In addition to developing a library of instructional videos, TED-Ed has just launched a free set of tools that allow teachers to create a customized lessons from existing videos on TED, YouTube or YouTube for Schools.

Once you have selected a video, it will publish to it’s own unique URL. You can share the lesson with students and others via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter. It will exist on its own unique page on TED-Ed, and you can decide who gets to see that page.

In addition to framing a video for your intended audience, you can create multiple choice and open-ended questions, and add additional readings or activities to each lesson you create. After you have shared your lesson, you can log in at any time to see who viewed your lesson, the number of questions they attempted, the answers they provided, and, in the case of multiple choice questions, the number of questions they got right (with their permission, of course).

I’ve long held that staff development should model what you want to see in the classroom, and for that reason I wouldn’t do a workshop without using a student response system. (SRS). Learning Catalytics is a powerful “bring your own device” SRS system that has an array of powerful response monitoring and reporting tools. It’s a stand out at fostering peer discussion. Here’s my observations from my experience with Learning Catalytics. I encourage other educators to give it a try. Learning Catalytics is currently running a free trial subscription good for up to 100 students for 30 days.

As I’ve previously posted, filtering information and maintaining focus may be one of the most critical new literacies. Emails are at the top of my “needs better filtering” list. And no, I’m not talking to spammers. Friends, family, clients – I’m talking to you. To begin with, why don’t you at least consider updating the subject lines of our emails after a reply or two.

OK enough venting. I thought you’d enjoy this infographic which offers guidance for email hygiene in the work place. This infographic offers guidance for email hygiene in the work place. Use it to decide if you should forward that link to Kitten Album Covers.

Jon Smith’s 5th grade special education students from Gibbs Elementary School in Canton, Ohio publish their own iBook. The post includes book highlights and an additional video student reflection on the experience.

Jon notes, “we need to globalize our teaching. Kids need to understand that there are other people in this world who care about their work than just their teachers. …. Special Ed kids are much more capable than people give them credit for and I wanted to show that to people including the kids. We wanted to squash stereotypes about special education students and showcase their successful work. …. Our kids are really touched by the fact that nearly 400 of their iBooks have been downloaded by people from all over the world .. and they’ve received great comments on their work via Twitter.”

Here a great how-to video which explains using iBooks Author to make and and sell a multi-touch iBook for iPad. Plus links to my resource collection “Publishing with iBooks Author”

For years, I’ve posted pdf versions of my lessons and made them available for free. Here’s some screenshots of a document based question (DBQ) I’m working on that explores the American Homefront in WWII. I’ve download iBooks Author and I think it’s time to turn some of my PDF lessons into iBooks. Apple’s new authoring program, certainly lowers the barrier for doing that. I look forward to the day when a student asks a teacher if it’s OK to turn in that project as an iBook.