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"Whether it's Minecraft or duct tape wallets, the childhood passions that seem like fads, if not totally unproductive, can alternatively be seen as mediums for experiencing the virtuous cycle of curiosity: discovering, trying, failing and growing. At DIY, we've created a way for kids to explore hundreds of skills and to understand the ways in which they can be creative through them. Often, the skills are unconventional, and almost always the results are surprising. I don't think it's important that kids use the skills they learn on DIY for the rest of their lives. What's important is that kids develop the muscle to be fearless learners so that they are never stuck with the skills they have. Only this will prepare them for a world where change is accelerating and depending on a single skill to provide a lifetime career is becoming impossible."

"Five years ago when I started DIY Girls, I envisioned a community for girls driven by an interest in making. I was inspired by the maker movement. The movement was making equipment and resources that were formerly only available in engineering labs more accessible and I wanted to teach girls to use and create with them. I was excited. Then reality hit. I started in the Los Angeles community I grew up in and I quickly ran into what I thought were barriers of working in an under-resourced public school. The classroom space where I was going to run the program for girls didn't have wi-fi, there were no computers and I didn't have enough money to buy the equipment I thought would make this a real maker program. People also thought I would prepare the girls to compete in expensive engineering and robotics competitions. That couldn't happen."

"In our innovative classrooms across America, students are using technology in ways that were unheard of just ten short years ago. In a small elementary school in Northwest Baltimore, students use their Makerspace to create 3D printed materials, learn to code and engage in other making activities. In another school in Philadelphia, a student fulfills his senior capstone project requirement by creating a "Smart Beehive" that uses sensors and a camera to track the health of a bee colony. While there are some schools of education that prepare pre-service teachers to excel in these types of technology-rich environments on their first day of in-service teaching, there is still room for growth in our teacher preparation programs as a whole, particularly as more schools shift towards digital learning. "Education-Creative Commons" by NEC Corporation of America licensed under CC BY 2.0" This is why the 2016 National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) asks us to refine educational technology's place in teacher preparation programs. It makes the bold statement that "no new teacher exiting a preparation program should require remediation by his or her hiring district."¹"

Use these photos as stimulus for writing. This Flickr group offers eccentric and experimental images produced by the Flickr community's aspiring creative minds. Surrealism, in all mediums of art, is a constant source of inspiration due to its limitlessly artistic nature and photography is no exception. The style allows photographers to visualize their wildest dreams and conceptualize their strangest nightmares. Photographs in this group spark new insight on creativity and perspective, welcoming the unusual crossroads where fact and fiction converge.

"Teaching with video games is not what you think. Unless you recognize video games as an increasingly engaging, compelling, and interactive narrative form that is seeking to leapfrog film as the medium of choice not just for teenage boys who like Call of Duty, but, well, you too. And that teaching with them means taking as close a look at the creation and design of the stories and play mechanics and the interaction between story and player as you do the narrative itself. Which can act as a kind of schema to inform how you teach novels, poetry, government or science-as-inquiry."

"App Smashing is the process of combining content in one or more apps together for a creative and effective outcome. App smashing can make the iPad a powerful aid in sports coaching and other mediums. As any cricket geek knows, the season is about to start. I've been playing, and more specifically, bowling, for about 25 years (the less said about my batting the better) and I have a fairly well grooved bowling action. As any sportsperson will know, there is always room for improvement and this pre-season, I turned to my iPad to help me tweek my bowling technique."

"What medium is delivering the best learning experience to your children? Just because a child is engaged on an iPad, are they learning more than they would with a picture book? In this intriguing TEDx talk, author of Screen Time: How Electronic Media Affects Your Young Child and Director of the New America Foundation's Early Education Initiative, Lisa Guernsey, discusses the research she has been involved with, as well as some the practical outcomes of her work exploring learning and screen media."

"Have you made digital vessels on your iPad? Yes, you can create clay vases on iPad! 'Let's Create Pottery HD' is a wonderful tool to support teaching and learning in your classroom. Firstly, let me assure you that using the iPad in a creative workflow in my classroom is not about 'getting rid of clay'. Art teachers know how valuable those 'hands-on making' experiences can be for our students as they grapple with this challenging medium and the multi-step process of building a large-scale object from the ground up. The Pottery app has immense value in the classroom for other reasons."

"I'm not usually the type of person who tells other teachers what they MUST and MUST NOT do. This post is pushier than usual, because I'm more passionate about this topic than usual. Being a connected educator has transformed my teaching and added so much joy to my life that I want every discouraged and overwhelmed teacher to know: You can become energized once again. You can love your job! Being a connected educator means creating a personal learning network or community (often called a PLN or PLC.) The people in your personal learning community are those you connect with to share ideas and encourage each other. Some teachers have a lot of people like that in their own schools, but many teachers don't, and they reach out to like-minded individuals online. Through Twitter or Facebook or blogs or whatever medium they choose, the build a community of people they can share success and failures with and enjoy growing together."

"While In college I learned about engineering in a makerspace. I learned how to communicate in a makerspace. I learned how to organize people in a makerspace. But it took a year of operating a mobile makerspace to realize the true value of these environments."

"Not too long ago, tablets and smartphones were largely viewed as educational scourges - mere distractions responsible for dulling minds and derailing productivity. Now, instead of being shunned completely, these devices are embraced as invaluable tools for meeting the complex, often hard to define needs of digital natives. Undoubtedly, wearable technology is destined to follow suit. The 2015 Horizon Report agrees, predicting the widespread use of wearables throughout the entire spectrum of modern education. Still, considering our senses are already overloaded with 1s and 0s, reluctance to embrace yet another digital medium is understandable. However, as this piece will explain, the potential benefits are simply too tremendous to ignore."