Today’s teens are constantly surrounded by visually stimulating, interactive content. Television, portable digital content, and websites all seem to reach out to their young audiences with eye-catching material. So it’s no surprise that today’s learners expect to be encountered the same way in the classroom, which is why Brainpop’s education strategy is a good one to mention.

It appears that a new site has appeared that allows anyone to see your photos, regardless of whether you have a private profile or not.
We won’t go into whether or not a teacher should have a Myspace account. The fact is that newer teachers grew up in the Myspace age, and they have them. So here is what you need to do in order to keep prying eyes off of your private pics.
1. From your main page, click Photos.
2. Click on an album
3. Click on options
4. Select Options
5. Mark as …

There are few people these days that don’t know about YouTube. People from almost every background are using it to express their own ideas, remix other material into their own, or even follow the election. It currently hosts so many videos that it would be hard to search for any given keyword and not come up with relevant results.
YouTube has a dark side, though. A side that hosts many videos that are highly unsuitable for school audiences. You would be hard stretched to find any school that did not block …

We’ve covered several different ways to generate bibliographies, but Bill over at bloggingonthebay.org has pointed out a useful tool, The Citation Machine. The concept of this web resource is that it gives you the fields to fill in about your source and it generates a citation for you. Handy. Check out Bill’s article here.

Once a year…1000 remarkable people gather in Monterey, California to exchange something of incalcuable value, their ideas.
This opening line starts off every one of the 18 minute videos that appear on Ted.com. What are they? They are presentations from some of the greatest minds this world has to offer, covering a vast array of topics. They take place once a year in Monterey, California and are then shared via the web. The value in this is huge.

From time to time teachers often like to assign something like this:
Students are to read through magazines or scholarly online articles and find 3 that are relevant to subject X. Each article will need to be accompanied by a short write-up documenting their relevance to the topic.
This isn’t a bad approach, and actually brings a fair amount of relevance to the material the teacher is covering. But let’s imagine something bigger. (This one hits fairly hard on the advanced side, but is great for showing where things could go …

Students can find out which Presidential candidate they most relate to thanks to Minnesota Public Radio’s quiz. The results page lists who they match the best with and includes which subjects they both agree or disagree on. Take it a step further and check out the cumulative results for all quiz takers. Sounds like it would make for a nice oppurtunity for writings, discussion, or blogging. I’ve added a few cross curricular ideas to boot.

A co-teacher of mine emailed today about in interesting service today provided by Izzit.org They offer a free service for teachers wanting to cover current events in their classroom. Each day they post an important article from newspapers and magazines ranging from USA Today to the Wall Street Journal. Each article contains great key questions that can be used as discussion starters. Very few online services offer such quality and relevant articles and questions, and I figured it deserved some acknowledgment- not that it needs me based on the fact …

Lifehacker recently published on article on the various free resources that colleges offer on their websites. Some of the highlights include art galleries, a virtual microscope, and a vast collection of history resources. Sometimes it’s a tough task finding the information we need for our lessons and thankfully several universities are providing it for free! Read lifehacker’s full article here.

When starting a research assignment students often turn to Google. Even teachers do – you do right? And often times I wonder about the credibility of where they get their info from. Google makes it easier to keep it in check with Google Notebook. Let’s take a look at it’s features and then explore it’s possibilities for students AND teachers.