Today’s kids can go online from so many different tools, and they are increasingly living their lives online. Although there are wonderful resources for our students online, these resources can pose problems as well. And here is a cool online game that we can use to train young learners on how to be more safe as they are using their emails: Safety Land  Safety Land is online game making kids more aware about e-mail safety. The game is featuring two characters, Captain Broadband and another character who is sending unsolicited emails to kids. In the game, you visit different buildings in the town to catch the nasty character and answer questions about what to do on receiving unwanted emails. When you answer all the questions, you can send the nasty character into the jail. Also, on finishing the game, the children can download a Hero certificate and as teachers, we can even download the game as a PDF file to use it in our classes as paper based resource.   

I am borrowing the notion of the Leitmotif, a recurring theme, and applying it to learning in the 21st century. For me it always seems to come back to a red thread of self-motivated and self-directed learning that connects all.   Anyone with an internet connection has the capability  of accessing courses and lectures from Ivy League universities. Times Magazine published an article titled, Logging on to the Ivy League already in 2009. Diamond is an esteemed neuroanatomist and one of the most admired professors at the University of California, Berkeley. It would be a privilege for anyone to sit in on her lectures. And, in fact, anyone can. Videos of her popular course are available free online, part of a growing movement by academic institutions worldwide to open their once exclusive halls to all who want to peek inside. Whether you’d like to learn algebra from a mathematician at MIT, watch how to make crawfish étouffée from an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America or study blues guitar with a professor at Berklee College of Music, you can do it all in front of your computer, courtesy of other people’s money. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1891740,00.html#ixzz2Avj9XAHx Simply google Yale iTunes University or Harvard iTunes University and you are in business to potentially LEARN from the same professors that teach the students who are attending these "very expensive"higher education institutions. Will you earn a degree from these universities?…No… Will you receive one on one attention from the professors if you have questions about their lecture?… No… Will you meet the right people or be roommates with the children of the right people?…. No…. Do  you have access to listening and learning from some brilliant minds?.. on your choice of topics?… without having to spend a dime?… Yes! Can you become part of an online learning community, with members watching the same lectures, discussing and learning with  and from each other?…Yes The "education" is there… there for the taking… only the self-directed and self-motivated… will and can take advantage of the offerings and LEARN from it. I recently published a blog post inspired by Will Richardson’s article "Three starting points to think differently about "Learning. I believe we have hit on another point,  illustrating how we NEED to think about learning in a different light: Being able to look for, find, watch, "re-wind" and learn from online lectures, guides and tutorials? How do we transfer this skill and break it down into different benchmarks for the younger students not ready for Yale or Harvard yet?  Thinking of : the highest level of thinking skills (Bloom’s Taxonomy) of creating the disputed Learning Pyramid, which claims that learners retain about 90% of what we teach others (Take a look at Darren Kurpatwa’s Academe’s Dirty Little Secret) Alan November’s Digital Learning Farm with Tutorial Designers as one of the roles to empower learners.  Give students authentic job responsibility to empower them and become part of a learning community (see Langwitches Posts about The Digital Learning Farm). Alan November recently published a book called "Who owns the Learning",  where he goes further into the concept of students leaving a legacy, including creating tutorials for a global audience. I am taking the route of having our students learn to create quality tutorials for each other or for their younger schoolmates.  There is something about kids and wanting to teach what they know to others. Our kids are not only flocking as their first choice for learning to online tutorials, they are also becoming the creators of many (without adult intervention!) Just ask a teenage daughter what she does in order to get make-up instructions if she has a "challenged mother" in that department? What about detailed directions for a complicated French braid? How do you learn to pick a lock, after your niece locks the basement door from the wrong side? What about help in order to upgrade your laptop’s memory or install a new hard drive? Online tutorials to the rescue! Take a look at the thousands of tutorials on youTube, websites, or snapguide, with "instructors" half or more the age of "traditional teachers". I have written many tutorial posts on Langwitches. They come in forms of  info-flyers to help guide teachers step by step in implementing a process or a tool, screenshots (image of my screen), screencasts (video recordings of my screen), infographics, podcasts (audio file), plain texts in blog posts, Word documents or shared with Google Docs. The above mentioned book Who owns the Learning by Alan November was one of the Summer Reading choices for our faculty. Our  4th and 5th grade teachers have been taken on the task to expose students to the importance of digital tutorials and encourage the to produce their own tutorials. In Language Arts, students worked  on  "how to" posts for their blogfolios.  They were encouraged to add hyperlinks, video, and/or images to their post to enhance their writing. Making a Hyperlink! (by Evie M.) Hyperlinking With Thinking (by Itamar) Adding an Image to a Blog Post (by Benjamin) How To Draw A Dragon Head (video) by Julia 5th grade students had a first go at storyboarding and filming a tutorial of "How to create a QR code?". As a class, each video clip /tutorial was critiqued. Students came up with a list of suggestions to make tutorials better. Everyone went back to the drawing board to edit and make the tutorials better according to their list. See a few video samples  from students of "How to Create a QR Code": What are your thoughts on the skill of learning with and from online tutorials? Important for the present and future of learning? Do you have your students create tutorials? How do you break the process down for them?

