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"Libraries have existed since approximately 2600 BCE as an archive of recorded knowledge. From tablets and scrolls to bound books, they have cataloged resources and served as a locus of knowledge. Today, with the digitization of content and the ubiquity of the internet, information is no longer confined to printed materials accessible only in a single, physical location. Consider this: Project Gutenberg and its affiliates make over 100,000 public domain works available digitally, and Google has scanned over 30 million books through its library project. Libraries are reinventing themselves as content becomes more accessible online and their role becomes less about housing tomes and more about connecting learners and constructing knowledge. Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Massachusetts has been in the vanguard of this transition since 2009, when it announced its plans for a "bookless" library. A database of millions of digital resources superseded their 20,000-volume collection of books, and a café replaced the circulation desk. With this transition, not only did the way in which students consumed content change, but also how they utilized the library space. Rather than maintain a quiet location for individual study, the school wanted to create an environment for "collaboration and knowledge co-construction.""

"A makerspace is a collaborative work space inside a school, library or separate public/private facility for making, learning, exploring and sharing that uses high tech to no tech tools.  These spaces are open to kids, adults, and entrepreneurs and have a variety of maker equipment including 3D printers, laser cutters, cnc machines, soldering irons and even sewing machines.  A makerspace however doesn't need to include all of these machines or even any of them to be considered a makerspace.  If you have cardboard, legos and art supplies you're in business.  It's more of the maker mindset of creating something out of nothing and exploring your own interests that's at the core of a makerspace.  These spaces are also helping to prepare those who need the critical 21st century skills in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).  They provide hands on learning, help with critical thinking skills and even boost self-confidence.  Some of the skills that are learned in a makerspace pertain to electronics, 3d printing, 3D modeling, coding, robotics and even woodworking,   Makerspaces are also fostering entrepreneurship and are being utilized as incubators and accelerators for business startups.  There have already been some amazing success stories that have come out of makerspaces to date. "

"I always have teachers wanting to know how they can better utilize the iPad in their classrooms. I know that it's very easy when first receiving an iPad to take a worksheet that you have done for several years, and convert it to glass. But glass can be boring too, so I created this Breakfast Club session to give my teachers some ideas on ways to better utilize this powerful tool in their classrooms. So the "activities" that I started coming up with started turning into all sorts of ideas and app suggestions.  I shared all of the ideas with the teachers that attended, but found myself particularly enjoying the conversations that we were having about some of the activities that are taking place in the classrooms at Aurora Public Schools. Our teachers are doing great things with the iPads in their classrooms and it was great to have teachers share and learn from each other!  Here are some of the activities, ideas and apps that we talked about on how to better utilize the iPad in the classroom."

"Making looks different at different types of makerspaces. However, schools, public libraries, and even artist collaboratives have some universal themes that tie us all together (and owning a 3D printer isn't one of them.)"

"Concussions are a serious public health concern. One in five Canadians report a sport-related concussion in their lifetime and an estimated one in 10 youth sustains a sport-related concussion each year. To improve concussion prevention, detection and management, the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary has developed a course for parents, coaches, teachers and administrators of school and sport environments, health-care professionals and those who have experienced a concussion.  "This course demystifies concussion and explains how everyone can play a role to prevent, identify and manage this type of traumatic brain injury," says Dr. Kathryn Schneider, PT, PhD, an assistant professor and clinician scientist (physiotherapist) in the Sport Injury Prevention Research Centre in the kinesiology faculty. "This program also demonstrates how a concussion management protocol can be adapted to the characteristics and resources of different sports and settings." A concussion management protocol is a detailed process that outlines how to prevent, detect and manage concussions in a specific context."

"Welcome to Teen Ink, a national teen magazine, book series, and website devoted entirely to teenage writing, art, photos, and forums. For over 25 years, Teen Ink has offered teens the opportunity to publish their creative work and opinions on issues that affect their lives - everything from love and family to school, current events, and self-esteem. Hundreds of thousands of students, aged 13 -19, have submitted their work to us and we have published more than 55,000 teens since 1989. Distributed through classrooms by English and Art teachers, and available in libraries nationwide, Teen Ink magazine offers some of the most thoughtful and creative work generated by teens today. We have no staff writers or artists; we depend completely on submissions from teenagers around the world for our content. Teen Ink has the largest distribution of any publication of its kind. Teen Ink is devoted to helping teens share their own voices, while developing reading, writing, creative and critical-thinking skills. All proceeds from the print magazine, website and Teen Ink books are used for educational purposes to further our goals."

