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"From Fitbits to the Apple Watch, wearable technologies have become incredibly popular with consumers. Many large organizations, intrigued by the extraordinary value that wearables can deliver, are looking to bring them into the enterprise as well. Wearables can help both large businesses and public-sector enterprises save money, boost productivity, improve safety and enhance learning, researchers and analysts say."

"If you've looked into 3D printing, you know there are a lot of options - some good and some not so much. Since the technology is just beginning to enter classrooms and is new for most schools, choosing a good partner and printer is important when diving head first into this new world. There are plenty of schools which have experienced problems from purchasing machines that are no longer serviced or weren't made well, and avoiding these missteps can save everybody a lot of time, money and headache."

"The Problem The US has fallen behind the world in terms of science and math. One big reason is that many of our classrooms don't have the money for books and equipment. 1 share this stat with friends The Solution Imagine this: There's been a mysterious blackout at school the night of the homecoming dance, and you'll need to use your science skills to fix it! Play and share this text-message game to solve the mystery of the blackout and save the dance. (PLUS you could win a $5,000 scholarship IRL!)"

"When I talk to other librarians and educators about starting a school Makerspace, one of the most common things I hear is: "I'd love to do (insert cool Maker activity) at my school, but we don't have a budget for that".  What many people don't realize is that the idea that you need a lot of money to start a Makerspace is a myth. All you need is to have vision, ingenuity, and resourcefulness. A lack of funds is no longer an excuse for keeping your students from experiencing the empowerment of bringing the Maker Education Movement into your program."

"One of the most common questions we get is in regards to buying makerspace materials.  There are a ton of products and supplies out there and it can be overwhelming to pick the right ones especially if you are just starting out.  One of the first steps you should do before spending any money is to talk with the people who will be using your makerspace.  Some schools and libraries have done formal or informal surveys to capture this data.  These surveys can help to determine what projects and areas of interest people are most excited about.  But always remember that one of the best parts of maker education is discovery.  It's good to have items that people know they like but always make sure to include projects and products they've never used before.  Makerspaces are a great way to help students discover new interests and potential career paths. The list below contains a lot of great products that are makerspace friendly.  They are ranked in no particular order and are all worth checking out.  Take this post with you and download a printable supply list of makerspace materials and products."

"We're always creating something at our Makerspaces.com office and just recently we ran out of work space.  Instead of just going out and buying a workbench, we decided to build one and share the plans so you can build one too. Making your own workbench offers a few advantages over buying one from the store.  First, you will be able to customize the bench to your specific needs, requirements and space constraints.  You can make it as long, high, wide, flashy or simple as you want.  And the best part is you will save a ton of money, learn something new and have the gratification of doing it yourself. Ok, let's make a makerspace workbench !"

"Thousands of Indigenous Manitoba students will return to better-funded schools next fall with the creation of a new First Nations school board that will serve as an "inspiration" throughout Canada, according to the federal Minister of Indigenous Affairs Carolyn Bennett. The board is designed and operated by Manitoba First Nations. The provincial government has no jurisdiction over it. "This is totally unique and historic, because for the first time we will be able to fund a system that then is self-determining," Bennett told reporters after the signing ceremony Friday morning. Bennett said the system is unique because the federal government will send funding to the school board itself. "In other agreements, we're sending money to a chief and council that goes to a school. This way, we're building a school system run by a board, working in close collaboration with educators," she said. "The educators will determine how they work in terms of curricula and professional development, hiring of faculty, staffing - this will be their system that we will fund." Students will have access to more resources and opportunities as part of a new funding formula, said one of the Indigenous leaders who helped negotiate a new agreement."

"Aah February; a month of love, of reading, of waiting for spring if you in the Northern Hemisphere.  While February may  be the shortest month of the year sometimes in teaching it can feel like the longest of them all.  While I love this month for the work I can do with my students, I find that sometimes the dark nights and cold Wisconsin winters can be positively slump inducing.  Rather than dread the slump, why not do something pro-active? So this year I plan on doing my very own unslumping challenge and you are more than welcome to join me.  Every day for the month of February, I plan on doing something to either reinvigorate myself or make a difference to others.  It will not cost me much money but will hopefully instead lead to a deeper level of gratitude for the incredible job I have, the amazing students I get to teach, and the wonderful people in my life. Here is what I plan on doing"

"Dumpster diving and dollar stores. Purse-shaped post-it's and animal lubricant. When you're building a makerspace on a budget, you learn that resources are everywhere-and they aren't always what you expect.  Dumpster diving and dollar stores. Purse-shaped post-it's and animal lubricant. For three years I and my fellow cofounders Kim Martin and Beth Compton, have created, developed, and run Canada's first mobile makerspace-the MakerBus. As an entirely community-driven (pun intended) makerspace, we have had to master doing a lot with very little. As we have learned, while money is extremely useful, no amount of it can replace the value of an engaged, creative community. Below I share some ideas for creating makerspaces at various price points, offering advice for building a $100 and a (nearly) $0 community makerspace."

