Other Topics include:
RSS in Plain English
Blogs in Plain English
Podcasting in Plain English
Social Bookmarking in Plain English
Social Media in Plain English

The following is a list of online resources to explore. Maybe pick out three that you would like to use with a class next year. I think all of these are free! And all work on mac and pc. Feel free to add to the list!

Animoto -  a web application that, with the click of a button, produces videos using images and music that you select. The resulting video has the emotional impact of a movie trailer and the visual energy of a music video.
Bubbleshare – lets you create your own photo albums. You can also add fun clipart, audio and video captions to your albums. Select frames for your photos from over 20 themes. Print stunning photo books, calendars and more!
Creative Commons – This is the place to look for images, videos, graphics, and audio that students might want to use in projects. Here’s a great little comic strip that explains how Creative Commons works.
Gcast- lets you create your own podcast right from your cell phone.
Google Docs – lets you create and store documents (word processing, spreadsheets, powerpoints…) on line. Also allows others to view and edit your documents.
Google Earth – lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings and even explore galaxies in the Sky. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places and share with others. View a few Lessons and Activities.
Hulu – really no educational value here, but you can find LOTS of TV shows (current and past) to watch online for free!
iTunes – has a large library of podcasts and videos of educational value. There are many foreign language resources to check out. iTunes U has just started posting K-12 classes. There are some excellent science  podcasts and videos put out by Paradise Valley.
Kstudio – download this application to resize a bunch of photos at once.
Newsmap -  I think this site is fascinating (especially for social studies teachers and students), but hard to describe, but I’ll try. Think of it as a visual representation of current news stories, indicating the popularity of the story among internet users. You can view this information not just in the United States, but in other countries like India, Spain, andd Australia. Information is also color coded by topic.
Ning – a social network that you can set up on any topic. You could create a classroom ning or you could explore and join many of the already established nings. Two of the best education nings are Classroom 2.0 and Nings in Education.
Resize2mail – lets you resize an individual photo for emailing.
Skype – an application you can download that allows you to use your computer to call other people who have skype for FREE. You can also do video calls if your computer has a webcam.
Slideshare – allows you to share powerpoint presentations over the internet.
Toondo – lets you create your own comic strips.
Voicethread – is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways – using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) – and share them with anyone they wish. Check out this project by 3rd graders.
Wikispaces – is an excellent tool for collaboration. It lets you create simple web pages that groups, friends, and families can edit together.
Zamzar – is an online file conversion tool. If you need to have a certain kind of file (document, sound, or video) in a different format, you can probably convert it here.

Peruse best practices in your subject area.
I’ve been going through my del.icio.us links and working to categorize it by teacher or profession. I will be cataloging and going through them more in the future, but take a look at the websites that you can use or what other teachers are doing. Keep a notebook handy to jot down your ideas:

• • administrator
  • all teachers
  • art teacher
  • best practices
  • composition teacher
  • computer science teacher
  • curriculum director
  • elementary teacher
  • geography teacher
  • gifted teacher
  • government teacher
  • guidance counselor
  • history teacher
  • keyboarding teacher
  • language teacher
  • librarian
  • literature teacher
  • math teacher
    
  • reading teacher
  • science teacher
  • special needs teacher
  • technology integrator

It is this second use of technology that needs to be represented in our portrait of a Summit graduate. I ran across the following information on one of the many blogs I read, but the original source turned out to be the National Council of Teachers of English. Here’s what they have to say about 21st Century Skills, and I think they say it better than I probably could:

Toward A Definition of 21st-Century Literacies
Adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee
February 15, 2008

Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to:

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology

• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally

• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes

• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information

• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts

• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments