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"A person's culture deeply impacts his or her way of thinking and learning; that presents a special challenge to educators because modern classrooms often have a beautiful mishmash of students from different backgrounds. How can you adapt and demonstrate cultural awareness in your teaching? The following resources may help."

"Every day on Twitter, media outlets, and through my inbox, I am lambasted with arguments as to the essential elements of 21st century learning and teaching and its merits. Most of the skills and knowledge associated with 21st century learning begin with "C" for some strange reason, and deal with notions of creativity, collaboration, citizenship, etc. Here is a very popular framework. While I do acknowledge that we need a perpetual debate as to what learning is and what excellence in teaching might be, I think that much of our focus as educators has been diverted to thought experiments where we are trying to predict the future. We are told what skills students will need in the future as if we have a crystal ball. How can we presume to prepare young people for any kind of future? Will they need lasers are on their heads?"

"It's one thing for celebrity hijinks or cute animal stories to take off on social media. That happens all the time. It's not too often a math problem goes viral, especially when it doesn't involve a complaint about Common Core. Over the weekend, Singapore TV personality Kenneth Kong posted a logic problem on his Facebook page that was given to high school kids competing in a math olympiad."

A recent lesson with my Year Six class reminded me of the fear teachers face when confronted by the unknown. I thought the lesson would go quite smoothly, I have taught it before but this time things went in an unexpected and frightening direction.

"If you would like to capture and record the screen of an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you can easily do so thanks to QuickTime, the video app that comes with every Mac. This offers a simple solution for recording the screen of an iOS device for demos, presentations, tutorials, and much more, and it's remarkably simple to use. To get started capturing a video of an iPhone or iPad screen with QuickTime, you'll need a USB cable, and want to be running a modern version of OS X on the Mac, and a modern version of iOS on the iPhone or iPad. Specific requirements and an alternative approach for older versions are discussed further below. But since most users already have all that is necessary on their Mac and iPhones right now, let's jump right into recording the devices screen."

"About two decades ago The MIT Media lab introduced the concept of block-based programming. The idea was to develop an interface that allowed computer programs to be built by simply dragging and dropping puzzle blocks to represent complex programming constructs and commands. With this new method for teaching and learning computer science, the hugely popular Scratch platform was born. This approach lowered the bar for experimenting with programmatic thinking, making it possible for students to create interactive animations and small games without writing a single line of code. This simple concept removed the need to learn the syntax of a formal programming language, and made teaching and learning the basics of computer science accessible to younger learners and to teachers with no formal coding background. Outside of the classroom though, coding has always been, and still remains, a process of typing letters, numbers and symbols. This text-based programming, used in programming language such as C, Javascript and Python, requires coders to obey and conform to formal syntax. Despite the pain of dealing with typos in names of variables and inevitable syntax errors, no other coding method designed to be more "user friendly" has really caught on. Tools have been offered for managers to define business logic through a graphical user interface without writing lines of codes. Or for web developers to add interactive behaviors to their websites without learning Javascript. But in reality, neither of those substitute the power and flexibility of text-based programming. And with neither winning significant adoption, the demand for the classic skill of text-based coding continues to grow and grow."

The Teaching Practices Inventory (formerly called the "Teaching Practices Survey") was designed to characterize the teaching practices used in undergraduate science and mathematics courses. The inventory requires 10-15 minutes to fill out and provides a detailed characterization of practices used in all aspects of a "lecture" course (it is not suitable for use with courses that are primarily laboratories, seminars, or project courses).

"I facilitated a workshop at Miami Device this past week. Most conference sessions feel rushed with only 45-60 minutes to share, but thanks to Felix Jacomino's  the genius mind behind the conference, scheduled my 10 Tips to Get Started with Sketchnoting workshop for 2 hours!  It gave us the opportunity to DO what we were talking about. Participants were able to practice sketching the content of the workshop as they were learning about sketchnoting! We walked, step by step, through building a sketch by remembering these 10 tips:"

"Recently many of our Year Six students have been involved in projects that require them to utilise the brain of a maker. Facing challenges involving the exploration of how everyday objects are manufactured and while responding to their 'Genius Hour' ambitions they are facing a new set of problems and discovering the joy that comes from solving these with their hands as much as their brains."

"Last week we explored ideas for building a $100 library makerspace. This week we're increasing our budget 10 fold and exploring how to build a $1000 library makerspace. While our budget has gone up significantly, we'll still have to be strategic about how we spend our money."

"According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), employment in occupations related to STEM is projected to grow to more than 9 million between 2012 and 2022. And the Global Stem Alliance estimates that 75% of all jobs will require STEM expertise by 2018. SEE ALSO: 6 awesome ways to bring your kids' ideas to life with 3D printing Certainly that's a clear indication that STEM should be an integral part of school curriculums. Introducing these topics in an approachable way that both engages and educates kids, is possible without having to implement complex coding classes and HTML 101 in elementary school. Thanks to a slew of wildly innovative and imaginative toys out there - like the 11 below - kids can start developing the skills necessary for an increasingly digital world"