Ning is a social networking platform that allows any user to create their own social network in a relatively quick amount of time for free. In an educational context, there are countless of ways to integrate Ning into a school or school system.

A Ning social network has a main page that serves as a hub for the entire network. From this hub users can fan out into blog posts submitted within the network, photos uploaded to the pages, a calendar section, and user-driven forums. Schools, teachers, and school districts can all create Ning social networking groups to further communication between administrators, parents, and students.

Each part of a school can utilize Ning in a different way. For instance, a school board can create a Ning community to keep parents up to date on district developments and conversations can be held within the Ning forum concerning proposed legislation that will affect local schools and improvements parents would like to see within the system as a whole.

While schools and school boards can leverage the power of social networking effectively, a lot of Ning’s real appeal for educators focuses on teachers. Whether they are on the site as members of an educator’s group or as owners of a network tailor-made to suit the needs of their students, teachers have a lot of options.

Teachers can create a social network focused on bringing together English or math teachers to network ideas and provide insight into course specific issues. A class specific Ning could feature test dates, a list of homework assignments and projects due, and links to internet resources that can provide homework help or additional insight into a classroom theme. Since a Ning features customizable privacy options, including the ability to make a Ning invitation-only or private, the safety of students accessing the material can be assured.

The value of social networking in education is only beginning to be fully realized, and Ning is on the cutting edge of specialty networks created to bring together a specific group of people – like educators and their students.

Teachers.tv is a dynamic site featuring a wide variety of educational videos for several different grade levels. While the site is based in the United Kingdom, the topics touched upon will provide an excellent learning aid to students worldwide. However, the usefulness of the site is not limited to students, both teachers and parents can use teachers.tv to find new ways to present content to their students or pick up tips from numerous videos focusing on educational concepts.

Teachers.tv contains instructionals covering the basic school subjects such as English, math, and science but also incorporates several electives. Videos on art classes, religious studies, music, and foreign language are also readily available for viewing. The content is easily divided into sections based on learning needs; Early learning, primary education, and secondary education classes are all covered.

The videos on teachers.tv vary in length with some as short as three minutes. One example of a short video entails a visit to the home of Charles Dickens – the short running time allows for the program to be implemented into an English period without draining a large block of class time. On days when a longer project is desired, there are plenty of additional options to choose from.

On the teachers.tv web-site, instead of the format for each class or video being the same, each teacher or video instructor is able to inject their own personality and teaching techniques into their presentation. A prime example of this is John Heely who leads several videos on teachers.tv focusing on algebra and algebraic concepts. Heely’s videos have a quality that rivals public television productions while maintaining a definite focus on presenting math in a relatable manner.

Whether they do it through the course of home study or as part of the school day, students will have no trouble identifying favorite subjects and instructors on teachers.tv. On a slow day for learning at school or for additional help mastering a new concept, students will never be without new educational material after a visit to this site.

Aviary features a wide variety of free tools to enhance the photo editing and graphic creation process. The tools and web-based programs available at Aviary.com can be easily used by students to create dynamic reports, educational fair projects, and slideshows for any subject.

Aviary features six core applications: Phoenix, Toucan, Peacock, Myna, Raven, and Falcon. Each program can stand alone as a creative tool, but some, such as Phoenix, can bring in elements from other applications to enhance projects.

Phoenix is an image editor that features a wide variety of tools to enhance photographs or assist in the crafting of new images from a blank file. It contains many features that are found in software packages such as Adobe Photoshop and Corel Paint Shop Pro, such as the ability to edit in layers and add unique filters. For a student who wants to add a deep visual element to a school report or display photos, this program will work well. Text can be added to pictures to eliminate the need for a separate caption and the clone stamping feature can be utilized to remove unneeded elements from a photo.

Toucan, the color editor from Aviary.com is useful for a student who is planning a project where a coordinated color scheme will come in handy. The various controls can be toggled to bring up a palette of compatible colors which can then be saved to a clipboard.

