An interesting point of view on internet censorship and the school’s responsibility in dealing with this kind of information.  Do we have the right to censor?  We can’t censor our libraries without a strict policy in place (originally called a Selection Manual and it discussed how and why books were selected and had a form for parents to deal with challenging a book).  Do we need the same kind of manual in place for the internet?  How intensive would something like that need to be?  Or do we just not filter and hope for the best?

world-shaker:

Here are three:

Pocket
(Formerly Read It Later)

First, let’s start off with my newfound favorite curation tool. Formerly ‘Read It Later,’ the newly designed Pocket tool is a simple way to create a truly gorgeous page filled with your favorite bookmarks. The style of the site is simple, easy on the eyes, and the service is pretty easy to use. I use the term ‘pretty’ because the setup process is a bit laborious. If you’re on a desktop or laptop, it’s a simple bookmarklet that you drag onto your toolbar. But if you’re on a smartphone, you have to create a new bookmark that’s comprised of some custom javascript. Once installed, you just ‘save to Pocket’ by clicking your new bookmark. It’s a bit clunky but easy enough. Definitely worth checking out. (UPDATE: For an easier way of using Pocket on your smartphone or other mobile device, just download the Pocket app for iTunes or Android marketplace, and saving is as easy as a single click–no clunks to be found.)

Pinterest

The uber-popular social network / social bookmarking / time sucking website is a great way for anyone who wants to organize their online travels. You can pin just about anything (as long as it has a big enough image on the page)using a bookmarklet. Pinterest is by far the easiest tool of all the ones mentioned by us. Best of all, it’s the best in terms of content discovery. Pinterest is a legitimate social network where you can waste, err, spend hours just browsing your favorite categories. You’ve been warned.

Diigo

Diigo is very popular with the world of education. That’s because it offers a few critical tools not found in most other tools. You can ‘highlight’ certain web snippets for easy access at a later date. In other words, you can pick and choose certain parts of web pages and not have to simply bookmark the entire page. That’s great for detailed lesson plans, research, citations, etc.

Struggling with making things in the classroom?  Check out these super cute printables!  Lots of things for kids to color as well as things like flashcards.  I love not having to make cute things and instead find ones to use for free.

Take a look!

Though they do tend to reference a good portion of their own work, they also have referenced large studies and projects that relate back to education and technology and point out many of the current trends that are affecting our students.  We need to keep those trends and ideas in mind as we work towards a new technology plan at our school.  I think it is important to keep the student focus as we move in that direction.  How does your school make technology choices?

world-shaker:

Three short YouTube videos of games-based learning case studies. They’d collectively take less than ten minutes to watch, and I’d recommend taking a peak.

This is how we can teach with things kids are interested in.  Who wants student engagement?  All of us.  This is a way to make some of those outside interests into personal educational connections.