And, we're back!  My apologies for the delay of Weekly Roundups lately! It's been a challenge balancing a new job with a new doctorate program and running the website, but I've got it sorted out now and the Roundups should be back to their typical weekend postings!  Hopefully.  To start with, remember that crazy robot Watson who beat everyone at Jeopardy? Well, s/he's back and ready to start teaching teachers! Read more over at EdTech Magazine! Next up, the staff at Edudemic has a nice"Guide to Creating Tech-Friendly Classroom Management Strategies."  With more and more technology creeping into today's classrooms, management of behavior is an incredibly important issue. Find out what edudemic suggests in their four-part guide. As always, Free Technology for Teachers has an excellent collection of new resources for class.  Here are a few: Three Online Tools for Building Review Games Poll Your Students with Google+ Polls The Best of the Web! Fall 2014 Edition Remind Launches Chrome App! Over at Getting Smart you'll be able to find a summary of the new report from the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL).  The article, entitled "iNACOL Report: Online Learning Can Close The Opportunity Gap," discusses how online learning allows for greater learning opportunities in schools and districts where particular courses and electives are unavailable.   For those of you who are fans of the Maker Movement like myself, Dr. Jackie Gerstein at User Generated Education has an excellent post on "The Mindset of the Maker Educator."  The article includes several graphics which outline a framework for maker education in the classroom and she also includes a presentation (below) on Maker Education. The Mindset of the Maker Educator from Jackie Gerstein Up next, Katrina Schwartz at Mind/Shift has a great post on "How Virtual Reality Meets Real Life Learning with Mobile Games."  Schwartz discusses how "situated games" which require students to interact with the real world, can be both motivating and educational.  It's an excellent article with tons of examples and definitely worth reading. Over at Mighty Skins (yes, the iphone/ipad/computer case makers), it turns out they have some great EdTech  blogs as well.  In their new post, "The Dawn of the Digital Classroom" the team discusses the emergence of digital learning.  But, more importantly, they share an excellent infographic on the prevelence of digital learning in education today. At Magoosh, Peter Poer has a new post which discusses how "Online Learning Can Work for Everyone."  Throughout the post, Poer outlines the benefits of blended learning, and the challenges to overcome when implementing blended learning in the classroom.  He concludes by discussing how students and teachers can overcome their fears of online learning. Finally, we've got a very special offer from Bettermarks for readers of the Roundup!  Anyone interested in a free access account just needs to click here and apply.  But wait, what is Bettermarks?  Bettermarks is an online learning service that offers adaptive math books, aligned with the common core standards, which adjust to your student's learning needs.  So definitely check them out and give it a free try! That's it for the Roundup this week!  Thanks for reading, and again, my apologies for the recent delay!  I hope everyone has an excellent weekend and I'll see you next time!

Welcome back to the Roundup!  I hope everyone is having a good weekend!  Today we'll begin over at ideas.ted.com (thanks to Mind/Shift for also sharing this) with an excellent post entitled,"There's No App for Good Teaching" by Laura Moorhead.  The post outlines "8 ways to think about tech in ways that actually improve the classroom" and it is a wonderful and insightful read. Next, John Hardison at Getting Smart has an excellent post on Project-Based learning, "Diving Into Project-Based Learning? Head These 7 Warnings."  He likens the experience of implementing PBL to skydiving, and includes lots of great resources, ideas, guides, video-cases, and suggestions for getting start with or improving your PBL practices.   If you've been using iPads in your classroom, you may have found yourself completely overwhelmed by the availability of resources and apps.  Educational Tech & Mobile Learning has organized Apple's most useful links on using iPads in the classroom to help you find some great new resources and ideas that you can put into practice. If you're thinking of going completely paperless in the classroom, or at least taking steps in that direction, you might be interested in Edudemic's new post, "The Ultimate Guide to the Paperless Classroom."  They provide an awesome list of resources, suggestions, websites, and examples to help you get started. As always, Free Tech for Teachers shares some wonderful new classroom resources: PicMonkey + Thinglink = Interactive Collages Handy Sheet of Google Search Modifiers PhotoMath Could Change Teaching Math The Most Popular Posts of the Week Finally, EdTech Magazine has a new article on Google's new classroom management application, "Changes to Google Classroom Give Teachers More Control."  The article outlines the changes that have been made to the app, based on teacher feedback.  If you haven't checked out the app yet, you can explore it here And that's it for the Roundup this week!  Thanks for reading, and if you missed the recent Bammy Awards for educators, you can find out more about who won here on their blog, or by checking out their video collection.   For now, we'll end with an enjoyable infographic fromTutoring Expert on "How The Greatest Minds in Mathematics Changed the World."  Have a great weekend! Courtesy of: Tutoring Expert

