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"f you're reading this on the iPad or browsing through our iPad magazine, you're going to want to read this. A new study from Belkin, Harvard School of Public Health, and Microsoft has found that tablet users may be at high risk to develop neck discomfort based on behaviors driven by the limitations of tablet designs."

"This isn't just for people with traditional careers and family lives. It applies to all families regardless of how busy your schedule or important your job, In her book "The Obamas," author Jodi Kanter highlights the President's commitment to having dinner with his family five times a week. Unfortunately in the hustle and bustle of today's digital world, the art of the family dinner has been drained out of many homes with device interaction replacing face-to-face connection. During a panel discussion hosted by Common Sense Media that focused on raising caring kids in a digital world, Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education shared that many families are not even sure what to do at dinner time if all are free of digital devices. If this applies to your family, don't despair. Below are ideas for dinner time activities for each day of the week. These suggestions should serve as a helpful way to ensure dinner time is a valuable experience for families."

"The science is clear: If you get kids moving throughout the school day, they will do better academically. That's the case being made in the article "Building a better brain" just published in the Globe and Mail. The article quotes Harvard Medical School's John Ratey, an internationally recognized expert in neuropsychiatry: If you want to raise test scores, we have documented evidence - big time evidence - that the key is to include fitness-based activity in the day. Not only do schools need to start incorporating physical activity into every school day, they need to make sure that their students are physically literate, so they have the skills necessary to participate and enjoy that activity. And we know that kids who are physically literate have the confidence to move and will seek out opportunities to be physically active."

"So you finally get the chance to meet one-on-one with your child's teacher - now what? Like a good Scout, be prepared: Educators agree that doing your homework before a parent-teacher conference can make a big difference. The Harvard Family Research Project's Tip Sheet for Parents suggests reviewing your child's work, grades and past teacher feedback. Ask your child about his experience at school and make a list of questions ahead of time to ask during the conference. Care.com - a website that matches parents with child caregivers - created a list of questions to print out and take with you. A good parent-teacher conference, experts say, should cover three major topics: the child, the classroom and the future."

"In Square Peg, Todd Rose tells the story of how a high school dropout became a Harvard professor in educational neuroscience. Diagnosed with ADHD in middle school, Rose was always in trouble. From his study of complex systems and neuroscience, he makes four points: variability is the rule: perceptions and reactions are much more dynamic and diverse than previously thought; emotions are important: emotional states influence learning; context is key: circumstances affect the behavior; and feedback loops determine success or failure: small changes making a difference. In Todd's TED talk on the Myth of Average, he makes the case that schools are designed based on the average. But the problem is that no student is average on every dimension, "Every student has a jagged learning profile." Rose said, "We blame kids, teachers, and parents, but it's just bad design.""

"Can the act of making or designing something help kids feel like they have agency over the objects and systems in their lives? That's the main question a group of researchers at Project Zero, a research group out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, are tackling alongside classroom-based teachers in Oakland, California. In an evolving process, researchers are testing out activities they've designed to help students to look more closely, explain more deeply and take on opportunities to change things they see around them."

"Professional and personal development are important to many people. Professional development allows you to stay current in your field, make connections with likeminded professionals, and satisfy any continuing learning requirements your job may have. Personal development allows you to grow as a person, learn new skills, and try new things. In order to grow, professionally or personally, in the past, you had to sign up for college courses, pay a lot of money, and rush to class after work or on weekends. But that set-up as changed. Online courses, many of which are totally free, have revolutionized the way in which many people access professional and personal development. Thanks to the advent of massive open online courses (MOOCs), people can attend free courses offered by Stanford, Harvard, and MIT in the luxury of their own home, taking the courses at their own pace at a time that is convenient."

"One of the things I was keen to do this year in setting up an in-house research centre at Wellington College was to have a small number of students partner with us on our project with Harvard faculty on Growth Mindsets and Grit. A key point for me was what does this research actually look like in the classroom and and at the level of the student? Another goal was to have them help us in designing a survey by having them pilot test some of the more problematic questions so we could get as reliable data as possible. We asked the students to read some of the literature and research in these areas and then had a series of group discussion with them where we discovered a huge range of things that was really helpful in helping us understand Growth Mindsets from multiple perspectives. "

"Harvard education specialist Tony Wagner has been advocating that we reinvent the education system to promote innovation for years. He's clear that content should no longer be at the center of school. Instead, he says a teacher's main job should be to help students develop key skills necessary for when they leave school. He contends there are seven essential things young people need to be successful lifelong learners:"

"Over the past decade, maker-centered classrooms and making-centered learning have become increasingly popular - young people (and teachers and parents alike) have greater opportunities to build, hack, redesign, and tinker with a variety of materials, in school- or community-based spaces, design thinking and engineering programs, and Maker Faires. Maker-centered learning not only offers opportunities to learn about new tools and technologies, it requires certain thinking skills - such as navigating uncertainty, adaptability, collaborative thinking, risk-taking, and multiple-perspective taking - that are critical to engaging and thriving in a complex world. Drawing on research from Project Zero's Agency by Design project, this course offers classroom teachers, maker educators, administrators, and parents an opportunity to explore firsthand maker-centered learning practices and the opportunities they afford. Discover what kinds of tools might best support this kind of teaching and learning, and examine the benefits (to both young people and facilitators) of engaging in this work. Through hands-on, collaborative activities, consider how maker-centered experiences might fit into your own contexts."

Schools Answer Student Calls for Mobile Computing"