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"To be clear-learning can happen in the absence of technology. Integrated poorly, technology can subdue, distract, stifle, and obscure the kind of personal interactions between learner, content, peer, and performance that lead to learning results. But increasingly we live in a world where technology is deeply embedded into everything we do. Thinking about it simply in terms of "digital literacy" puts you about 5 years behind the curve. It's really much more than that-less about being connected, and more about being mobile. There will be growing pains, and I'm sure educators that have brought in BYOD programs into their school can come up with 50 reasons it won't work. But most of those 50 are a product of the continued poor fit that exists between schools and communities-the system and the humans it serves."

"If you perform a basic Google search using terms such as 'iPad' and 'education' you will find that most of the results come from blogs and news sites. The success of iPads in schools is still highly anecdotal and often unconfirmed, but that is changing as more researchers and educators publish their findings in scholarly journals, which undergo peer review and a raised level of scrutiny. I spent the last few days tracking articles published through Elsevier's various journals as listed on ScienceDirect.com, and it is clear that the iPad is on track to be the focus of more articles in 2014 than any year previously."

"Proponents of the sociolinguistic perspective to the study of literacy ( e.g.Paul Gee, Collin Lanksheare, Michelle Knobel, Brian Street, to mention but a few ) view the developments of literacy and with it education as a direct result to the sophistication of the social and cultural aspect of human life. Some of them like Collin and Michelle associate the evolution of education to that of the web and hence the nomenclature education 1.0 (related web 1.0), education 2.0 ( related to web 2.0), and education (3.0 related to web 3.0). This association, however is not haphazard for there are many commonalities between each pair."

"The Maker Movement is one of creativity and invention. Of Do-It-Yourself ingenuity. Of making things with your own hands. Building something from scratch can shift a lesson from a lecture into an experience. Students can play, diverge, tinker, make mistakes, help each other, and express themselves with the appropriate guidance of a teacher/facilitator. The end result can be anywhere from an honest try to a creative wonder. Whatever the case, consider adding the following tools to your experiential learning toolkit. Curated by elementary school technology coach Elizabeth Espinoza, this comprehensive collection contains web, desktop, and mobile apps that can help your students become makers and inventors."

"n Mrs. Chellani's continual efforts to create an engaging learning experience for her students, she has found utilizing QR codes to facilitate collaboration to be highly beneficial. In order to review material discussed in an assigned video and in class in her Pre-Calculus and Calculus courses, she created QR codes with relevant questions on the material and its' applications. Students were placed in groups of four to five; and, using a QR reader app on their phone, they were able to view the question. Once the students worked on the problem together, they would confirm the result with Mrs. Chellani. When the solution was correct, they would be given the next QR code (i.e. question). The level of engagement increased dramatically with the use of QR codes and simply allowing students to utilize their cell phones in the learning process! "

"It's easy to forget that we have access to a virtually limitless resource of information, i.e. the Internet. For a lot of us, this is even true at our fingertips, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones and an ever-increasing push for online greatness by tech engineers all over the world. As a result, there are countless websites out there that are geared to make you smarter and more brilliant for either a low or no cost. Here are just 25 killer websites that may just make you more clever than ever before."

"These days, so much of the research students do is of the online variety. There's less time spent in the library, requesting materials, and reading through print journals. Online research enables students (and teachers) to get the information they need quickly and efficiently. But just because there is a lot of information out there, a simple Google search isn't necessarily going to yield you the best results. The handy infographic below takes a look at how to get the most out of Google when you're doing online research. So whether you're helping your students learn how to find the information they need, or if you're doing your own research for professional development or personal interests, you can be an effective, efficient researcher. Keep reading to learn more!"

"It's getting harder and harder to update this article-and that's a good thing for everyone but me, because it means that today's Windows Web browser choices are fast, secure, compliant with new Web standards. The products most people are likely to have heard of-Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox also sport trim, clear interfaces. But each browser has its own appeal and unique features. Microsoft Internet Explorer excels at graphics hardware acceleration, as you'll see in the benchmark results in the reviews linked below. It's also the only 64-bit program of the lot, and the only one that includes powerful Tracking Protection against site code that tracks your browsing activity. "

"The Lawrence School District of Kansas, sitting right in the University of Kansas' backyard, has embraced blended learning, but not just for "college and career readiness" Last year, Barbie Gossett volunteered to turn her Kindergarten classroom into a blended learning environment. Along with 7 other teachers from elementary to high school, these pioneers introduced blended learning to their students as well as to the entire district. In a district that serves about 11,000 K-12 students, 8 teachers is just a tiny sampling. But the results of these field tests have had a powerful impact on the direction and the decision the district as a whole is making for the future of their schools."

"Getting students engaged is not an easy task particularly in an age that is full of all kinds of distractions. Some argue that some of the habits that students have developed as a result of their heavy use of emerging technologies and social media have negatively impacted their capacities to concentrate and focus for longer stretches of time. Multitasking in particular is blamed for this and I personally side with the camp that views multitasking as a distractor to productivity and not a positive attribute."