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"Too often teachers are passive recipients of professional development rather than being active agents of their own development and change. Several recent reports have indicated that teacher professional development, as it is being implemented in most schools, is ineffective and a waste of time and money. Several studies over the past few years that have found professional development to be largely ineffective or unhelpful for teachers. Only 30 percent of teachers improve substantially with the help of district-led professional development, even though districts spend an average of $18,000 on development for each teacher per year, according to a new report. Most professional development today is ineffective. It neither changes teacher practice nor improves student learning. The hard truth is that the help most schools give their teachers isn't helping all that much. When it comes to teaching, real improvement is a lot harder to achieve-and we know much less about how to make it happen-than most of us would like to admit. (New report reveals that teacher professional development is costly and ineffective)"

"here was a time when knowing how to program was for the geekiest of geeks. That's not exactly the case today. As most entrepreneurs, freelancers and marketers will tell you, learning how to program can help you succeed. Over the past year, I've been learning to code. It's helped me to become a much better entrepreneur -- I can dive in when my team needs to fix a few bugs on the site.  You don't even need to shell out a ton of money or put yourself in debt to learn how to code, either. These 12 places offer coding courses for free:"

"Explore resources and downloads for educators seeking to help students learn financial concepts, practice money management, and build strong financial decision-making and economic-reasoning skills."

"In his new book, Raising Kids Who Read, Daniel Willingham wants to be clear: There's a big difference between teaching kids to read and teaching them to love reading. And Willingham, a parent himself, doesn't champion reading for the obvious reasons - not because research suggests that kids who read for pleasure do better in school and in life. "The standard things you'll hear about why kids should read I actually don't think are very strong arguments," he says. "Because if the goal is to become a good citizen or the goal is to make a lot of money, I can think of more direct ways to reach those goals than to read during your leisure time.""

"The concept was pretty straightforward, but the logistics were a bit complicated. We wanted to create four mobile maker space carts that could rotate among four middle school libraries in the Knox County School district of Knoxville, TN. It all started when our director of instructional technology, Theresa Nixon, encouraged us to apply for a TeacherPreneur Grant to fund a traveling maker space program. Our funding goal was approximately $50,000. Requesting  this much money meant that we needed a an idea that dazzled. As we prepared the grant application, the librarians representing the middle schools (Farragut, Vine, Carter, and Karns) discussed rotating maker space carts that would dock in each library for nine weeks. We hoped to optimize accessibility to high-ticket items such as 3-D printers and keep our libraries dynamic with new projects."

"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."

"After a week of downloading and trying out various travel and navigation apps, I reached an unfortunate conclusion: Most of them are worthless - clunky, buggy, seemingly desultory efforts by developers rushing a poor product to market. There are a few, though, that provide elegant solutions to some of travel's more common complications, doing what a good app should do: make life easier. Here are seven free travel apps that are worth your time, and three that are worth your money."

"Khan Academy, the wildly popular Youtube lecture series, is slated to launch its iPad app any minute now in Apple's store. The enhanced version of Khan Academy will include time-syncing between devices--no Internet connection required, an interactive transcript of the lectures for easy searching, and a handy scrubber for moving between parts of the lectures. Perhaps more importantly, now that more schools have begun adopting Khan's lectures for their own classrooms, the free iPad app could possibly replace or supplement textbooks, saving cash-strapped schools and students a lot of money."

"pple has just unveiled their latest attempt to rethink an entire market. It's not a new tablet, phone, or even a device at all. Today at the Guggenheim, Apple announced how it will essentially get more school districts to buy iPads. But it's not just about the money, there's some amazing software that's rethinking the tried-and-true textbook publishing model."

"One of the things we need to be doing as educators is to critically evaluate the resources and learning experiences that we provide for our students. This is even more important when we are spending vast sums of public money to implement new or innovative hardware devices into our schools. At the moment only short term studies have been released showing the benefits or not of using 1:1 tablet programs. There are few that are easily accessible to teachers or that outline specific strategies for implementing tablet programs. It would good to create a collection of these if people are aware of them. Send them through and I will add them to this article. These could even be cited when making the argument for implementing such programs. "