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"We all have them, some good and some bad. We pick them up from friends, family, and even strangers. But we may not recall who we picked them up from or when they began. Because we've practiced them over and over, these seemingly thoughtless repeated habits or behaviors, the pathways in our brain have become so broad, fast, and efficient in carrying them out that we do them automatically without even thinking. Yet these unconscious habits and behaviors add structure and order to our lives and help us to make sense of the world we live in. Our classrooms are full of them. We teachers are pros when it comes to employing and modeling good habits and routines that enable us to manage and carry out the many tasks and demands of teaching. And when it comes to teaching mathematics, we model and teach our students how to carry out procedures and algorithms flawlessly. But why is it that these same students often struggle when confronted with a problem to which the immediate answer is unknown?"

"Looking for some good web tools to use to create educational video collages? The collection below has you covered. It features a number of popular tools and mobile apps to utilize with students to create, edit and share video collages. The common thing among all of these video editors is that they are easy and simple to use with no advanced video editing knowledge required. Some of these tools work on Chromebooks as well."

"Block Posters is a web-based tool to which you can upload a high quality graphic then divide it into letter-sized chunks for printing. Print out each section and put them together on a poster board to make your own poster. If you find a great infographic or poster that you want to display in your classroom, Block Posters is a good tool to use. Block Posters is also good for creating large jigsaw puzzles. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use Block Posters. "

"Multicopters are one of the hottest consumer gadgets on the market, and for good reason. They're cheap, easy to fly, a ton of fun, and by far the easiest way to get into radio controlled flying. This Drone School series is our way to help new flyers get off the ground, and over the next few weeks we'll get into some exercises to build your skills and capabilities for maximum fun with minimal crashes. For starters, let's look at how to pick a good beginner quadcopter."

"School administrators and educators are currently zealous about the idea that every student should learn computer science. "Think about the world we live in now," says New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, "Hundreds of thousands of good jobs will be accessible to those with coding and other essential skills." I agree that everyone should learn to program, but I disagree with Mayor de Blasio's motivations. You shouldn't learn to program in order to get a good job. Learning to think computationally can give you a new way to understand and describe your world. Learning to program can make you a more expressive person."

"A few days ago we shared with you a new Google feature that allows you to easily fact check online content. Today, we are sharing with you 10 good tips that will enable you to critically assess the veracity and credibility of online content (e.g. news stories).  These are guidelines Facebook Help Centre provided for it users to help them spot fake news. However, these tips can also apply to any other type of content. Students can use them to evaluate digital content and enhance their critical reading comprehension.  We have embedded these tips into the visual below so you can print and share with your students in class. You can also download a PDF copy from this page. Enjoy."

"Feedback is crucial for learning and improving, but it's rarely fun to be on the receiving end of it when it's critical. Many people have a negative reaction to feedback, especially feedback on their creative work. In a study of seven companies and 11,471 days of creative work, researchers found two striking patterns: First, getting feedback was incredibly rare, indicating that people seemed to avoid it; and second, when people did receive feedback, it generally left a negative emotional residue. So what might good feedback for creative work look like? By "good feedback," I mean feedback that creative workers actually want and that leads to changes that improve their creative output."

"Below are 12 good task management apps to help you enhance your productivity and facilitate your workflow. Some of the things you can do with these apps include: create memos and to-do lists to organize and prioritize your tasks and projects, record and share ideas with others, keep track of your work across different devices and platforms and many more. We invite you to check them out and share with us your feedback. Links to the apps are below the visual. "

"Anxious, overconfident, curious, indifferent, angry, amused, lonely, hopeful, embarrassed, empowered, afraid, excited, diminished-teachers have seen all these emotions emerge from students as they engage with classroom content. Emotional responses to lessons often go through students' minds before they even begin to think about the material: This stuff is stupid/awesome/beyond me. I'm not comfortable with this. Finally, something I'm good at. Maybe somebody will notice I can't read. Let's see her find a mistake in that one-it's perfect. Does the teacher know I didn't study this last night? Some of us deny this reality and claim we aren't trained to guide children's emotional health. We think our purpose is to teach content and skills only, not to deal with the touchy-feely stuff. This attitude turns a blind eye to the developmental nature of the students we serve, and it runs afoul of how minds learn. Unless we're the most severe of sociopaths, we all have emotional responses that affect what we do. Adding to the messiness, our individual perspectives and experiences may put us out of sync with others' emotional states, even as the institutional nature of schools demands emotional synchronicity. The resulting miscommunication, blame, anxiety, and frustration are not the best ingredients for a good day at school. Teachers who deny the emotional elements of teaching and learning can become exhausted from ceaseless confrontations with students' emotional states, often blaming their personal stress and students' failure to learn on students' lack of motivation or maturity. They grow disconnected from students, creating an almost adversarial relationship with them: I need to get them to shape up. It's them or me. These students are hopeless; why should I bother? It's the parents who created this situation. This attitude can bleed into daily interactions with students and colleagues. It doesn't have to be this way. We can develop constructive responses to our own

"On August 21st a solar eclipse will cover a large portion of the United States. If you're in an area that the eclipse will cover, you may want to have your students build solar eclipse viewing boxes. But before doing that, you may want to have your students review how eclipses happen. The following three videos are good for that purpose."