Here is a cool tool for creating online sketches: SKetch Toy Without signing up, you can start drawing on a blank page. You can choose different colors to draw on the page. When you are done, it gives you a link that you can share with others. The link shows the actual drawing of your sketch on the canvas.  Students can draw their live cards for birthdays, mother’s or father’s days, xmas … They can send students a greeting card for special days or different occasions.  Students can also create their own mini animations using this tool and share them with others.     

Halloween is just round the corner and the preparations are in full swing! If you want to do some online activities with your kids at school before the night, here are some spooky, scary, creepy web tools for you. Children can tell their spooky stories with Storyjumper or a collaborative story using Storybird. Choose your storyline, write your text and boo others! Children can also try some spooky poems using Poem Creator tool of Storybird. Children can create and adopt their cute monsters on Moshimonsters. They can write or talk about their animals’ Halloween plans. What about creating Halloween e-cards with your own pictures? Choose your e-card, upload your pictures, add your message and scare others. You can carve your own pumpkin here or here.  Would you like to create your own spooky pumpkin, here you go! Children can create their own Halloween avatars using Voki, and record their voices telling their jokes or stories. Here and here, you can create an interactive e-card, use text-to-speech and share it with others. You can play this Halloween Escape game and ask kids to write the directions for each other. You can create your own funky card here by uploading your face pictures. Here is a nice game where you write the words and make the ghosts disappear. You can attach different animal parts to a human body to build your wild safe and share it with others. If you are working with young learners, PBS Kids is also celebrating Halloween with many interactive activities.  You can try this comic creator that includes characters and setting that would go well with the Halloween spirit.    Here is Scholastic’s fantasy story starters. Choose one and  let children write their own stories.  Choose from many different activities that you can do in class from this collection of ideas.  Have a spooky time on Halloween. Don’t get too scared though… Image source: Shutterstock

Let’s talk about LEARNING, not technology! What are some cultural shifts in our fast changing world, that have an impact on our own learning as educators? How can we start thinking differently about learning? Thank you to Will Richardson for his thought provoking "3 Steps to Start Thinking Differently About Learning" , Alec Couros for his "Taking on the Challenge of Teaching & Learning in the 21st Century"  and Steve Hargadon for his thoughts of  "You First", which makes so much sense.   The video is also available as a slidedeck Learning2learn from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

Here are some spooky apps to celebrate Halloween with your kids! With Free Halloween Sounds app or iHalloween App, listen to many creepy sounds on your tablet. You can ask students to guess  what the sound is or set the timer to scare someone. Or add scary noises to your stories as you tell them.   Happy Halloween Pumpkin app helps you to carve a virtual pumpkin with a mess and lets you decorate your pumpkin. After creating their pumpkins, children can describe theirs to each other. Halloween Jokes app includes many fun and interactive jokes about ghosts, skeletons, pumpkins, witches, vampires, wizards, and many more, for kids to have fun.  Halloween Card Creator App lets you create spooky Halloween cards that you can share with others.  Carve-a-Pumpkin App is another app that will help you to carve your pumpkin and decorate. When you are done, you can share your pumpkin via mail or social media tools. Make a Zombie App allows you to choose from the included backgrounds, bodies, clothes, eyes, hairstyles, heads, pair of legs and mouths to create your very own zombie and then share it. Let children create their zombies and tell their spooky stories with them. With this Monster Maker App, let the children create monsters and tell their stories. Mask Jumble App allows your students to make virtual masks on their faces. Enjoy Halloween with these free apps! Image Source: ShutterStock      

