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"ome of the most important subject areas and activities we want students to learn are the very ones that are left out of many schools: the arts, computer programming, and learning to making things by hand."

"Over the past nine years I have had the pleasure of hiring (and the displeasure of firing) new hires into their teaching careers. In watching teachers come into the profession some just "have it." Some seem to be innately programmed to be teachers. For others, it is a much more difficult road to travel. Additionally, there has been much awareness brought up about "teacher burn-out" and teachers not being able to survive this profession. It has taken nine years of watching, listening, and observing to come to understand that there are two distinct differences between teachers that excel and love the profession, and those that do not excel and are prone to burn-out."

"Parents and teachers who trust little Muffy and Junior with their shiny iPads don't have to worry about how access to shoot-'em-up video games will rot their precious little gifted and talented program minds. Instead, they can download some of the following alternatives to help them build up their brilliant brains that will totally go on to win Nobel Prizes someday."

""There's an App for that"… Well actually, sometimes there isn't. Sometimes the App you want is the one in your head, not in the App Store. This is where German startup "Cleverlize" steps in to help educators create their own custom apps… In minutes… With no programming required at all!"

"Ginger Gregory is the Gifted Resource Teacher at Lakeview Elementary School in Yukon, Oklahoma, and currently has 117 videos on her classroom YouTube channel. Ginger has used the six iPads in her classroom and her free, district-provided YouTube channel (since the Yukon school district participates in the Google Apps for Education program) to help her students develop oral communication skills, oral fluency, as well as digital literacy skills this semester. In the following six minute video, Mrs. Gregory and eight of her students explain what they have learned as a result of their assignments this year using iPad videos and YouTube."

"Samantha John didn't learn programming until she was nearly done with college. Her Hopscotch iPad app teaches the next generation of kids how to write code as soon as they can read."

"Last year I volunteered in my child's Kindergarten class daily for an hour with our family's three iPads. I learned a lot about selecting educational content (primarily early math & literacy apps) and how to set up an environment most conducive for learning. I was most impressed by the potential for mobile devices to improve the experience in class for both teachers and students. So this year I volunteered to bring our iPads into my child's First grade class once a week for 'buddy reading'. As I do more outreach and training for local teachers in my community, I am surprised at the large number of classrooms getting devices without any guidelines about how to integrate them into their existing institutional structures or curriculum. From these experiences, I have come up with the following five tips for starting a new program in any classroom …"

"Many schools will ask students to bring their own smartphones, tablets and laptops from home as a federal government program which gave every student in years 9 to 12 access to a computer expires at the end of this month."

"Three young digitally-savvy women at the Digital Data Strategist Program at Hyper Island Stockholm have written a book about HTML coding…for children. Are toddlers too young to learn how to build a website? These women don't think so! Cody the Coder in My First Website takes a toddler through a magical world where he has to create his home (his website), and as you read through, one can't be help become more familiar with the HTML code snippets necessary to build your first website."

"Education got a lot more mobile in 2012 as in-school iPad initiatives, the iPhone 5 launch and online learning providers in general made classroom experiences more interesting-and don't expect to see teaching head back to desktop PC's in 2013. In fact, as MOOCs and hybrid programs continue to evolve, mobile should have an ever more significant role to play."

"I am extremely excited that my second book is now available through Solution Tree entitled What Principals Need to Know About Teaching and Learning Science. It was a great deal of fun co-authoring this book with Keith Devereaux, one of my Science teachers at New Milford High School. It is our hope that this book becomes the go to resource for principals looking to establish and maintain effective science programs that focus on doing science as opposed to just knowing. Principals will not only find the latest research on effective science instruction, but also tips for integrating technology, purchasing materials, assessment, and establishing safe lab environments."

"In less than a decade, Oregon State University went from not offering formal tech support to its faculty to having the director of its faculty tech training program, Jon Dorbolo, named one of this year's top 50 innovators in education. That's because in 2003, Dorbolo and his colleague Mark Dinsmore had a vision for how to turn their scattershot efforts at individual faculty tech support into something more scalable."

"Taking a screenshot with an iPad comes in handy more than you might think as you integrate Apple's latest technology in the classroom. Whether you're walking students through the installation of an app, the configuration of a program, or simply capturing annotated screenshots for your flipped classroom, it boils down to a few simple steps. There are a variety of apps that can help here, but the simplest mechanism for turning the iPad's screen's display into a still image is to hit two little buttons."

"With the new school year beginning in Australia, many teachers will be introducing blogging into their classrooms. Some teachers will be continuing an established blogging program with a new cohort of students, while others will be introducing blogging for the first time."