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"From packing peanuts to disposable coffee cups, each year the US alone produces some two billion pounds of Styrofoam - none of which can be recycled. Frustrated by this waste of resources and landfill space, Ashton Cofer and his science fair teammates developed a heating treatment to break down used Styrofoam into something useful. Check out their original design, which won both the FIRST LEGO League Global Innovation Award and the Scientific American Innovator Award from Google Science Fair."

Recently I have been diving into the world of Assessment, seeking to better understand how we might design effective processes around this essential phase of the learning cycle. In doing so I have found a wealth of resources and quality reads that offer insights and strategies to be applied into our classrooms. Here then is a sampling of what I have been reading. 

"Here is a handy visual we published awhile ago featuring some of the best   STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering ,Art, and Math)  tools to use in your classroom.  Under each category we featured four representative tools that will help students cultivate the skills involved in that category. The overall aim is to provide teachers with a handy resource to use with their students to help them develop critical thinking skills and  adopt 'an engineering or design approach towards real-world problems while building on their mathematics and science base'."

The narrative of "learning loss" is weaponizing static achievement against young people and families in ways that further harms them in a time of global pandemic and disarray. Instead of falling back on the nostalgia of an outdated and mechanized education system, we must push forward into the global shift of our human existence and post-pandemic learning needs and opportunities. As we design teaching and learning now, and in the future, it is best we recycle the good mineral components of the previous education machine and build new resources for teaching and learning that serves the needs of all of our futures.

"reepik helps you to find free vector art, illustrations, icons, PSD and photos for using in websites, banners, presentations, magazines... We are currently creating hundreds of free vectors daily Discover our exclusive content! Find dozens of free vector graphics every day, all designed by Freepik."

Creative Web Tools For and By Kids is a project designed for students, ages 9 to 14, to use emerging technologies for engaging, thinking, learning, collaborating, creating, and innovating. The focus is on the use of free, open-source, or minimal cost tools, so the project can be replicated. An underlying goal is to demonstrate how advanced technological applications for enhancing learning can be implemented with only a computer and Internet access.

"Asked to develop a technology-integrated lesson for 5th Math, I naturally leaned to using the iPad. However, the lesson is being developed as a district resource and not every campus has iPads or iPods. Thus, I created a hybrid lesson. Since the elementary math specialists already had a bank of word problems that they had used in a "Words to Symbols" matching activity, we only had to spruce up some of the text and make it applicable or relevant to the apps we planned on using."

"We were recently gifted with a Makerbot Replicator (5th Gen) to pilot in our elementary school library. Our librarian, Angelique Lackey, and I knew that time was short before the end of the year, but we wanted students to experience the power of creating with this device. If you search the web for 3D printing curriculum to use in elementary schools, you will find a sparse number of appropriate resources. Most of the "curriculum" turns out to be instructions on using a 3D printer like this, or lists of manipulatives teachers can make on a 3D printer. Angelique and I were looking for something that would be more transformational for our students, however. "