After planning with our first grade Hebrew teacher a year long project of  Creating a Visual Dictionary on the iPad, it was time to put theory in practice. Kitah Alef, our first graders, received an introductory lesson on properly handling our iPads in the classroom. We created a short video of our rules and tips. Students were excited to be sharing the video with Kindergarten and Pre-schoolers in the future, so they could learn from them. On the first day, we learned common vocabulary we will be using when working with the iPads screen apps icons swiping tapping Home button open/close save e-mail send To practice following directions according to this new vocabulary, students opened the Skitch app, drew an Aleph (first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet) and sent/e-mailed that image to their teacher. Being able to create>save>send is an important fluency skill for students to learn and practice. The second day we talked about the camera: practiced taking pictures without covering the camera up with a hand or finger switch back between front and back camera pay attention to make sure that the camera is not set to video recording hold the iPad steady while taking the picture using the thumb to take the picture going to the Photo Album to verify that image was taken and they are satisfied with the image. Another stop to getting to know our iPads was the keyboard. we have the English and the Hebrew keyboard installed on each iPad tapping the "world" key to switch between keyboards Students took pictures of  "Ariot", a cartoon character of their Hebrew book to be saved into the Photo Album The next day, we reviewed the previous steps and found the picture they took of Ariot in their Photos. we opened  PicCollage app added the "Ariot" image to the canvas resized the image cut around the image The first image, they had taken a picture with the words, written in Hebrew, typed already underneath it. Our next step was to have them use the Hebrew keyboard in order to add the corresponding words to the image. They then changed color and size of the text too. Changing the background was not something we taught the students, but one or two "discovered" on their own and showed the rest of the class. We created an album for each student on their assigned iPad. After a dictionary page was created and saved to the photo album, it was also placed into the student’s album, so all dictionary pages would be housed together and easily accessible. Students were so excited that they found a classmate who started with the Hebrew letter of the week After 4 weeks, students were "fluent" in creating their dictionary page for their Hebrew letter of the week. Being fluent meant: find and open Pic Collage take an image of something that starts with the Hebrew letter of the week re-size the image trace the image to cut around the object Change the background change the keyboard to Hebrew letters add text (name of object) save image to library add image to Album (specifically created to house students’ dictionary pages) The workflow, that took 30+ minutes in the beginning is accomplished by most students in a few minutes now. Some of the students have become helpers on their own… walking around the room to help their classmates who are having trouble with a step.  

If you and your students like reading books, here is a very cool website where you can find many books to read online. We Give Books has a great collection of books that you can choose from the library to read online. You can search the books by name, age range, genre, and author or most read. Simply click on the book and start reading it. The website has also reading extension activities for teachers to do with the students in class here. The best part of this organization is that, as you read a book, the website gives real books to the charities around the world and you will help the children who cannot afford to have a book, have a real book in their hands!! I loved the website, the quality of the books and hats off for what they are doing! Please spread the word! Picture Source: ShutterStock

Helping students become quality Tutorial Designers has been on my mind and agenda lately. The reasons are plentiful, from the train of thought "if you can teach it, you know it", being a vital skill in the 21st century, Alan November’s work "Who owns the Learning?"/ "Digital Learning Farm" to tutorials being an important piece in the self-motivated and self-directed learning of our times. Teaching, nor creating (digital) tutorials, may come natural to everyone. There are are several skills involved. which are valuable for our students to learn. communication not only understanding content and process, but being able to express and communicate them to someone else. The communication can be accomplished in a variety of media. collaboration curating all student created tutorials in one place (ex. wiki) will create a hub, where students can search for tutorials of content, that they need a refresher on and  it creates a depository for students in future years to come. writing writing a script is an essential part of tutorial design. Tutorial writing could be considered part of the expository writing and technical writing genre vocabulary using  specific vocabulary related to the content explained storyboarding "Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing"~ Wikipedia digital storytelling a tutorial is a special type of story. It requires the "teller" of the story to engage the "listener" via different digital media networking tutorials are meant for others to learn from us digital media creating, editing, and mixing of a variety of media forms (text, images, audio, video, etc.) and the fluency to work with a variety of media and switch effortless between them empathy the ability to understand and share the feelings (ex. not know how to do something or understand) of another In addition to supporting students in gaining competency and fluency in the above mentioned skills, we also need to emphasize QUALITY work. Too many student-created tutorials, lack depth of content knowledge and more emphasis seemed to have been placed on using a specific tool rather than showing evidence of learning. In an effort to support teachers and have a handy list for students when creating tutorials, I created the following checklist. The checklist is divided into three parts: Steps Technique Quality Considerations Each part is divided further into different sections Steps: storyboarding creation dissemniation Technique: screencasting audio movie images text comics miscellaneous Quality Considerations: audio video images text content strategy & procedures Download the Tutorial Design Checklist as a pdf file. Interested in reading more about my thoughts on Tutorial Designers? A Vital Skill? Look For, Find and Learn from Online Guides & Tutorials Tutorial Designers, Guides, Step-by-Step Instructions: Amplification & Imagination Is It Worth It? Student Created Tutorials Becoming good Tutorial Designers Tutorial Designers- Empowered Learners- Contributors Teaching is the Highest Form of Understanding  

