Trying to bundle these ideas is a bit of a challenge for me. Yes, I like to read a bit about upcoming theories of education. Yet, how can we discuss good ole fashioned research at the same time. They do go hand in hand, just infuse a bit a technology and it all flows smoothly.

Social Studies: SweetSearch has been around awhile and a student search engine and I may have even mentioned it here, but sometimes if another person pulls together the topic, it is a bit easier for students (and teachers) to get started. So pull together a directory of class resources, a bunch of how to articles for lessons and tons of fun tidbits and that is what you'll find at the SweetSearch Social Studies site. I loved the article called, "10 Reasons Students Shouldn't Cite Wikipedia." The left is a column of more list type sites and the right is the Today in History items so the page itself is dynamic. You could spend most of the summer getting great anecdotal material here.

Science, Civics, Math, and Economics: Any time you have data you have a graph. That is the way of the internet but I'll bet you never saw such a collection of different types of graphs as at Many Eyes. This visualization website hosts over 188,000 data sets on all topics from sports, energy, government, internet, and so much more. Graphs include basic bar, pie, and line and also histograms, treemaps, tag clouds, matrix charts and others.

Searching for Students: In general, most students pull up Google and away they go. That is fine for a savvy searcher, yet Google is overwhelming and only good if you want "popular" information. It also won't tell you what answer the teacher is looking for. SchoolWax is a homework help site that pulls in all the searches most students will need: Dictionary.com, Answer.com, Google Translate, Quizlet, Essay Topics, Citation Builder... However, if the student gets bored during their homework, there is SchoolWaxTV with loads of videos on academic topics. Educators can find videos on their curriculum topics too.

Videos: I'm lost when it comes to YouTube because there are too many videos when I search. Today I stumbled across Classroom Clips and low and behold they are categorized by SOL standard. That is time saving!

Teaching: The Marzano Research Labs are always working on collecting data on the latest trends in education. They study the effectiveness of everything from interactive white boards to providing feedback to students. The latest study at their site shows the gain achieved by using a variety of teaching strategies. Ever wonder if incorporating more cooperative learning techniques is worthwhile? Or what would happen if you focused more on vocabulary? The stats are revealing and worth a look.

Tools to Whittle Away: Richard Byrne is one of the best bloggers for educators because all his ideas are FREE. No one can surf the web anymore, it's just too big. The best way is to learn more about online Social Bookmarking and RSS. This blog entry titled, "Keeping Track of the Good Stuff" explains, using video, the two concepts and why they make learning more a bit easier to manage. And how to avoid waisting time watching those cat videos too.

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What Did a Hard Drive Look Like in 1956?

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They are great tools and obviously, I'm an advocate, but what in the world would you do with one or many in the classroom? This list will grow with time and I would love to hear more ideas through the comment section.

1. Book Blogs – students give synopsis, comment and rate their favorite books and/or characters.
2. “Who am I?” or “Where am I?” or “What am I?”Activity – teacher provides clues and students can guess or students can group and provide clues to the class.
3. Multiple Answers – teacher asks open-ended questions that have multiple answers, and students provide their answers on the blog.
4. Cartoon Critique – political cartoons are analyzed.
5. Add an Idea – begin with a big picture concept, such as “Capitalism,” and require each student blog something new about the concept.
6. Peer Assessment – provide a rubric for comments and use groups or partnered students to assess each others’ work
7. Sequence – any process or list where the student must blog “what comes next.”
8. Mind mapping - students add drawings, PowerPoint Smartart, Webspiration, Bubbl.us, or any online mind map and then explain the flow.
9. SMART Notebook- teacher posts a notebook for student use and questions to view (students will need SMART Express to do this). Students can ask questions through the comment option.
10. Homework Help - open the blog as a homework help forum where students and teachers help each other.
11. Create an Ending - teacher provides writing prompt and assigns students to create their own ending.
12. Graph and Explain - using Excel or Create-a-Graph or any online graphing tool; students create a graph based on figures, an experiment, or survey and post it with an explanation.
13.  Survey - teacher or student led. The topic can be an interest inventory, can examine learning styles, or gather information about a topic for which you need data or a decision.
14. Current Events – students blog about a current event topic or choose their own.
15. Podcasting – students create an audio (with Audacity) or video podcast program and deliver/publicize by uploading/embedding it to the blog.
16. Categorize – using the table feature and ask students to categorize words or pictures.
17. Digital Dropbox – use blogs as a method to turn in homework.
18. Delivering a Presentation – rather than using class time to present, students post/embed their PowerPoints in the blog so peers can view and assess the project.
19. Collaboration – create groups for a project so they can post group planning, design, and share files. (better suited to a wiki but this works too!)
20. Exit Ticket – students must write a personal reflection on the lesson before or after leaving class.  This activity can be provided as an open topic or can be used with a more focused approach
21. Embed Anything – teacher or student can embed code for interactive website, links, YouTube video, flash files, photos, etc.  This allows for the user to easily share resources with the class.

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