Editor’s note: Guest contributor Nancy Barlow regularly blogs at The Teacher Geek. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Common Craft's New Video Explains Plagiarism

Lee Kolbert writes about Common Craft's new video on her educator's blog, A Geeky Momma's Blog. The video explains in a way that everyone can understand, what plagiarism is and how to avoid doing it. Common Craft has a wonderful selection of video that explain concepts simply. It's a subscription service that offers special pricing for educators and non-profits, and once you're a member, you can embed videos into blogs,just like Kolbert did.

Audacity: Why Every Educator Should Use It

Beth Crumpler at the adaptivelearnin Blog writes an extensive chronicle on using Audacity, the free (and easy) audio recording/podcasting tool to boost students' literacy skills. She writes for beginners or those who do not think of themselves as tech-savvy. When you're done reading that, if you have ESL students in your class, check out her Sight Word Acquisition Book and MP3 file. This is a great example of teachers helping parents in order to help the students.

39 Clues: The Holiday eBook Release

As if this series couldn't get any cooler, Scholastic will be releasing 7 stand-alone short stories collectively called The 39 Clues: Rapid Fire (authors TBD, but there's talk of RIck Riordan and David Baldacci for starts) between Christmas and New Year's Day, each for 99 cents. The stories will contain codes that unlock exclusive online content. This sounds like a great gift for the holiday break and a fun way make the eBook experience unique.

App of the Week: Famous Quotes

"Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves."  ~Abbé Dimnet, Art of Thinking, 1928 50,000 quotes in your pocket? Why not? This free app will let you search and explore by author, or just shake your device and have a new quote delivered randomly. Available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. If you have an Android Device, try the Favorite Quotes for free.