Here is a cool tool for sending virtual postcards. It is Postcard FM. Without signing up, upload a photo and then upload a mp3 song file. You can record your voice and use that sound file too. When you are done, preview and send the link via email.  Students can be asked to celebrate important dates, tell the story of a picture or sing a song or read a poem that they have created. Simple yet a powerful tool for learners. Image Sourse: Shutter Stock

As I am wrapping my mind around the whole concept of "Learning How to Learn", I am also thinking about the infrastructure of the school landscape that needs to be in place to make learning in new forms possible. Steve Hargadon, with his "You First- You be the lead learner"call for action, Will Richardson’s 3 Starting Points for Thinking Differently About Learning and Alec Couros’ slidedeck Taking on the Challenge of 21st Century Teaching and Learning are the core of my "Thinking Differently About Learning- Next Steps" Checklist Once a school landscape/infrastructure/platforms and [educator's] Learning "You First" are in place, new forms of student learning will happen organically. I understand that changing a school culture, starting to think differently about learning and education is very complex. It often seems an insurmountable task to fight for these changes to occur. With every step, there are many variables to consider and new obstacles to overcome. A one-page checklist seems too simplistic… but it is a starting place… and might make the initial task clearer. The checklist below is by no means exclusive nor "how it HAS to happen", but just my thoughts of (hopefully) helpful steps to get a conversation going at your school or your classroom, an idea of how to begin or possible next steps to continue. Please add comments with a step, that seems to be indispensable in your infrastructure, Learning "You First" or Student Learning section. You Can Also download the checklist as a pdf file.  

If you would like to calm your students in class with a background noise, here is Noisli web tool for you. Noisli is a web tool where you can use it as a background-noise generator or as a color background creator that "brings you the healthy benefits of the chromotherapy." You can listen to the rain, wind, a camp fire, thunder storms, water streams. The web tools also lets you mix and match different kinds of background noise at once. You can also set the time to fade out the audio. The concept is simple yet brilliant. You can use this web tool to create a relaxing atmosphere during writing activities, role playing or you can use this tool as a settle down activity. You can make children listen to the sounds and write the story behind it. Image Source:ShutterStock

I recently wrote about Thinking About Learning Differently- Talking to Strangers, where I mentioned our third graders journey of skyping around the world to learn about different communities. They have spoken via Skype with classes from a suburb of Los Angeles, CA , an rural community in Missouri and a city, Weatherford, TX. The latest connection was with Anna Faridaku, a teacher and children’s book author from Indonesia.  Students took turns speaking with Anna, who was just amazing in connecting (via the screen) to the kids, answering and asking questions. She engaged them  and pushed them to deeper thinking about similarities and differences about our communities. They have now also spoken to a class from Prague, Czech Republic and we are working on our next connections with Argentina and New Zealand. Please contact me via Twitter (@langwitches), if you are interested in being part of the 3rd grade learning journey. The goal is not to only collect cold data, but to: make connections between the different locations and communities learn about geography talk "to strangers", practicing speaking skills and conversation skills, be aware of body language… reflect on how and what we are learning invite a global audience (including parents and grandparents) to continue a conversation via the classroom blog continuously  becoming better at asking questions and learning that questions don’t stop at the end of a lesson, day, Skype call Overcoming geographic boundaries Conversations about Alligators in Florida and Prague Two native Hebrew speakers meet across the Ocean Documenting through various lenses Documenting Using tools for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration Formulating questions and collecting data The comments on the classroom blog below came from family and friends of our students who continued to contribute to students learning after the call ended. Family continues a conversation after the call ended Skyping with Indonesia   It is time to THINK DIFFERENTLY about learning!

Do you remember what happened a year ago today? With Little Memory web tool, now it is easy to know! Little Memory is a web tool like a diary. After signing up, you simply write today’s memory. If you want, you can upload a picture, tag where you are, tag your friends and surprise them by sharing your memories of the day with them.  You can keep your memories private or share them via different social media tools. The tool also sends you a notification during the day to remind you to write. You can also download it to your iOS or Chrome devices.  With this tool, students can keep their memories of each day or a period of time. When they are done, they can print out all their memories and compare their progress with their friends. It is great to promote metaskills as the kids can follow their progress as they keep their memories. Also, it is a cool way to improve writing skills of the students and write reflections on what they have learnt in class. Image Source: Shutterstock