Peacock is an effects editor which features a drag and drop interface. Starting with a central canvas, various patterns and filters can be dropped onto the workspace and connected with the canvas to create unique files that would be perfect as backgrounds or accent pieces in a science or social studies fair presentation or slideshow.

Myna is an exceedingly easy to use audio editor perfect for the student who is crafting a presentation that needs to utilize various sound bites or feature a prerecording of various elements. It could also be used to create a podcast promoting school related activities.

Aviary.com has an exceedingly well-developed vector editor in Raven. Raven will provide any student with the ability to create stunning graphics for projects, reports, displays, and school related publications. Aviary features a wide variety of tutorials and guides to ensure that this program does not leave an eager learner behind. The diversity of Raven also means it can be a fitting alternative to the typical art class. With the various effects and dimensions that can be added to graphics, stunning art can be crafted which makes Raven perfect for encouraging creativity.

Falcon Image Markup is the last Aviary program currently available. This is another photo editing program, but its focus is not so much enhancing photos as adding to them. A selection of arrows, straight lines, and pencil strokes can be placed on any photo or created file within Falcon. This could work out particularly well when wanting to give a school presentation a more personalized and dynamic feel.

With the wide range of web-based photo and art programs to be found at Aviary.com, school students and parents can concentrate more on creating and less on the prohibitive cost of many designer programs. It also has the advantage of going home with students since it is free and can be used through a browser. Most schools will not let students take home computers with Adobe Creative Suite, which costs about $400 per license for the student version.

In blogs, educators are discovering a new tool for engaging students who live in a world increasingly dominated by technology. By incorporating blogging into the school environment, educators can capitalize on the social media explosion, turning a potentially isolating medium into a window of discovery and self-expression as well as a bridge to the broader learning community.

Naturally when confronted with change there will be some resistance among educators to adopt and embrace this new medium, just as the advent of the internet posed a classroom challenge. Yet the reality is that today’s students are already immersed in social media and schools can either seize this new opportunity or play the proverbial ostrich. Ideally educators will lead and not lag behind at this transformative moment by encouraging youth to utilize this amazing technology as more than just an entertaining diversion.

Subscription services like EdublogsCampus, based on the WordPress platform, provide the technical framework and support to get schools started. Luckily for educators, tech-savvy students make excellent navigators, and engaging their help fosters a spirit of cooperation and sense of mastery. Classroom blogs can serve any number of purposes, as student newspaper, sharing information, writing practice, homework submission and testing forum, tracking tool for parents, online calendar, and so on. Security is of course a key concern, and web-hosting services offer custom access levels to assure student safety and confidentiality.

Blogging is a natural for facilitating extension of lessons, replacing old norms of information regurgitation and bringing lessons to life through interactivity, journaling and use of multi-media. Blogging provides the ideal avenue for sharing the learning experience, furnishing a vehicle for budding photographers, poets and artists to share their talent in a non-threatening forum. Blogs offer a creative outlet and give students a voice in what may be their only outlet or experience of being heard.

Beginning at the earliest school level, introducing blogs into the classroom fosters an environment of cooperation and recognition of the talents of each individual. At the same time, students are learning and applying technical and communication skills that they will take into the workplace, fulfilling the ideal of learning as an ongoing process and lifelong journey.

WordAhead is a vocabulary word centered website sure to be of help to any student who wants to do well on state administered standardized tests, the SAT, or ACT as well as increase their personal vocabulary. The WordAhead premise is a simple one. The site provides a video featuring each vocabulary word on the site and its definition. A casual user can utilize the site very passively by signing up for a word-a-day email, but there are also several unique features at WordAhead to allow a more active learner to get ahead.

At Wordahead, scientific studies emphasizing the importance of repetition as a learning device have been taken fully into account. During the videos presented for almost all vocabulary words, the actual word is repeated several times. A video for a word such as “adjourn” will start with the word being presented with its full definition while the information is also read aloud. Then, a still cartoon image is shown to illustrate the meaning of the word while several sentences are read presenting the word in context. In many of these sentences the word will be used at least twice and typically in multiple tenses (i.e. present and past tense).

A multitude of vocabulary words and definitions are presented on the site and many students will likely find that they are already familiar with certain words and do not need to thumb through them on every visit to the site. In this instance, a free Wordahead account can be created which will allow any user to create a customized word list featuring as many or as few definitions as needed.

When a customized word list is toggled from the drop down menu at WordAhead, the videos will automatically begin to play in the browser window. This feature can also be used by a teacher to create a word list centered around a current lesson plan or as a study aid for an upcoming test. Any vocabulary list can be shared with other WordAhead members through the use of a class specific name like “Mrs. White English I, Test 3 Word List.”

These customization features and the targeted word repetition, featuring learning through hearing a vocabulary word in context and seeing an illustration while reading the word’s definition, makes WordAhead a unique educational resource.

This post is brought to you by Tandem Online School Calendar. Try the free annual school calendar here.

English classes generate some of the more complex pieces of homework students are assigned during primary and secondary education. Between book reports, essays, creative writing challenges, and research papers, English demands a lot of time and effort be put forth in both the actual crafting of meaningful paragraphs and the research behind each assignment. Technology has presently caught up with the challenges issued by English teachers and several exceedingly handy tools can be utilized by students to expedite and organize their English assignments no matter the scope.

Finding a wide variety of credible sources for a research paper can be a daunting task for the best of students as many basic internet searches can pull up results that are either mostly irrelevant to the particular topic or do not contain enough verified information. Ultimate-research-assistant.com helps clear through some of the clutter by compiling the results of a search in an easy to read summary format in addition to providing a list of clickable links for additional research. A tag cloud featuring the search results is also presented in the right hand margin of the page and can provide insights into additional keywords to search out or topics to explore.

Zotero.org features a handy tool to expedite crediting sources used while writing a research paper. Zotero is a Mozilla Firefox extension that can be utilized as sources are gathered online. The extension will help compile data and create a properly formatted Bibliography in several different styles. By progressing with the bibliography as research material is acquired, students will not have to frantically scramble to identify which source provided what information from where. When the research paper is done, a simple copy and paste will suffice for creating a well-structured Bibliography.

Rhymezone is a fairly basic web-site as far as an online dictionary and thesaurus goes, but its real shining point exists in the assistance it provides for creative writing tasks or research papers. The site features a robust rhyming dictionary to help find the perfect word to close up a couplet, and the synonym and antonym feature brings up a variety of words to use when avoiding redundancy is key.

Simplifying some of the more complex components of a research paper or creative writing assignment using the educational tools presented above can help any student get a step ahead in English class.

Springnote is an free full-featured virtual notebook sure to inspire students and educators to greater levels of task and time organization, which in turns enhances learning. Anyone can create a Springnote account with a minimum of information.

The site allows members to enter a unique name which will then become a personalized URL. For example, “your name” would become http://www.yourname.springnote.com. At these personalized URLs a member’s notebooks are viewable to the individuals selected. Notebooks can either be private, shared with selected people, or entirely public. Each notebook can also contain numerous pages which can be assigned individual sharing rights.

A student could use one Springnote notebook to keep a detailed to do list of tasks for both home and school and make this list private while collaborating with a friend on a separate notebook page for a science project. Teacher’s could also use the service in a similar fashion and create virtual notebook pages for each school subject taught and provide a handy online assignment list for each course. The contents of these subject pages could be shared with the entire class with a few clicks of the mouse.

If a multitude of notebook pages exist, then the Springnote tagging feature will help ease clutter. Users can assign specialized tags to each notebook page to group like materials together. An additional organizational feature sure to help out is the ability to link any item on a list or notebook page to another page within Springnote. A general class assignment, like a term paper, would appear on the English class assignment list and can link to a “Term Paper” notebook page full of additional requirements or preliminary notes.