I'm currently working on a short publication and I could use the help of any K-12 teachers who use e-portfolios in their classroom.  Time commitment would be minimal, and you would be listed as one of the authors as well!  I would send you some questions, you would answer them, or write up a few paragraphs about how you're using the portfolios, and that's it!I'm hoping to find teachers outside of English and Computer Science, and teachers who are using tools other than Wix or Google Classroom, since I've already got those covered.  If you're interested, send me an email and I can tell you more about the project!In the meantime, have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!  And again, my apologies that the Roundup has been slower this semester, I've been focusing more on the reviews, so be sure to check those out, we've got a lot of new ones up!-Mike

I hope everyone is having a great week!For those interested, my research team and I here at Indiana University are researching K-12 teacher global education practices. More specifically, we are interested in learning about how primary and secondary teachers are using technology in their instruction to address global and multicultural education. Additionally, we want to learn more about their global education experiences and how such experiences have shaped their teaching practices. Professional development related to global educational practices with technology is of particular interest.We have designed a survey geared for those involved in global education practices that takes approximately 15 minutes to complete (Here is the survey link).  If you have the time and the inclination, I'd really appreciate your support in getting as many teachers to take this survey as possible!Thanks so much for any help you might lend. Please let me know if you have any questions.Have a wonderful weekend!Mike

3rd Quote is a new service that aims to improve the process of technology purchasing in the K-12 setting.  Designed for administrators and technology coordinators, 3rd Quote can be used to find, research, buy, and review educational technology of all types.  It’s an excellent service and it’s completely free to educational institutions. Read more on our reviews page.

Propagate is a new service that allows teachers to embed vocabulary practice inside any digital text.  Right now the application is in Beta and is free for any teachers who are interested in trying it out.  If you’re using digital text in your class, regardless of the subject area, Propagate is an excellent way to help students acquire and practice new vocab.  Read more on our reviews page.

Remind is a service that many of you might already be familiar with.  They offer a free, safe method for teachers to easily text students and parents.  Remind has been around for a while, but they've just recently announced their new chat feature, which will allow for two-way communication between teachers, students, and parents. Read more on our Reviews Page.

Defined STEM is an excellent service that offers an enormous collection of pre-created problem and project-based learning resources for all core subjects in K-12.  Each resource is built around a specific career to help increase relevancy, and comes with all the resources, standards, materials, and so on that you could possibly need.  Read all about the service on our reviews page.

Raz-Kids is a service that is operated under the Learning  A-Z umbrella.  For those unfamiliar, Learning A-Z offers an enormous number of K-6 learning resources to help save teachers time and support student achievement. Raz-Kids in particular, offers a collection of e-books that students can read and engage with online.  You can read more about the service on our reviews page.

If you're looking for an interesting and thought-provoking read from the EdTech Leadership position, may I recommend the new post from Mike Daugherty over at More Than a Tech. The piece discusses how a push for online assessments may actually act as a catalyst for increasing and improving technology infrastructure in K-12 settings. Definitely worth reading, as is the rest of Mike's site!