Kindergarten time is storytelling time: Listening to stories, telling stories, acting stories out, learning how to read your own stories and creating your own stories! Learning about a holiday, like Thanksgiving in the USA, is the perfect time to cloak the historical origin into a fascinating story for five and six year olds. Who is not excited about a story with Indians, interesting people named "Pilgrims", a ship named Mayflower and a huge feast with "yummy" food? (Can you tell I am in the "little people" mode) Our Kindergarten teacher upgraded a traditionally created paper bound class booklet of the students illustrations and text of a Thanksgiving story to creating a TechnoTale. What is a techno-tale? A techno-tale is a digitally told story By creating a movie, the teacher AMPLIFIED the original reach her students’ work had …by embedding the video on the classroom blog, allowing family and friends to watch the movie, regardless of their geographic location and the amount of physical booklets that were available. the learning style …by allowing students to learn through and express themselves in a variety of forms. using different communication media …by giving students the opportunity,  not only draw illustrations and add text, but by recording their voices over the illustrations. home-school connection …by allowing students to share something created in the classroom with their families at home, opening doors to further conversation about school and classroom happenings. repetition …The video is personalized (student’s voice, student’s illustrations) and motivates students to watch over and over again. dissemination …by using different strategies, we actively and strategically share and disseminate our students’ work. We blog, tweet, promote and talk about their work  with others. If interested, take a look at my How-To Guide of How to Create a TechnoTale in iMovie In addition to the TechnoTale video you see above,  the Kindergarten class also created a bilingual iPad eBook (Hebrew/English) of their book ( with the BookCreator iPad app) By creating an eBook version, we further AMPLIFIED the original paper booklet and technotale movie by: adding language tracks …by adding a second voice recording in the target language. classroom learning time …by giving students the opportunity to read and practice the target language (Hebrew) beyond the contact time in the classroom. parent-school connection …parents or grandparents, who are native target language speakers are included and encouraged to read the eBook with their children. accessibility ….by making the eBook available to download on the classroom blog, we allowed more family and friends to read and listen to the story. distribution …duplication of the book does not cost anything extra, distribution is easy and instant. reach a global audience …by making the file available for download and sharing the created eBook freely, we are encouraging a greater world wide audience for our students. students’ legacy (definition of legacy: Something handed down from an ancestor or a predecessor or from the past) …by creating an eBook, which is saved in the school’s  iTunes account and available on all school iPad iBook shelves for years to come, students in subsequent years, can read, listen and learn from this year’s Kindergarten class. If you own an iPad or iPhone, you can download the ePub file  and directly drop it into your iTunes library. Once you sync your device with iTunes, you are able to read our ebook. If you are reading this post on your iPad or iPhone, simply click on the ePub file and choose to open in iBook. The above can give you a pretty good idea of the amplification possibilities,  a "traditional" analog project, "upgraded" to a digital version can bring. I do want to close, not with more transformative skills or goals for further amplification, but with the LEARNING behind the scenes that went into the production of the TechnoTale and eBook. Take a look… K-Thanksgiving-technotale from langwitches on Vimeo.

I love storytelling and all the other tools and apps that will help our children to improve their creativity! And here is a brand new tool that we can bring to our classes: Write About Write About includes many picture writing prompts for all level of students. After choosing your picture prompt, you can write your story or record your voice telling the story. Then you can share it or keep it private or save it as a draft to work on it later. You can also check what others have done by checking the gallery. Great for inspiring students and helping them to build their stories as well as improving their writing in English.  As a teacher, you can also create an account and give your students your teacher codes. Like that, you can give them assignments and check what they have done. You can also download the apps on your Android or your IOS devices.  Love this tool to pieces.

