With Web 2.0 tools, students have creative options for book reports that go beyond the traditional plot summaries and dioramas. Teens can use digital storytelling tools to share information about their books and generate enthusiasm for reading. The author discusses a variety of options for creating book reports with digital tools, including using movie-making programs to create exciting book trailers, crafting multimedia slide shows, making original animations starring an avatar, and more. Projects fulfill numerous Common Core Standards, including determining a text’s theme and showing how it is conveyed through details, and incorporating multimedia components in presentations to clarify information.

A science fair project is an opportunity for teens to choose a subject of interest, investigate it using the scientific method, and share their findings. While the scientific method never goes out of date, much about science fair research and presentation has changed with the advent of digital tools. Readers learn how they can use digital tools to brainstorm a question, research and take notes, collaborate with teammates, record and organize data, and create presentations using multimedia. As required by the Common Core, readers learn to use technology to produce and publish their work and to collaborate with others.

In the not-too-distant past, students were expected to turn in only handwritten or typed papers. However, with today's ease of access to the Internet and free applications, teachers are now expecting students to go beyond the confines of text-only productions. Various online programs make it possible to create multi-layered term papers that are rich in images, audio, and even video. And most of these tools are free to use! Students can now access their work from nearly anywhere that has an Internet connection. In the case of collaborative research projects, this same technology allows team members to work with each other even when they are in different locations. A wide variety of online and offline tools, techniques, and tips to help students research, write, edit, prepare, and present term papers are discussed and explained here. This revelatory guidebook to the latest in term paper technology also supports Common Core Standards for the reading of technical accounts and texts.

A student doesn't have to be a programming whiz kid to use innovative technology and tools to make a great multimedia presentation, demonstration, or collaborative learning project. Many digital programs and software are easy to use and help students find the best way to package and present their information. New social networking tools can also help students reach a larger and more targeted audience with their message. There are so many cool new Web sites, software, apps, and other digital tools designed just for creating, improving, facilitating, and showcasing multimedia presentations, demonstrations, and collaborative learning experiences, and they are discussed in great detail here. Any student can create an amazing presentation or speech. All that is required is imagination, creativity, a little help from the latest digital technology, and this superb guidebook to the readily available tools and their astounding capabilities. This text supports Common Core Standards for the reading of technical accounts and texts.

Many teens enjoy theater arts and debate and grow intellectually, creatively, and socially from their experiences in these areas. Today technological tools offer exciting options for play, skit, and debate participation. Readers learn how to use digital tools to help them research, plan, write, and present their own theater and debate material. The author presents easy-to-use, inexpensive apps and tools they can use throughout the process, from brainstorming ideas to tracking audience responses. Further, digitally savvy actors and debaters fulfill the Common Core Standard of using technology to interact and collaborate with others and to produce and publish their writing.

Textbooks are symbols of centuries-old education. They're often outdated as soon as they hit students' desks. Acting "by the textbook" implies compliance and a lack of creativity. It's time to ditch those textbooks--and those textbook assumptions about learning In Ditch That Textbook, teacher and blogger Matt Miller encourages educators to throw out meaningless, pedestrian teaching and learning practices. He empowers them to evolve and improve on old, standard, teaching methods. Ditch That Textbook is a support system, toolbox, and manifesto to help educators free their teaching and revolutionize their classrooms.

Students write, plan, revise, edit a book report using QR codes, GE literary tour, audio, and video tools. Grades 2-5, CCSS and ISTE aligned