"Google has recently released several updates to some of its major services including its search functionality. Being the top search engine on the web, Google is trying hard to sophisticate the way it filters and respond to users search queries through including some important features like customization, personalization, and localization. Google has also been investing in the power of social media particularly its tool Google Plus to recommend search results to searchers. Whether this is the beginning of a social revolution in web searching is too early to answer."

"Project-based learning is not 'doing projects'. PBL is student-driven and specifically open to interpretation to ensure students learn through carrying out a project and not doing a project pre-designed by the teacher. They are driven to answer a 'big' question and carry out their inquiry and design in teams. They are also under pressure to present their results to a third party of some kind. The students decide on how to achieve the goals and are not carrying out teacher-designed tasks."

"It is that time of year again, when teacher's are desperately trying to prepare for SATs tests and looking for ways in which to get those all important results. The Year 6 teachers asked are there any really good apps to help with revising different topics. I have previously blogged about ways in which I use the iPads to make the SPAG more bearable - read here. I have recently discovered two new apps from Andrew Brodie, focusing on Mental Maths and they both are BRILLIANT!"

Creating live padlet pages in iBook author ADEHow to guides April 3, 2014 - 2 comments 0 (0 votes) apple_official_ibooks_author I have been playing around with iBook author for a while and love its potential for engaging students in the classroom. I am currently creating a book to support our upcoming PE conference and wanted to use the book to support everything from signimg up to sessions to giving feedback. Padlet sprung to mind as a great way to share the feedback live and to use as a promise wall for delegates to show what they were going to do as a result of the conference. To keep things neat and tidy i wanted this process to be linked up into the book. Here is the process i used.

"One of the stumbling blocks facing students learning math is the complex math terminology . Not understanding a set of math terms for a homework will eventually result in student not being able to do the homework. That's why having a handy math dictionary around can make all the difference in math learning. I have compiled for you some useful math glossaries that you can share with your students to help them understand the math lingo."

"Children's unorthodox spelling and grammar while texting does not stop them learning the rules of formal English, suggests research. Just over 160 children, aged between eight and 16, from the West Midlands, took part in the snapshot study. The researchers compared spelling and grammar in formal tests and in text messages, at the start of the project and again after a year. The results showed the most creative texters were among the best spellers. The children were asked to copy out all their text messages over a two-day period."

"It's a query that can give an ill-prepared job seeker pause: So, do you have any questions for me? Interviewers will judge you by your questions. Almost all employers wrap up job interviews by turning the tables and offering candidates an opportunity to showcase how well they understand the role, how interested they are in the opportunity and what plays to their passions points. When the time comes to flip roles and grill your interviewer about the potential job, it can be tempting to ask pressing questions about salaries, hours and workload. But asking questions about vacation time, salary reviews and benefits might be red flags - and worst-case scenario, they might cost you the job. When asking your interviewer questions regarding compensation or scheduling, there's an imminent risk of being perceived as self-serving. Questions that are more focused on achieving results, helping the company grow and showing how well you've researched the role are the most wow-inducing. The goal is to end with a bang and leave a solid impression. We asked managers what they actually want to hear candidates ask during an interview. Below are a few of their responses."

"Using your child's interests, strengths, and talents you can connect them to reading they enjoy as they simultaneously builds their reading skills. Their increased reading skill will result in more satisfying reading experiences. In short, as literacy levels increase, so does the pleasure of reading. But this can go the other way as well; celebrating reading and making progress visible can also improve ability, perseverance, and curiosity. If we can think of from multiple perspectives-using joy to promote literacy, or using literacy to create joy-we can see that it can go both ways. This can be thought of as the Reading-Pleasure Cycle. Using the reading/pleasure cycle intentionally, a lifelong love of literacy can be developed."

"For many years New Milford High School was just like virtually every other public school in this country defined solely by traditional indicators of success such as standardized test scores, graduation rates, and acceptances to four year colleges. These indicators have become so embedded in the minds of those judging our schools and work that we, like everyone else, worked hard to focus only on initiatives that would hopefully produce favorable outcomes in those areas. If we were doing well we continued down the same path allowing the status quo to reign supreme. The mentality of if it ins't broke than why fix it resonated so profoundly with us that we would not have even considered changing our ways. If results were not what our stakeholders wanted this would then trigger meetings leading to the development of action plans to get us back on course. "

"In children's books, it can be easier to find talking pandas than characters of color. Only six percent of children's books published in 2012 featured diverse characters. Last Saturday, the first ever BookCon in New York city came under severe scrutiny for featuring all-white speakers (and one Grumpy Cat). NPR's Bilal Qureshi reported on the controversy and the resulting hashtag campaign, #WeNeedDiverseBooks. We asked around the NPR headquarters, checked out our library and compiled a list of books with authors hailing from around the world, including Korea, India and the South Dakota Sioux reservation. These books tackle themes like international adoption, bi-racial families and cultural history, to name a few. Not all of the authors are minorities, but every book features a protagonist of color that children can point to and say, "That's me!""