Student blogging is not a project, but a process. We are continuously striving to refine, improve and re-evaluate. As I am meeting with teachers individually, I can’t stress enough the importance of READING other blogs (professional, student, blogs about your hobby, blogs about other interests you have etc.). I am trying to filter and funnel quality blogs in education, their grade level and  areas of interest to them as I come across them, so they can build a quality RSS Reader. BUT.. we need their help in having a basic understanding of blogs, its pedagogical uses, as a platform of a new writing genre (digital writing) and how our blogfolios fit into your curriculum and the BIG PICTURE of LEARNING. The blogfolios are not a platform to use only for a particular subject, but should give evidence of learning for each student. Andrea Hernandez and I  are  working on a "spiraling" blogging skills guide for each grade level in order to facilitate skill building connections from one year to the next. Creating the platform and the username and password and teaching the kids to log in is the EASY part. The focus needs to be in using the platform to guide students to : GROW as writers create QUALITY content write with a GLOBAL audience in mind learn the infrastructure and grammar of digital wriring use the amplified possibilities that the digital platform offers to not only practice basic writing skills, but REDEFINE and TRANSFORM the writing process NOT only TRANSLATE traditional writing (that can be done with a paper and pencil) to an online space personalize their writing create a hub for their own personal learning experience By "translating", I mean… take a traditionally written five paragraph essay, type it and publish it on the blog convert a research paper into digital text and publish without adding links for references, nor connections for further research possibilities. take a linear writing process and try to make it fit into a multimedia, multi-dimensional writing platform By "transforming", I mean…being able to do something that was impossible to do before: write for a global audience. Hundreds or thousands of people reading, learning from and possibly responding to student work. linking to other resources, other writers, writing on different levels (foreground (author’s voice) and backchannel (linked content) embedding of multimedia (images, audio, video, etc.) While I understand that "translating" and  "substituting" (take a look at the SAMR model) analog, traditional tasks with online digital tasks is part of the process, it is only a step. There has to be an understanding that the goal is to keeping moving, tweaking, growing, amplifying. We are all pioneers in exploring: What writing in digital spaces mean? How do we use it for learning? How do we prepare our students for the digital environments, that most likely will be the majority (if not only) platform that they will be working in and with. In an effort to move forward with our student blogs, take a look at the following checklist for students to Take Another Look at Their Blog Posts. This checklist below focuses on the "Quality of Writing", with an emphasis on building community through links and conversations. I have follow up checklists in mind, that will address hyperlinked writing, multimedia writing, connected and collaborative writing. Download the Checklist as a pdf file.

There are many student response systems that you can use in the classroom with your students. And here is a new and a great one for me that I have learnt from great educators Yaz Bayraktar and Berna Aslan. Plickers is a kind of clickers that you can poll or quiz your students online. The best part is that your students don’t need to have any devices or connect to the internet. After signing up, you create your class online and create a list of questions or your students. You download the app to your phone. Then, print out the plickers code cards (that looks like a QR code) and hand them to your students. You can use the same printed cards in all your classes. The code cards are four sided and on each side A, B, C or D letter is written. As you show the questions and the possible answers to your students on the screen, they rotate their cards to give the right answer and hold it up. (The right answer should be on the top) Then with the app, you can scan the codes and see who has got it right or wrong immediately! I think this is one of the most creative web tools I’ve ever seen! You can use this tool as an exit card, to get feedback or to create class polls. Please, check this tool and download it! Hats off for the creator of this tool!

Is traditional reading and writing enough to be considered literate in the 21st century?I have put together my thoughts via a slide deck. Please note, that I am not advocating throwing out traditional reading and writing, but pushing the awareness that it simply might not be enough to prepare our students. We need to rethink our notion of critical literacy, develop authentic learning and assessment opportunities, upgrade and amplify our curriculum. 21st Century Critical Literacy from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

Videos are an essential part of our teaching and here is a super cool tool that will help us to make our videos more interactive. Edpuzzle helps you to do many different things at the same time with your videos. You can find videos from different video sharing websites or upload your own videos, then you can crop them. You can record your voice over a video with your own words and in your own language and share them with your students. Edpuzzle also allows you to record audio comments or conclusion for your videos. Also, you can ask open ended or multiple choice questions or add text comments on the videos. Then you can share your videos or assign your students to watch them.  This tool is great if you are specially doing flipped classroom. Teachers can add open ended questions to explore and answer the questions as a whole class in the classroom. Students  can also be asked to make some comments on different videos.  Picture Source: Shutterstock

