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""Project based learning's time has come." Educators across the nation have been realizing the potential for powerful deeper learning when project-based learning (PBL) is employed. We have witnessed schools that are wall-to-wall with projects, blended classrooms engaging in PBL and organizations that are helping to create high leverage engagement opportunities for all students. Leaders at schools and organizations across the United States and around the world are helping to continue to build and sustain the PBL momentum. Their vision for what PBL can be in, and can bring to, their communities is astounding. At PBL World, a conference focused on innovations in project-based learning, we heard inspiring messages about what's possible in PBL."

"When you're entering the United States, whether at an airport or a border crossing, federal agents have broad authority to search citizens and visitors alike. And that can include flipping through your phone, computer, and any other electronic devices you have with you. As US Customs and Border Protection outlines in a tearsheet it provides to people at the border, federal agents can seize and search your phone, and even make a copy of it to have forensic experts analyze its contents off-site."

"Celebrate Black History Month with these twenty-eight ideas, one for each day of February, that recognize the heritage, accomplishments, and culture of African Americans in the United States."

"It is an unarguable point that cell phones are a great way to keep in touch. However, giving a child a cell phone can be a tough call for parents. In the United States, the average age for adolescents to receive their first cell phone is 11. There is no one-size-fits-all approach for determining the appropriate age to give a child a cell phone.  Cell phone use depends on a variety of circumstances. In an emergency situation, having a child equipped with the cell phone is a savvy and essential way to stay in touch.  There can be many benefits to giving a cell phone to a child. Children and parents can inform each other about any changes of plan. Parents can stay in contact with their children throughout the day. Children can reach friends more easily."

"There are holidays like Mother's Day, Earth Day, Thanksgiving Day. Even a Talk-Like-Shakespeare Day. But Friday is Pi Day. Really! It's official. The date March 14 (that is, 3/14) was designated Pi Day by House Resolution 224 of the first session of the 111th Congress of the United States. It begins "Whereas the Greek letter (Pi) is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter," and is followed by 11 more whereases before it resolves to support the designation of "Pi Day" to encourage "schools and educators to observe the day with appropriate activities that teach students about Pi and engage them about the study of mathematics.""

"Over the last several decades, the United States has declined as an economic and educational global leader in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). To regain economic success and global competitiveness in these fields, government at all levels should launch campaigns that raise STEM awareness and increase student engagement. Actively leveraging social media channels is one potential path to drive K-12 excitement in STEM education and jobs through challenges."

"Why Minecraft? Every day, more and more teachers are using the world-building game Minecraft to engage and educate. The game is a true phenomenon and gamers young and old are using it in countless creative ways. Practitioners of Games Based Education have realized the potential and have embraced Minecraft in classrooms around the world. Now you can too! What is MinecraftEdu? MinecraftEdu is the collaboration of a small team of educators and programmers from the United States and Finland. We are working with Mojang AB of Sweden, the creators of Minecraft, to make the game affordable and accessible to schools everywhere. We have also created a suite of tools that make it easy to unlock the power of Minecraft in YOUR classroom."

"I support the technological efforts of a few hundred teachers and thousands of students within my school district. I know there are others that perform roughly the same function as I do around Michigan, and the United States. I figured there might be a few more of us out there trying to provide support for iPads and other iOS devices. I've been creating "how to" videos for iPads every week since the start of this school year, and I though it might be a good idea to create a how to video of how I'm actually making the iPad videos. "

"Teaching primary and secondary students how to program has become a hot topic lately. Even people like United States President Barack Obama to actress Angela Bassett to music artist Shakira have spoken about the value of computer programming in an initiative called Hour of Code. With good reason too. Technology is a major part of our lives. Knowing how to build new technologies means having the ability to shape its direction. So let's encourage students not just how to program, but how to write programs that can help our world. And to start, technology coordinator Holli Scharinger has curated a set of web, desktop, and mobile apps that students can use to learn computer programming."

"The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is an all-digital library that aggregates metadata - or information describing an item - and thumbnails for more than 7 million photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums around the ​united ​states.The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America's libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world."