"Stress! It's just a part of everyday life, right? But what if that stress is chronic and beyond a child's control? More than half of all students in U.S. public schools come from low-income families. Poverty is associated with chronic stress, which can have a toxic effect on the brain. While there is no silver bullet to solve the problem of poverty, we as educators do have the power to positively influence learning for children experiencing poverty by better understanding their brains."

"For too long, the American education system failed too many kids, including far too many poor kids and kids of color, without enough public notice or accountability. To combat this, leaders of all political persuasions championed the use of testing to measure progress and drive better results. Measurement has become so common that in school districts from coast to coast you can now find calendars marked "Data Days," when teachers are expected to spend time not on teaching, but on analyzing data like end-of-year and mid-year exams, interim assessments, science and social studies and teacher-created and computer-adaptive tests, surveys, attendance and behavior notes. It's been this way for more than 30 years, and it's time to try a different approach. The big numbers are necessary, but the more they proliferate, the less value they add. Data-based answers lead to further data-based questions, testing, and analysis; and the psychology of leaders and policymakers means that the hunt for data gets in the way of actual learning. The drive for data responded to a real problem in education, but bad thinking about testing and data use has made the data cure worse than the disease."

"Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn't the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of "grit" as a predictor of success."

"Bronwyn Bevan (former Director of Research and Learning at the Exploratorium) just published an expanded literature review of the research on Making for the National Academies of Science committee on Out-of-School Time STEM. Though practice is still way ahead of research in Making and Tinkering, this new paper references 66 different studies, many of them are new ones published in the last 18 months. Recent publications document how STEM-Rich Making supports the development of STEM learning identities, deepens engagement with STEM concepts and practices, and leverages learners' cultural resources. The paper was published in the journal Studies in Science Education, and it might be of interest to anyone interested in the connections between research and practice in our making and tinkering programs. You can download it by clicking here."

"Five years ago, universities like MIT and Stanford first opened up free online courses to the public. Today, more than 700 schools around the world have created thousands of free online courses. Here are 250 Ivy League courses you can take online right now for free 250 MOOCs from Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale. medium.freecodecamp.com I've compiled this list of over 438 such free online courses that you can start this month. For this, I leveraged Class Central's database of over 7,000 courses. I've also included each course's average rating"

"Six years ago, universities like MIT and Stanford first opened up free online courses to the public. Today, more than 700 schools around the world have created thousands of free online courses. I've compiled this list of 430 such free online courses that you can start this month. For this, I leveraged Class Central's database of over 8,000 courses. I've also included each course's average rating."

"As academic standards shift, technology evolves, and student habits change, schools are being forced to consider new ways of framing curriculum and engaging students in the classroom, and project-based learning is among the most successful and powerful of these possibilities. Of course, content knowledge matters. It's hard to be creative with ideas you don't understand. Academics and their 'content'-organized in the form of 'content areas' like literature, math, and science-are timeless indexes of the way we have come to understand the world around us through stories, patterns, numbers, measurements, and empirical data. The idea here, though, is that we (i.e., the field of public education) have become distracted with academics. Knowledge is only useful insofar as students tend to use that knowledge as they grow into adults that live through doing so. Studying philosophy or physics or poetry but not living through them-that's the difference between knowledge and academics."

"At Excel Public Charter School, we place a strong focus on integrating computational thinking within our curriculum across all disciplines. To us, computational thinking means solving hard problems of all kinds using ideas from computer science. These include algorithmic thinking, decomposition, pattern recognition and abstraction, as well as confidence in the face of ambiguity and tenacity to persist through challenges requiring iteration and experimentation. Our computational thinking curriculum is freely provided here for you to incorporate within your own classrooms. You'll find lessons divided into disciplines along the top of this and every other page. With these lessons and projects, we hope you will encourage your students to grow and flourish as computational thinkers, ready to face the real-world challenges of their generation!"

"With the prospect of returning to face-to-face instruction or hybrid constructions, what can we learn that works in our digital spaces that can readily transfer to our in-person classrooms? How do teachers motivate students to share ideas and risk "being wrong" in the digital space or the public space of the in-person classroom? How can we catch that lightning in a bottle? Well, there is the chat function built into many of the digital tools we use. There is power in the chat that can be intentionally put to use now and in the future."

#EdWeekSJSD

"The second Horizon Report for the K-12 sector describes the continuing work of the NMC's Horizon Project, a research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies that will likely have a significant impact on K-12 education. This report was produced in partnership with the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and was made possible via a grant from HP. "