Springnote users can also accomplish several other necessary tasks like attaching videos, pictures, or files to a specific notebook page with a couple of clicks. Formatted tables, equations, and maps can also be inserted in a snap from the notebook page header.

When any assignment or task is completed the notebook owner can either strike-through the entry, highlight it in a variety of colors, or simply use the delete or backspace key – any option will work. Springnote is full of unique options for students and teachers. The site can easily become a virtual notebook, agenda, and planning desk in a matter of minutes for any user.

MindMeister is a neat web application that provides a set of tools any school, teacher, student, or parent could use on a daily basis as well as for planning special projects and assignments. MindMeister puts a technological twist on the classic English class staple known as brainstorming or cluster mapping while allowing for more collaboration.

The basic features of MindMeister are free and allow for up to three Mind Maps to be created and utilized at any given time. A Mind Mapper with an iPhone or iPod touch can also install (for $4.99) an application that allows them to brainstorm on the go.

The educational possibilities of MindMeister are really limitless. An English teacher can suggest mind maps to facilitate students’ brainstorming or outlining for a research paper. If a student is conducting a significant amount of their original research online, the MindMeister map bubbles will allow for easy storing of “notes” which can include URLs or attachments. Students can also create a mind map for a subject that they are learning to create a visual representation of concepts and how they connect like a mindmap on the Civil War or the cardiovascular system. Students can also search delicious and Wikipedia for topic tags that relate to the content of any bubble on their map.

MindMeister can also be utilized in classes that rely heavy on group projects, like social studies or science. Students can share Mind Maps with each other and collaborate. Changes are automatically saved, so students will never be working over each other, and MindMeister provides a list (at the bottom of the window) of users who are accessing a MindMap at any particular time.

Some schools are attempting to get laptops assigned to every student to help students prepare for a world where computer literacy is becoming an increasingly important ingredient for success. With netbooks costing as low as $250, it seems like a no brainer to equip every child with a portable PC. But then there is the question of whether computer literacy is more important than book literacy. Reading is still an essential part of learning and a lot can be learned from reading books. If you think reading is more important, then you might advocate that every student get assigned a kindle e-book reader.

Here’s a quote from a Scholastic article

Kindles stocked with well-chosen e-books would also allow teachers to flex new teaching strategies, according to Cornelia Brunner, the deputy director at the Center for Children and Technology in New York City. “You could have a very nicely selected group of readings. . . . Kids could read, annotate, and actually clip and be asked to make connections among those clippings,” says Brunner.

Other possible benefits include providing students with more books electronically than is practical in print, reducing photocopying, relieving the unhealthy weight of student backpacks, and—though this case is far from proven—saving school districts money on textbooks.

An education think-tank led be former Clinton advisor Thomas Z. Freedman, even proposed giving a Kindle to every student in the country in a paper titled A Kindle in Every Backpack. According to the paper:

We shouldn’t wait a decade or two to begin to achieve what is inevitable — an education system where each American schoolchild has an eTextbook, like Amazon’s Kindle, loaded with the most up-to-date and interactive teaching materials and texts available,” the paper argues. “The ‘Kindle in every backpack’ concept isn’t just an educational gimmick—it could improve education quality and save money.

One solution may be to use an ebook reader application on the laptops so students can have the best of both technologies.

Do you think it would be more effective for students to have laptops or ebook readers?

Photo by Yutaka Tsutano

Paul Bloom’s, highly recommended Intro to Psychology course is available to watch for free online. He is a very engaging and interesting lecturer. Even if you can’t get into Yale, you can still attend class or at least experience lecture by watching the 20 video lectures from this course. You may not be able to ask questions or take the exams but you can do the assigned reading from Peter Gray’s Psychology (5th Edition).