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My dear friend Kevin Honeycutt is, to me, everything good in a keynoter and a person. He is a family man. He is smart. He is musical. He is hilarious. And on top of that he is so so right on so many things. He has long been my friend and I hope will continue to be. I first saw this three years a go at NECC - we had a band "Tweetwood Mac" out of about 5 -6 ipods (before the iPad was out.) Sitting on the floor with him messing with gadgets is truly the highlight of every NECC/ ISTE for me. That is what he does - he "messes with things" and as he does it he will teach you a whole lot! He talked about in this video that iPhones aren't just devices they can be instruments and also makes the poignant comment: "Don't marry Apple, Android has a lot to offer also." Watch this video for a great laugh and a look at just a great person in education.  Way to go, Kevin, I'm a huge fan. And I hope against all hope I can get to Podstock one day!  Ke...

Image via Wikipedia I've been using some really cool music and sound effects in my classes from Jewelbeat . This is a really neat site. It is so hard because students want to just grab whatever music they can find. It is nice to have one site to send them to that is "OK."  Just wanted to pass this one along. If you know of other truly royalty free music sites that are easy to use like this, please drop them in the comments! Thank you! Related articles by Zemanta Royalty-Free Music: Where To Find Free Music Tracks For Your Video Clips (masternewmedia.org) Jazz Up Your Next YouTube Video with Royalty-Free Music From Incompetech (feeducation.blogspot.com) Orchestra To Turn Copyright-Free Classical Scores Into Copyright-Free Music (entertainment.slashdot.org)

This from @jshe and @WeAreTeachers on Twitter: They linked to a UK study by Janice on the Music Teacher's Blog that had the following findings from Professor Susan Halem, University of London's research: "Students who learned music over time, increased their general IQ by 7 points, while drama subjects only increased their IQ by 4.3points. Playing an instrument improves general behaviour because it requires a students to trust, respect and compromise with others Learning a musical instrument improves behavior, memory and intelligence Musically trained students retain up to a fifth more information"  I've always heard that there was a correlation between math and music -- that somehow math "primed the neural pathways" that music also passes along - however, in a country (the US) seemingly starved for music education - it looks like that perhaps by removing the extra curriculars, not only have we taken some of the joy out of school - we may have...