Today, the higher education marketplace is thick with companies and organizations claiming to have “personalized learning” or “adaptive learning” capabilities.  Companies are using this language in their sales and marketing efforts, creating confusion for institutions as they grapple with determining an approach to personalized learning that matches their students’ and instructors’ needs.  But if one cuts through the clutter, adaptive learning may be one key capable of actually unshackling…

Kickboard, a web-based school analytics platform that allows educators and school leaders to capture, analyze and securely share critical student performance data, announced today that it has received $2 million in Series A funding led by New Markets Venture Partners and Two Sigma Ventures, with participation from several angel investors. The new round adds to $800,000 from previous seed and angel rounds, bringing the total amount…

Dear colleagues, this post is about SMART 2013 international conference (Social Media in Academia: Research and Teaching), to be held in Bacau (Romania), between 7 and 9 of June, 2013.

The aim of this conference is to create links between researchers from apparently different scientific fields, such as Computer Science, Educational Sciences and Sociology. In fact, there are a…

fur.ly is a great place/idea for educators who are struggling with students finding the right websites or who are having their students copy long URLs off of the board.  This tool will let you have one URL that will open multiple websites at one time.

Great teachers are invaluable, yet too often their tireless work goes unnoticed or worse, unappreciated. While teacher appreciation week is in May, why wait to recognize the incredible work of our educators? These individuals dedicate their lives to developing the next generation. They come in early to prepare…

Kickboard, a holistic student data tracking platform that goes beyond the gradebook and enables teachers to collect, analyze and share mission-critical data, announced today that it is launching an exclusive, free webinar series, “Igniting a Gradebook Revolution,” beginning August 8th. Registrations are currently being accepted for the first two sessions in the series: Setting the Right Expectations and Analyzing the Right Data to Create…

Supers simple method of creating bibliographies and works cited citations.  Create MLA and APA style citations.

Spaaze is a website that allows for the simple creation of a virtual cork board.  It is extremely dynamic and easy to use.  You can add video, images, files, titles, and notes all in one spot so your students can have easy access to unit material.  The canvass size of Spaaze is huge so you can add quite a few units to one canvass.  

This educational web 2.0 tutorial demonstrates a great online method of taking collected data with your classroom and inputing the information into a chart in just a couple of easy steps.  Create cutomized data charts simply.

This is a great idea for those who are trying to incorporate Google Apps into their curriculum.  This tutorial demonstrates how teachers can create embedable Google Calendars into their classrooms so that students have ideas as to what and when an assignment is due.

Zamzar is an awesome tool for educators who are going the extra mile trying to use technology in the classroom. Too many times educators receive files from other schools or colleagues that just don't work on their computer because of different operating systems and software platforms. With Zamzar you can take files of many different file types and have them be converted to another file type. There isn't any software that needs to be downloaded; just internet access. Click here the link to…

Smartboard:  Tips and tricks using the Magic Pen tool.  You might not know, but the Notebook's magic pen tool does three awesome things that can enhance any lesson using the Smartboard.

Hohli charts is a simple method of creating dynamic data sets that then display as charts and graphs.  This web 2.0 tool would be great and simple for students to use in a k-12 educational setting.

This is a Smartboard Notebook tutorial on how to create an interactive study game board in which students can move game pieces along the board if they answer the questions correctly. This gameboard use tiles that on one side has the answer and on the other side has the question.

Edistorm is an excellent site for creating and using educational virtual sticky notes. Students can collaborate with the teacher on project ideas.  They can vote on those ideas and make comments to eacher other.  Use Edistorm as a means of brainstorming ideas.

Create interactive and informative educational timelinesin an extremely easy manner.  Students will love being given the option of creating a timeline.  Use Timerime for history, art, science, social studies or just about any subject in which they are required to understand the time frame at which events occurred.

Socrative is an awesome tool used in Education to gain a better understanding of what our students have learned or are learning during a lesson by getting.  In this post about socrative we see how it can be used assess writingin the classroom.

The following is an except from my book Exceptional that will be published later this year. For those of you who are first time readers - welcome. For those of you who are constant readers - welcome back for 2012!

Everyone has an opinion about education. I do. You do. Kids do. Parents do. Grandparents do. Teachers do. Politicians do. The media…

My favorite URL shorteners.  These are used to take those long annoying URLs and shrink them down to a managable size.  This tutorial will demonstrate the difference between Google URL shortener, CiteBite, and TinyURl.  These all have their unique uses for the educator.  Click the link to learn more.

PBS Learning Resources is an excellent site for teachers and students to find educational films as well as other media types such as sound, images, and lesson plans.  This site has a couple thousand videos for you to see.  These videos are all free.  Click the link to learn more.