"As the new school year ramps up, teachers and parents need to be reminded of a well-kept secret: Across all grade levels and academic subjects, girls earn higher grades than boys. Not just in the United States, but across the globe, in countries as far afield as Norway and Hong Kong. This finding is reflected in a recent study by psychology professors Daniel and Susan Voyer at the University of New Brunswick. The Voyers based their results on a meta-analysis of 369 studies involving the academic grades of over one million boys and girls from 30 different nations. The findings are unquestionably robust: Girls earn higher grades in every subject, including the science-related fields where boys are thought to surpass them."

"Education-bashing has become something of a national sport in the United States. From hurling criticism about slipping test scores, socio-economic disparity, dropout rates, to raising concerns about poor teaching standards and school resources, the popular narrative is that U.S. schools are failing children. There's good reason for the pile-on: in many cases, the problems are real. While most of the conversation around education reform centers on how to address these existing issues, another point of view has been gaining momentum over the last several years. It's a point of view that is less focused on fine-tuning the current system for high performance-since the system was built in 1893 with the goal of churning out "good workers"-and more about rethinking education entirely and how it meets the world's rapidly changing economy in the information age. This topic is explored in depth in the feature-length documentary, Most Likely to Succeed, which premiered at Sundance and will appear at the Tribeca Film Festival April 24. In the film, director, writer and producer Greg Whiteley casts a light on the shortcomings of established education methods by focusing on one school that's defying convention, San Diego's High Tech High. While following two ninth-grade classes for a year, with classroom instruction unlike anything you've ever seen, the doc offers some inspirational ideas for how to help students rise to the occasion of an innovation economy that requires critical thinking."

"As with many schools in the United States, the shop program at Analy High School in Sebastopol, California, had become largely irrelevant. The main shop room had become little more than a glorified storage room. The school's priorities were firmly focused on college readiness and success at standardized tests, and vocational programs had taken a backseat. Sebastopol is also the home of Make magazine, one of the leading voices of the maker movement, a community of inventors and do-it-yourselfers that has blossomed on YouTube and shows up in the tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands at Maker Faires all over the world. Make proposed that a group of students from Analy come to their offices to explore the possibilities involved in creating things with 3-D printers, computer-aided design, and more. The program was so popular that soon Make could no longer accommodate it in their offices, so they agreed to donate equipment to Analy if the school would ramp up their vocational program."

"Project Based Learning's time has come. The experience of thousands of teachers across all grade levels and subject areas, backed by research, confirms that PBL is an effective and enjoyable way to learn -- and develop deeper learning competencies required for success in college, career and civic life. Why are so many educators across the United States and around the world interested in this teaching method? The answer is a combination of timeless reasons and recent developments."

Prominent New York real estate developer, entrepreneur and philanthropist Arik Kislin immigrated to the United States with his family from Ukraine in the early 1970s.

Prominent New York real estate developer, entrepreneur and philanthropist Arik Kislin immigrated to the United States with his family from Ukraine in the early 1970s.

"The students had been researching Ellis Island in Social Studies and were finding out how it became a famous gateway for millions of immigrants entering the United States. They wanted to represent that information visually, so they took all that they learned in class and turned it into a news report. The script took some time to write but with Google Docs they could all collaborate on the same document at home or at school in order to get the job done. When the script was finished, they were ready to record their video. I set up the green screen, put the iPad on a tripod, and gave the students some basics on what they would need to know in order to make a successful green screen movie on the iPad. They were up and running in no time and filmed their own video whenever they weren't all on screen at the same time! We used the Teleprompter Pro Lite app to scroll their script in front of them, just like the professionals do. "

In Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait (2006-2009), Chris Jordan documents selected statistics about the United States in visual format.

"Figment.com will be unveiled on Monday as an experiment in online literature, a free platform for young people to read and write fiction, both on their computers and on their cellphones. Users are invited to write novels, short stories and poems, collaborate with other writers and give and receive feedback on the work posted on the site. The idea for Figment emerged from a very 21st-century invention, the cellphone novel, which arrived in the United States around 2008. That December, Ms. Goodyear wrote a 6,000-word article for The New Yorker about young Japanese women who had been busy composing fiction on their mobile phones. In the article she declared it "the first literary genre to emerge from the cellular age." "