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"If you've ever wished your childhood Lego creations could come to life, your dreams are now closer to reality. Lego has just unveiled a new subbrand called Boost which promises to do just that. The base set contains a combination of sensors, motors and a unique companion app that teaches kids how to code so that they can program their new robot friends. Lego's Mindstorms could let you do this too, but that's a decidedly more advanced system aimed at young adults. Boost, on the other hand, is designed for kids ages seven and up. The Lego Boost base starter set is priced at $160 and will be available later this year."

"Virtual and Augmented Reality apps are starting to hit the market in force. While most of the buzz for these technologies has been for immersive gaming, many companies are getting involved in realizing the potential that Augmented and Virtual Reality may have as educational tools. The fraction of projected VR and AR market value taken up by education may seem small, but considering how large whole market is, this "small fraction" still represents Billions of Dollars. This article will discuss 22 virtual and augmented reality apps for education that are already available, in beta, or still in the testing process. Some of the apps are aimed at parents and preschool teachers, while most are for primary school teachers. Others will interest anybody, including higher education students, and even non-students."

"Pokémon Go is a cultural phenomenon that has gained so much in popularity over the last few weeks. This is basically an augmented reality game that you can play through your smart phone. The app uses the coordinates of your GPS to determine your location in the real world and provides you with Pokémon characters to view and catch. 'Pokémon are out there, and you need to find them. As you walk around a neighbourhood, your smartphone will vibrate when there's a Pokémon nearby. Take aim and throw a Poké Ball… You'll have to stay alert, or it might get away!'"

"Project Bloks is a research project with the aim of creating an open hardware platform to help developers, designers, and researchers build the next generation of tangible programming experiences for kids. Learn more at http://g.co/projectbloks"

"Computational thinking is the thought processes involved in formulating a problem and expressing its solution(s) in such a way that a computer - human or machine - can effectively carry out. Informally, computational thinking describes the mental activity in formulating a problem to admit a computational solution.  The solution can be carried out by a human or machine. This latter point is important.  First, humans compute.  Second, people can learn computational thinking without a machine.  Also, computational thinking is not just about problem solving, but also about problem formulation.1 The Digital Careers organisation says that students need experience and skills in computational thinking and computer programming (coding) to be successful in their future careers.2 The NSW syllabuses provide a range of opportunities to develop students' understanding of computational thinking and coding. This guide draws out the areas where computational thinking can be applied within the existing NSW K-8 syllabuses. Like the syllabuses, it is organised into stages of learning and subdivided into learning areas, with suggested activities and links to online resources. Not all resources and activities listed in this guide refer to coding explicitly, but they do aim to develop algorithmic and computational thinking skills to better enable students and teachers to reach a coding goal."

Increasingly we aim to teach dispositions but some care in the use of the term is required as it is easily oversimplified. While teaching for dispositions is encouraged it will have little effect if it means doing little other than engaging with the terminology. If we are to encourage the expansion of the desired dispositions, we must be sure to adequately unpack them and understand the implications in store for our culture of learning. 

"The number of mobile apps marketed to kids is growing at a rapid pace, yet a recent report by the Federal Trade Commission raises new concerns about child privacy and the lack of disclosure about the personal data being collected."

" This blog entry aims to answer most of those familiar questions and point any beginners to additional 'how to' resources that may help you to find out more when you are ready. Remember it is still relatively early days for introducing mobile technologies into the classroom to support learning, evidence suggests that this process is transforming the way students learn and even the currently available Apps are changing on a daily basis because many of them were not originally intended for education. "

"Now Apple wants to help users achieve that limitless potential, with the free content-creation application iBooks Author. It aims to revolutionize modern textbooks by bringing interactivity to the learning experience. Not only can you add images to your pages, the reader can zoom in or out of them. You can insert Keynote slides, and embed movies that can be viewed inside a page or full screen. It's even possible to create short quizzes to test your readers' knowledge retention."

"It appears since the arrival of iPads that the PC it is no longer the cutting edge technology that it once was. My blogs aim to investigate the use of this handheld technology in primary education, in particular Spring Cottage Primary School's 'iPad journey' and look at some of the apps that can be used across the curriculum to engage, motivate and inspire children's learning in the classroom."

"A group of children took part in a series of literacy lessons centred around the popular game Bike Baron by Qwibooand Mountain Sheep as outlined in detail athttp://mrandrewsonline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/part-1-raising-standards-in-boys.html. The aim was to raise standards in writing. The work is based on the success of the Controllable Vehicle project which demonstrated that the iPad can significantly enhance pupil understanding and interest in a topic leading to accelerated progress in speaking, listening and writing."

Every day we aim to make technology so simple and intuitive that you stop thinking about it-we want Google to work so well, it just blends into your life. But sometimes it's helpful to step back and take stock of what you're doing online.

"Award-winning educational software publisher Terasoft, a. s., today is pleased to announce the release and immediate availability of Action Sight Words Games & Flashcards for Reading Success for iPhone and iPad from its new professional series aimed at early reading improvement. Featuring a total of 6 engaging games with over 300 high-frequency English words from the popular Dolch Sight Words List, the Action Sight Words Games application makes learning vocabulary and spelling fun and easy for young learners."

About: They Don't Teach You This In School was founded with the aim of helping motivated young people get where they want to be faster, by learning from the knowledge and experience of today's adult generation.

"Spanish is spoken in many countries around the world. The iPad can be a great friend in learning and translating Spanish. This AppList is aimed to showcase the very best Spanish learning and translating apps for the iPad"

"KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice."

"Below is a selection of the basic blogging terms that are definitely a must-know for any beginner blogger. The aim behind this list is to help teachers and students new to the blogosphere avoid those "awkward" lexical confrontations with technical terms . Learning and understanding this terminology will absolutely help you blog better."

"Recently, my school adopted a new approach to Educational Technology Integration. We're following an unconference model, and this has meant that we meet weekly, for no more than 1/2 an hour, in small, constantly-changing groups. Before these meetings, staff announce (via the school intranet) what sessions they might be running. For example, they might run a session called, 'Using Evernote in Ancient History' or 'How I Used Scripts to Automate my Classroom'. Staff can then pick a session that suits their fancy - or their professional needs - and these small groups are constantly revolving as people share their new skills with each other. It's been revolutionary - a huge success, so this discussion is aimed at sharing ways to ensure that your school is getting the most from professional learning. Here are my 5 tips:"