Bev Novak from Mentone Grammar School encourages educators to start developing their Personal Learning Network (PLN) and discover the joy of lifelong learning - learning anything, anytime, anywhere with anybody they choose.

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We get asked a lot how to get more space in your Dropbox, and we realized that we’ve never put an official guide together. So here it is! When people start using Dropbox, they start small but often need more and more space over time. We’ve created a bunch of free ways to get more space, but also make it simple to get loads of space really fast. Take A Tour For people new to Dropbox, there are a few things you should try out first — we want you to install Dropbox on a bunch of computers, use our...  show all text

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A top girls' school is planning a "failure week" to teach pupils to embrace risk, build resilience and learn from their mistakes.

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Excitement about goals is often diminished by our fear of failure or the drudgery of work. If you’re short on passion, it might be because your goals are too small or the fear is too big. Do a job for a long time and achieve what you set out to achieve, and suddenly, the dream job becomes a trudge instead. The job hasn't changed--your dreams have. Mostly, though, it's about our fear. Fear is the dream killer, the silent voice that pushes us to lose our passion in a vain attempt to seek safety....  show all text

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What it is:  The higher up I got in math, the less connection I could make back to it’s usefulness in real life.  I had math mastered in school, I could memorize the formulas and spit back out the steps to get straight A’s in algebra, geometry, calculus and even trig.  It wasn’t until I was watching the Social Network movie (as an adult) that I started connecting that higher math to purposes in real life.  That is a problem.  Remember the scene in the Social Network when Zuckerberg is writing a...  show all text

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Google Scholar is a great search tool that too often is overlooked by teachers and students. In the 45 minute video below, Google Search Engineer Daniel Russell walks viewers through using Google Scholar to get the best results. Applications for Education This video is part of Google's larger Search Education program through which you can find other webinar recordings, lessons for teaching search, and other reference materials that are useful for teaching and learning about best search techniq...  show all text

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One of the struggles of teaching a “special” is meeting the needs of over 250 students a week, sometimes for one measly 45 minute period. Differentiation in this setting is hard. Today I won a simple but hugely important battle in this arena. One of my 7th graders struggles to do anything independently. She is a hard worker and motivated, but with 23 students working on projects and only 45 minutes (less when you count transition times) for me to check in with each one, it never fails that this...  show all text

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U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski were on hand to unveil the new "Digital Textbook Playbook," a resource designed by the Digital Textbook Collaborative to help guide educators in their transition to electronic resources, as the pair headlined a national online town hall meeting for the inaugural Digital Learning Day. Genachowski also challenged states and educational content suppliers to ensure that all students nationwide have access...  show all text

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TB Today is Digital Learning Day, a national promotional effort by the Alliance for Excellence in Education to call attention to using technology in schools. More than 10,000 teachers and 1.5 million students have signed up in support to “celebrate innovative teachers and highlight instructional practices that strengthen teaching and personalize learning for all students,” according to the AEE. To that end, a repost of Adam S. Bellow’s Golden Rules of Technology in Schools, as he stated them at...  show all text

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Founded in 1943, ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) is an educational leadership organization dedicated to advancing best practices and policies for the success of each learner. Our 175,000 members in 119 countries are professional educators from all levels and subject areas––superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members. Our nonprofit, nonpartisan membership association provides expert and innovativ...

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Like many of you, I am a member Classroom 2.0. While I'm not as active in it as I would like to be (a man only has so many hours in a day) I think it is an invaluable place for educators to connect. So when Classroom 2.0's founder, Steve Hargadon asked me to collaborate with him on the creation of a book of best ideas and examples for using Web 2.0 in schools, I immediately said yes. Yesterday, the project was announced across the Classroom 2.0 networks. We would like you to contribute to the b...  show all text

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Earlier this month, I wrote "10 Important Skills Students Need for the Future." After reading a few articles about specific tech skills, I thought I write what I think are the 10 Important Tech Skills Students Need. 1. Internet Search - students need to know how to do a proper internet search, using search terms and modifiers. This skill is needed for school, work and life in general. Tips on Better Searches (from Google) Infographic on Better Searches Common Craft Video on Web Search Strategi...  show all text

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  Very funny… right?  But why is it funny? If I had said “rich doctor, rich lawyer or rich businessman”, we wouldn’t have batted an eye.     Why so?  Is our professional path not valuable, or worse, not valued? Of course, not… there’s more to the story, though…   I don’t know how it is for you, but I wholeheartedly ran from professions that would’ve made me rich, and I think many teachers can probably identify with this train of thought:  I didn’t want more of the pie than anyone else. I want...  show all text

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Here at Educon yesterday, I had the chance to learn a bit more about design thinking from David Jakes.  David's central point was that schools and teachers often get stuck in a "Yeah, but..." mindset when thinking about change. Instead of dreaming about what's possible -- taking a "What if" stance towards the challenges standing in our way -- we're all too ready to trip over the hurdles in front of us without even attempting to jump.  David asked each table group to come up with a "What if" que...  show all text

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This guide is an update of my post from February 2011. With the school year in Victoria, Australia about to begin, this is a timely reminder of how you can get your class blogging. Before you start, you need to find the motivation to begin and persevere with blogging. If you need reminding of some of the benefits of blogging, or need to convince a fellow staff member of the benefits, check out this post and this video. 1. Choose Your Platform If you are working in a Victorian Government or Cath...  show all text

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At next week's staff meeting I'm running a session for all the teachers who are not involved in maths planning - these are basically the specialist teachers who are teaching subjects such as PE, music and German.  This session will look at what Web 2.0 tools these teachers can use for recording student learning.  It's quite a diverse group so I want to come up with different tools that will appeal to them all. I first started to think about what these teachers might be doing now to record lear...  show all text

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Yesterday, the Google Apps for Education team published a new ebook (PDF) titled A New and Open World for Learning. A New and Open World for Learning is all about using Google's products and services in education. The ebook is clearly a marketing vehicle for Google Apps for Education, but you will find some good examples of and ideas for using Google apps in your school. As part of the same announcement in which A New and Open World for Learning was released, Google also announced a revamped G...  show all text

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A staggering manufacturing system in China has made it possible for Apple and other companies to make devices almost as quickly as they can be dreamed up, but for workers, it can be dangerous.

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Flickr: Marquette La By Dolores Gende Apple’s announcement last week about its new iBooks2 and authoring app created big waves in education circles. But smart educators don’t necessarily need Apple’s slick devices and software to create their own books. How educators think of content curation in the classroom is enough to change their reliance on print textbooks. As the open education movement continues to grow and become an even more rich trove of resources, teachers can use the content to ma...  show all text

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Watch live streaming video from LearningWithoutFrontiers at livestream.comBroadcasting live from LWF 12 : Future of Learning Conference January 25th & 26thBe part of the conversation and int

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What it is:  What makes technology SO great is the way that it can make life (and teaching) more productive and fun.  Over the years, I have found so many ways that technology can make reading more rewarding for both kids who love to read, and kids who dread reading.  Today, I created an “Extreme Speed Booking” website for @michellek107′s class at Anastasis.  I created the site quickly using Weebly, an awesome WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website editor.  Drag and drop website building  show all text

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The popular online online bookmarking, digital notebook service LiveBinders released a new iPad app last week. The new LiveBinders iPad app gives you access to all of your binders to edit and present the content stored within them. If you aren't familiar with LiveBinders itself, it is a free online service that allows you to create online binders of webpages, images, and documents. Live Binders displays your collected content in a tabbed, book-like format. You can create binders for as many to...  show all text

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The digital age has changed more than how we learn. It’s changed what we need to learn.

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