"The Internet is an amazing resource for people of all ages. A solid awareness of Information Fluency coupled with a sense of good digital citizenship will keep any Web user on the straight and narrow. But what about beginners? What are the best basic Internet safety rules we can give to young ones who are venturing into cyberspace on their maiden voyage? That's what this infographic from Pumpic focuses on. It features 10 timeless and trusty Internet safety rules for kids exploring online for the first time. While we here at the GDCF don't believe that the Web is strictly a dark place for cyber-criminals that act in shadow, we still encourage everyone to recognize that some online perils exist. A good dose of common sense goes a long way in keeping us safe online. The Internet safety rules in this infographic are ones that not only kids can benefit from, but that all of us can. The folks at Pumpic seem to agree: "Our infographic with 10 guiding principles aims to ensure your child is both safe and responsible online. The Internet needn't be a dangerous place if treated with caution and respect.""

"Good technology integration isn't about using the fanciest tool, it's about being aware of the range of options and picking the right strategy-or strategies-for the lesson at hand."

"WWF Together is a beautiful iPad app and Android app that features interactive stories about endangered animals around the world. Each of the interactive stories includes beautiful images and videos, facts about the animals and their habitats, and the threats to each of the animals. Some of the animals currently featured in the app are pandas, marine turtles, elephants, tigers, polar bears, bison, whales, gorillas, rhinos, and snow leopards."

"Here is a collection of some good iPad coding apps we curated for you from iTunes App Store. These are apps you can use with your middle school students to teach them everything related to coding and programming.  These include tutorials, guides, interactive games and several other materials ideal for use with students in class. "

"Below is a selection of some good Mac apps curated specifically for Music teachers. These are applications you can use to help you with songwriting and editing on Mac, designing new sounds, processing audio, building synthesizers, recording digital audio, and many more. Check them out and share with us your feedback in our Facebook page. "

"Today we spent sometime going through iTunes App Store collections for high school students and curated for you the apps below. These are some good applications high school students can use to help them with their math. The apps are arranged into three main categories: Algebra, Geometry and graphing and calculation apps.  We invite you to check them out and share with your students. The visual below is also available for free download in PDF format from "

"Over the course of the past couple of years, I've become particularly fond of a few Chrome tools that I consider too good to miss.  These would be handy across the board, but especially in Google Classroom and Chromebook environments. "

"Good morning! Stay six feet away. Pull up your mask. Don't forget to wear it at all times, even outdoors. Wash your hands. Go straight to your desk. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 germs. Goodbye! Wash your hands. Pull up your mask. Leave one at a time. Don't touch anything or anyone on your way out. See you tomorrow! This is pandemic education. It can feel so cold, so impersonal. The safety restrictions are necessary to keep COVID at bay, but what is this distance doing to our students? Plenty of research indicates that there are both physical and mental health benefits from hugging and other physical contact. Hugs reduce the negative effects of stress on the brain, by deactivating the part of the brain that responds to threats. They increase levels of oxytocin, the feel-good hormone, and ironically, may even boost the immune system. So this year's lack of contact could be taking a toll, especially on those students who don't receive much affection at home."

"After its launch last month, ChatGPT, the latest chatbot released by OpenAI, made the rounds online. Alex, a sophomore at a university in Pittsburgh, started toying with the chatbot about a week after it was released, after finding out about it on Twitter. Within a couple of days, he got really excited by the quality of the writing it produced. The chatbot was good, he says-really good. ("Alex" is the name that this person provided to EdSurge. He only agreed to speak anonymously, for fear of repercussions for admitting to academic dishonesty.) He'd found the chatbot around finals week, with everyone in a mad rush to finish papers. Most people seemed interested in asking the chatbot for jokes or stories, Alex says, but he was "instantly intrigued with the idea of using it to write a paper.""

"If you spend any time on the internet, you've probably heard about Chat GPT. This AI technology is capable of generating detailed written responses to complex questions. It can even do math and correct computer code. I spent some time experimenting with Chat GPT and it is good…really good"