The annual Edublog Awards are open for voting! Voting is open! Check out the 2012 nominees! Every year the list of nominated blogs provide a wonderful opportunity to freshen up your RSS Reader.  Don’t forget the importance of READING blogs as part of  professional development. Also, share the classroom blog and individual student blog list with your students. Let them audit each one, noting components that they like and don’t like. Let them review and articulate their findings and most importantly let them vote for their favorites. Thank you to all who selected and nominated their favorite blogs in so many categories. I am humbled that Langwitches was nominated in two categories:   Here are the lists of finalists in a few categories Best Individual Blog: A Journey in TEFL - Eva Buyuksimkesyan An A-Z of ELT - Scott Thornbur Annie Murphy Paul Box of Chocolates - Cecilia Lemos NeverEndingSearch - Joyce Valenza Teacher Reboot Camp - Shelly Terrell A Principal’s Reflections - Eric Sheninger Agnostic, Maybe - Andy Woodworth All Things Learning - Tony Gurr Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom - Steven Anderson ChristinaSkyBox - Ana Cristina Pratas Cool Cat Teacher - Vicki Davis Dangerously Irrelevant - Scott McLeod EdTechDigest Film English - Kieran Donaghy Free Technology for Teachers - Richard Byrne Gridjumper’s Blog Integrating Tech in the Primary Classroom - Kathleen Morris Intrepid Teacher - Jabiz Raisdana Jeremy Harmer’s Blog Kleinspiration - Erin Klein Langwitches Blog - Silvia Tolisano Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day Learning In Burlington - Patrick Larkin Learning with ‘e’s - Steve Wheeler Moving at the Speed of Creativity - Wesley Fryer Practical Theory - Chris Lehmann Research and Web Tools - Lucian Duma Science Soup - Lauren Fuge Seomra Ranga Speech Techie - Sean Sweeney Teacher in a Strange Land - Nancy Flanagan Teacher Tom - Thomas Hobson Teaching All Students - Patrick Black The Daring Librarian - Gwyneth Jones The Frugal Filmmaker - Scott Eggleston The Innovative Educator - Lisa Nielsen The Principal of Change - George Couros The Rapid e-Learning Blog - Tom Kuhlmann The Tempered Radical - Bill Ferriter Vicky Loras’s Blog What Ed Said - Edna Sackson Wright’s Room - Shelley Wright wwwatanabe - Tracy Watanabe ZDNet Education - Chris Dawson Best Librarian Blog: A Media Specialists Guide to the Internet Bulldog Readers Cabra Senior Library Blog El Blog del Bibioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes Leselyst Leselyst: en litteraturblogg Librarian in Black Library Matters Lucacept - Intercepting the Web Mighty Little Librarian Momo Celebrating Time to Read Mrs. ReaderPants O???????????? ???? Page in Training School Library Journal Sheldon High School Library Sonfession of a Science Librarian South Dublin Libraries Tales from a Loud Librarian Teen Librarian Toolbox The Adventures of Library Girl The Busy Librarian The Daring Librarian Van Meter Library Voice Watch. Connect. Read. Best Classroom Blog: 3/4C & 3/4K @ UPPS 3/4C @ The Junction 3MH’s Classroom Blog 4KM And 4KJ @ Leopold Primary School 6D 2012 - 2013 A Room with a View: Class 2! Carron-Kemp Crew Creative Articles & Media Arts Enjoy Learning English Fabulous 5S Flat Rosie’s Adventures Fraher’s Class and Friends Games MOCC journals Grade 5 at Napoleons Primary School GryphonScience Huzzah ICT4eTwinners  Inés workshop of English  Kids with a View  Mr. Avery’s 6th Grade Class Blog Mr. C’s Class Blog  Mr. Salsich’s Class Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom Blog Ms. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog Primary 5V Class Blog SCC ENGLISH  Techie Kids The Grade 3/4 Learning Legends @ Lonnie The Ins & Outs Year 6 The Skinny - 5th Grade tic-tac, aprenem  Where it all comes together… Year 2RC Year 6RC Best Student Blog: A Pupil’s Perspective Amy M’s Creative Mind Atsman BB’s Awesome Blog Beth’s Blog Bronte’s Barn Come Somersault With Sarah! Dana’s dazzling blog Dawso’s Blog  Dawso’s Blog Rss  Day Dreamer Dimitrije’s School Blog - English English  English at Sandvika  englishclas englishsandvika exploring english  GBM Corner Georgia’s Gorgeous Blog haakonmasst Hanna B. gradstudentSLP iamtessa Jack’s Blog Jaden’s Awesome Blog  Jarrod’s Awesome Blog Johanna’s Domain Johns A2 Music Production Leah’s Blog Matt’s Magnificent Blog MEAOW @ Josie’s Blog Millie’s Blog Miriam’s Magical Moments Molly Mystery Journal My life as student at Sandvika High School  NIKHIL GOYAL North America Meets South America  pernillelouise Ryan’s blog Sean Lin’s Blog Shoko’s Blog Skye’s Super Blog SLP_Echo Sophie’s Blog Thinking About … This and That… Verve victorenglish wjb’s blog ZACK’S BLOG Best Teacher Blog: AssortedStuff - Tim Stahmer Bianca Hewes Blogging through the Fourth Dimension - Pernille Ripp Blogush - Paul Bogush Box of Chocolates - Cecilia Lemos Classroom Chronicles - Henrietta Miller Cool Cat Teacher - Vicki Davis Ctrl Alt Teach - Catherine "Cat" Horton Flippen e Learning for life - Kimberley Rivett Edulang - Brad Patterson Integrating Technology - Kathleen Morris Kevin’s Meandering Mind Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day LeavingCertEnglish.net - Evelyn O’Connor Levdavidovic - Fintan O’Mahony Ollie Bray Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog Speech Techie - Sean J. Sweeney speech-language-therapy.com - Caroline Bowen Sylivai’s English Online Teach them English Teacher Tom Teaching using web 2.0 - Ann S. Michaelsen  The Frog Blog The Learning Spy - David Didau The Nerdy Teacher - Nicholas Provenzano  The Tempered Radical - Bill Ferriter  Upside Down Education - Amanda Dykes Wright’sRoom wwwatanabe - Tracy Watanabe Best Administrator’s Blog: A Principal’s Reflections - Eric Sheringer A Space for Learning - Pam Moran Darcy Moore David Truss :: Pair-a-dimes for Your Thoughts  Design Movement - Dr. Brett Jacobsen Dr. Cook’s Blog Education Rethink ErHead - Erin Paynter headguruteacher - Tom Sherrington Hooked on Innovation - Carl Hooker  John C. Schinker johntomsett  Learning In Burlington - Patrick Larkin Life of an Educator by Justin Tarte Moving at the Speed of Creativity - Wesley Fryer Ollie Bray Principal Greg Miller Raymond L. Young Reading By Example - Tom Sherrington Reflections from an Elementary School Principal - Jessica Johnson Sharing Our Blessings - Shira Leibowitz The Principal of Change - George Couros The Wejr Board - Chris Weir thinkwasabi - Berto Pena This and That - Jon Castelhano Tony Baldasaro ?????? ???? ?????

