Here's my second summer book report (blog report) on the best of what I've been hearing about education:
If anything you read below inspires you or if you just want to get a head start on your PDP next year, click here:
http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/take-charge-of-your-professional-development

All You Ever Needed to Know about Personalized Learning
http://pl.cmslearns.org/
Amazing Personalized Learning site that explains the direction CMS is heading and offers all the latest tools in one spot thanks to Jill Thompson.  (Note the shout out to Piedmont on this page  as Ms. Newburger transforms the media center into a 21st century makerspace showplace. )

Mr. Parkins' Summer Faves:

If it's recommended by Mr. Parkins you know it's good.

Try the links below for a few easy ways to go 21st C. this school year- invite a backchannel or other audience response into your usual lessons- it increases engagement, participation, feedback, and some even make instant data graphs for you. To start, all you do is call one of these up on the projector and invite students to participate via their BYOT devices or chromebooks or ipads. (You will get a code or address for them to join you)




www.socrative.com

www.mentimeter.com

www.todaysmeet.com

www.polleverywhere.com

Speaking of BYOT, Mr. Parkins also recommends If you have a smartphone or tablet try Apps Gone Free- download it in your app store - saves tons of money and lets you try new apps to get new ideas of how to use i-devices in the classroom. Share this with your students as well.
Speaking of Students, besides remind 101 there is a new site people like called Remind.com https://www.remind.com/

Click the links within any tweet to know more.  
If I were going to have you glance at my twitter feed this week, these are the tweet's I'd most hope you'd see:

When you've finished our summer reading book, I've had a crazy amount of tabs open on my computer of things I've been meaning to share this summer. Here they are:

The 1st three headings below are  ISTE-found links from my fellow PD Facilitator, Nicole Cathey. She attended the international superstar of ed tech conferences, and shared these off the top of her head when I asked her about the most useful takeaways of ISTE:

ISTE 2014 Session Notes:
Attendees at ISTE shared their notes for you and placed links on this google doc. Scroll through it and click on the topics that interest you to read that attendee's session notes! Great way to share! 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s_3d2sbkFbhD2P5D7Ap54YaywfI6qF26tt9QXiE7qH8/edit#gid=0


"21 Things" Sites:
If you go no farther this is a fun site to poke around 21Things for Teachers. They also have a "21 Things" site for administrators and for your students!

Adaptive Learning:
An algorythmically adapted personalized learning geared toward test prep site, called adaptive learning from Knewton. The site is connected to microsoft and Pearson. A lot of the info I found while researching is written from a business end (covered by Forbes and the economist) and higher ed stuff like their GMAT review course and there weren't a lot of teacher written reviews that my google was finding but this is an older review of the site as well as grockit-which sounds interesting http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/10/17/big-bucks-for-adaptive-learning-platforms/

Now here are a few links I've been holding that others have shared on Twitter:

Teaching Students to Ask the Right Questions:
I personally think nothing you can teach is more important than this for students' futures: http://rightquestion.org/education/

Another fantastic article about the importance of questioning as an oft-overlooked skill http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/why-its-imperative-to-teach-students-how-to-question-as-the-ultimate-survival-skill/

Making and Creating Resources:
Being a maker teacher is about interest in students creating, not just regurgitating. You do NOT need techy skills or enginnering skills yourself, just a mindset to let students create and build and design. 
4 Steps to Becoming a Maker Teacher http://gettingsmart.com/2014/05/4-steps-becoming-maker-teacher
7 Tenents of Creative Thinking http://www.edutopia.org/blog/7-tenets-of-creative-thinking-michael-michalko

PBL Clearinghouse 
 This weebly site is a great clearinghouse for all things PBL (project based learning) - it takes you from step 1 what is that? as far as you want to go.
http://learnpbl.weebly.com/

If want to learn about PBL for free, you can pick a project you'd like your students to try and a class here at PBL university- some classes are full already but you can still get ideas and learn more about the projects, PBLU


LAST BUT NOT LEAST>>>

Design Thinking!
 Along the lines of Making, Design Thinking is really taking off so here is some info on that in the classroom.


How to Apply Design Thinking in Your Class - Step By Step 
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/06/how-to-use-design-thinking-in-class-step-by-step/
I love KQED Mindshift, so here is everything tagged design thinking on that site 
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/design-thinking/