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"If you're going to communicate effectively with young people, it helps to do it in a language and format they understand. Like Minecraft, for instance. One hundred million people already play the Swedish-born game, and even those who haven't played can soon appreciate its build-it-with-blocks vernacular. UN-Habitat, the UN's agency for sustainable urban development, has a program to improve public space in developing world cities. It helps build new parks, squares, sports fields, and sidewalks, and promotes the value of public space to local people. Recently, it's used Minecraft to engage young people."

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 is available in more than 45 languages as a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes new features as well as dramatic improvements to performance, memory usage and speed.

"Students learning to create apps with Apple's Swift programming language now have a way to validate their skills with a new certification program. App Development with Swift is a new academic certification course created by Certiport in partnership with Apple that measures students' ability to program with Swift after completing a year-long program. 9to5Mac Happy Hour The new Swift certification program will be available starting this fall:"

"iTooch Elementary is an app covering the official Maths, Science and Language Arts curriculum for grades 3-5. Each title contains 40-50 chapters and includes 1000-2000 activities. The apps created by iTooch are currently being used by more than 300,000 students and have been created by teachers to make sure they comply with the U.S. National Common Core Standards. You can click here to see the teachers behind the development of iTooch."

"Being able to create your own robot gives students and kids a great sense of achievement, with the added bonus of allowing children to develop patience, imagination and problems solving skills. There are a number of impressive kids robotics kits on the market that even parents will enjoy playing with. Plus, these types of projects provide valuable bonding time for kids and parents as it's a toy that both can really relish. In classrooms, robotics are perfect for teaching coding to kids, there are many programmable robot kits that use a simple drag and drop programing language based on Scratch. Making your own robot is also a creative a process, where kids and students utilize their design skills to come up with interesting robot designs. The 10 best make your own robot kits for kids on the market are listed below."

"The BBC's Skillswise website offers lots of good activities for learning and practicing skills in language arts and mathematics. A section of the site that could be useful in a lot of classrooms is the speaking and listening section. The speaking and listening section contains subsections offering lessons and activities to develop a specific skill. Those skills are listening for specifics, communication skills, formal and informal speaking, and giving presentations. Each section has a short introductory video followed by a set of quizzes and interactive games in which students test their skills."

"A new wave of e-textbooks is giving students more than just words and a few hotlinks on a digital page. Publishers over the last few years have been adding video, interactive maps and gamified quizzes designed to engage students more deeply in their learning. "Think of it as making the textbook a hands-on activity," says Andrew Miller, an ASCD faculty member and technology expert. "It's making the content come to life in a way that meets the needs of different learners-auditory learners, visual leaders, text-based learners." The latest e-textbooks, developed by traditional publishers as well as new players like Discovery Education, are powered by a host of adaptive features, such as adjustable levels of difficulty and instant translation into other languages. And in some districts, teachers are using platforms like Apple's iBooks to create their own digital course materials."

"The impulse to create is one of the most basic human drives. As far back as the Stone Age, we were using materials in our environment to fashion tools for solving the problems we encountered. And in the millions of years since then, we have never stopped creating. In fact, the rise of civilization is largely defined by the progress of technology of one kind or another. Today, the availability of affordable constructive technology and the ability to share online has fueled the latest evolutionary spurt in this facet of human development. New tools that enable hands-on learning - 3D printers, robotics, microprocessors, wearable computers, e-textiles, "smart" materials and new programming languages - are giving individuals the power to invent. We're not just talking about adults. Children of all ages can use these tools to move from passive receivers of knowledge to real-world makers. This has the potential to completely revolutionize education as we know it. And the movement has already begu"

"Short Circuit is an after-school experience with a fresh approach to electronics and physical computing for young people. The Short Circuit Curriculum Guide includes seven informal learning activity modules that encourage students to express their creativity and develop DIY digital media skills by exploring innovative uses for physical and digital materials, like circuits, conductive inks, LEDs and the latest programming languages. Short Circuit Curriculum Guide modules include lesson plans and individualized assessment tools based on programs piloted at Quest to Learn, as well as by the Digital Youth Network and YouMedia programs in Chicago."

"I normally don't like to create "click bait" blog post titles, but this one seemed to fit. Twenty-five resources can be overwhelming, but there is a good mix of different types of items. There are links to websites with lesson plans, iOS apps, books, videos, and samples of student work to fit your learning style.  Scratch was developed by MIT a little over eight years ago. It uses a visual programming language that is easy to start for students of all ages. Teachers can start with the Scratch Jr. app for the iPad. That app, linked on the list.ly below, is designed specifically for 5-7 year olds. The only way to learn new skills, is to dig in and give it a try. I love the summer for this reason. It gives me the chance to keep up and learn something new. I am going to try Minecraft with my daughter, Gwen, after I finish up this blog post. "

"In honor of Autism Awareness Month, this week's featured Top Picks lists highlight the best edtech for kids on the autism spectrum. For these kids, technology can act as a bridge -- helping them unlock their potential by improving verbal communication, developing social skills, enhancing the ability to learn and organize information, and improving their overall understanding of their environment. Technology can also be extremely helpful for parents and teachers of kids with autism, as apps, games, and websites can replace more expensive specialized devices. The lists here include more than 40 apps, games, and websites focused on four important areas of growth: executive function, social skills, language skills, and emotional intelligence."

This is the cheapest multimedia teacher development book on the market. The book focuses on practical ways teachers can explore and exploit the potential of the vast web-based video resources that now exist on the internet. In addition to this the book offers guidance on how to encourage students to use video as a creative tool that can support their language learning.

Cheatsheets and various quick reference guides are available for almost any type of software and language these days.

The purpose of the survey was to ascertain the level of awareness and openness to mobile learning among English language teachers. I also wanted to find out to what degree and how teachers were already using mobile learning both in their teaching and and professional development and to establish whether they would be willing to pay for and use mobile content. The survey also collected information about the teachers' existing access to mobile services and the kinds of device they are using to get access to mobile Internet.

I'm never really sure what the value of being able to read quickly is and whether this effects the amount of information you actually retain when you read, but I do know that getting EFL and ESL students to read in chunks and getting them to read as much as possible can be very beneficial to their language development.

"As many people with dyslexia already know, the iPad has developed into an indispensable tool for various language-based activities. During the last five years, Apple has put a great deal of effort into steadily improving the accessibility features of its mobile operating system, iOS. Currently, users can take advantage of built-in dictation, word prediction, and multiple text-to-speech options. In addition, the newest version of the operating system, iOS 8, allows for the installation of third-party keyboards. These mark an increase in the amount of assistive technology (AT) that can be used universally with iPad apps involving reading and writing."

"What is "storytelling"? Telling stories, of course! In 2014, there are so many diverse, wonderful, and sometimes overwhelming ways to do this. What I want to explore is traditional, oral storytelling, which has been a part of human life since we first left Africa 200,000 or more years ago. Perhaps storytelling was the reason language developed in the first place, as our minds began to inquire, wonder, think."

The model of inquiry I chose to use was the LADDER model, which I developed several years ago in an attempt to create a model which had an easy to understand language that both students and teachers could understand.

"Starting from next week, EdTech and mLearning will be featuring a series of posts on the best educational web tools and mobile apps we have covered during this year. Today as we were working on some literacy and language arts' tools we thought to give a quick shout-out to two of the best resources to help you with the teaching of reading. These websites provide a wide range of materials (lessons plans, interactives, printables, graphic organizers...etc) all of which are designed specifically to help students develop their reading skills and become better readers."