Microsoft’s new presentation tool, Sway seems pretty promising which looks like a combination of a powerpoint and a Prezi. Sway gives you a canvas where you can add content from your cloud storage, your devices or your social networks such as  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or OneDrive. There are many styles and layouts that you can choose from. Even you do not choose, Sway will suggest you some styles based on the colors in your presentation. When you are done, you can share your presentation with a link, or get the embed code or share your Sways on social media platforms. The best thing is that your  Sway will always look perfect on all devices that you use. The students can use this tool for submitting their projects or presenting a topic. Let’s see if Sway will replace some of the tools that we get used to seeing in conferences.  

I am excited to be participating at Innovate 2013 and thrilled that the conversation is finally coming to South America! Innovate 2013,  is being held a the Graded School in Sao Paulo, Brazil next month. If you are planning on attending in person, registration closes in just a few days on December 7th. In case you can’t be there physically, put the dates on your calendar (January 19-21st, 2013) to attend virtually via Twitter (#innovate13) Become a connected educator and be part of that conversation! Innovate 2013 marks Graded School’s commitment to re-imagine the school that best serves and inspires students for tomorrow. Please join us and innovators from across the globe to engage in a dialogue designed to ignite new ideas resulting in building a foundation for the change our students deserve. In partnership with Un-Plugged at the American School of Bombay, the Lausanne Laptop Institute at Lausanne Collegiate, the European 1-1 Learning Institute hosted by the Frankfurt International School, and the Association of American Schools in South America (AASSA), Graded School is honored to launch the conversation in South America.

New year is on the way and here are some tools to enjoy the last days of this year with your students! Here is the Santa bot that is waiting for our students to chat online. JibJab is a cool website where you can place your face on different ready made animated e-cards.  Play this escape the room game and help Santa to go out. Students can write the missing parts of the directions as they play or or they can write the directions. Create your ElfYourSelf with your picture and select a  dance to have fun.  You have got something to say to Santa? He has got an email adress here. Let’s write and wait for his reply. What about creating a custom letter for Santa! You can film yourself or upload a picture and it to Santa’s mail. Here is another place to send your wishes to Santa! For every letter, they are donating 1 dollar to the charity.  Make Santa jump, hop, dance, sing!! Write whatever you want and Santa does it for you on SimonSezSanta. Here is where you can visit Santa’s secret village in NorthPole and play games. Send an interactive ecard via OWorlds, decorate your gingerbread man,write your message and change your background. Decorate your Christmas tree here. What about making your own virtual snowman! You can try this one here. Make your personalized Christmas card and share the joy with others. Make your carol with Zefrank and share the joy! Create your card that features the National Concert Hall here! Select a cute animated card here, add your message and send it to your friends. Would you like to play New Year songs with the Rain Deer Orchestra, just squash their noses with your mouse or click the symbol on your keyboard. Create your online snowflake and let it snow. Children can create their personalized Santa stories here.  You can Santa Yourself by adding your picture, writing your New Year message and send your animated card to others. Choose your character, your background, add some accessories here. Then use text-to-speech or record your voice for your message. Share the fun! and cheers to a happy New Year… Image Source: Shutterstock