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"With summer comes less of the demands on our time in education. It's an opportunity to refresh, renew, and recharge. Never one to just sit by idle, I always look forward to this time of year. What other profession do we get to start over every year? There are so many simple things that educators can do, teachers & administrators alike, to stay ahead of the curve, and get invigorated for the next year."

"Twitter is a brilliant tool to distribute information, follow ideas, and stay up to date with what's trending in whatever niche you're interested in following. In education, that could be curriculum, 21st century learning, education technology, assessment, or future learning trends like mobile learning, blended learning, and dozens of others. Twitter chats and #hashtags are exceptional ways to enable the above, allowing real-time and asynchronous discussions and other connections that can help you improve your craft as an educator."

LUNDAR -- Can you imagine a school of 1,195 students the size of Prince Edward Island? A school in which the teachers all know your name, and know your needs and know your strengths and meet regularly to stay on top of your education?"

"iPads are powerful tools for teachers in the classroom. In addition to being robust, mobile creation devices for students, they help you to stay organized, be on top of your classes, create content and lessons, focus on continued learning, and build your PLN. Here are five ways to turn your iPad into a robust, education machine! "

"Classroom management is a delicate balancing act often learned through experience and trial-and-error experimentation. Whether you're a new or experienced teacher, having strategies for effective classroom management is essential for creating positive, successful learning spaces (and staying sane!). In this guide you'll find 25 tips for managing your classroom. You can view the presentation here:"

" I've spent a lot of time lately reflecting on the way I teach literacy in my classroom and about the ways that the digital text I often use to teach now is inherently different from the text I used to teach reading ten years ago. In an earlier post, I talked about some of the ways that I think using digital text in shared reading, such as when reading projected blog comments or tweets, is actually superior to the traditional text we have long used. Even if you are not convinced that digital text can work better than traditional text, it is difficult to argue that digital text is not here to stay or that it is not becoming increasingly important. It is and will be a significant part of our students' lives both now and in the future. If this will be true, it only makes sense to begin to teach children strategies for reading this new form of text."

"Perhaps it's my bias as a classroom teacher that has me pushing back a bit, for I firmly believe that while extra-curricular activities can be one way of educating our children in more complete ways, they had better not be the main way in which we do so. This is important for two reasons. The first is that many children are unable to participate in outside activities. They may have to work or support their families. They may not have the resources or parental support needed to stay after school. If extra-curriculars are our main vehicle, the students who would most benefit from a whole child approach will be least likely to get it. Second, I worry about a subtle message that may be sent when the most engaging, supportive, and interesting work happens outside of the regular curriculum. Some students might come to believe that academic work is something to slog through-to endure. The fun learning happens in the band room, on the baseball field, on the ropes course, or in the afterschool art class."

"Finland's plans to replace the teaching of classic school subjects such as history or English with broader, cross-cutting "topics" as part of a major education reform have been getting global attention, thanks to an article in The Independent, one of the UK's trusted newspapers. Stay calm: despite the reforms, Finnish schools will continue to teach mathematics, history, arts, music and other subjects in the future. But with the new basic school reform all children will also learn via periods looking at broader topics, such as the European Union, community and climate change, or 100 years of Finland's independence, which would bring in multi-disciplinary modules on languages, geography, sciences and economics. It is important to underline two fundamental peculiarities of the Finnish education system in order to see the real picture. First, education governance is highly decentralised, giving Finland's 320 municipalities significant amount of freedom to arrange schooling according to the local circumstances. Central government issues legislation, tops up local funding of schools, and provides a guiding framework for what schools should teach and how. Second, Finland's National Curriculum Framework is a loose common standard that steers curriculum planning at the level of the municipalities and their schools. It leaves educators freedom to find the best ways to offer good teaching and learning to all children. Therefore, practices vary from school to school and are often customised to local needs and situations."

"I recently had the opportunity to take part in a two-day professional development session with the Children's Museum Makeshop in collaboration with Kickstarter.  Here there were a variety of different of teachers and administrators who had varying levels of experience with making in education.  The commonality: all teachers and administrators wanted to incorporate making into their instruction in a more meaningful way. Led by Teresa DeFlitch, we were engaged in a take-apart activity.  In this activity, we were to take apart an everyday item.  Our team selected a children's toy.  During this process, I was reminded of what drew me to making in the first place: the awakening of a curiosity for how things work."

"I get caught up in things. Informercials. New gadgets. New shades of Sharpie. Every kid I've ever taught has said, "You say EVERYTHING is your "favorite thing." It's true. Life? It's my favorite. I grew up, but my internal excitement level has stayed at a five year old's level. So, I'll just preface this post with that. I will also say that I've held off on writing this. Long enough to figure out if this whole "maker movement" was another "thing I love," or more. It's more. So much more."

""Sorry, that's a great idea, but we can't build it here." That's my nightmare. A student in the STEAM Room, our student Makerspace, approaching me with a brilliant project concept requiring some reasonable tool we didn't even consider. Of course, there are worse nightmares involving our reciprocating saw or our drill press, but those scenarios are easier to plan around. How do you come up with an all-encompassing list of tools and materials that will facilitate every student's wildest dreams, while staying within budget and within space constraints? How can you avoid stifling creativity when you haven't even polled your students for their interest areas? How do you know when your Makerspace is complete?"

"Why With Nye is a series of nine videos featuring Bill Nye. This series is based around NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter. In the series Bill Nye explains things like whether or not Jupiter has a core, if water can be found on Jupiter, and how Juno stays on course"

"I was 11 the year my summer camp director transformed the regular schedule, procedures, and lingo that we were used to-into the most memorable, enriching experience I had ever encountered at that point in my life. I had no idea that he had 'gamified' the week; I just knew that it was the best summer ever. Instead of grouping us by numbers, we were named after the Greek alphabet. We competed daily against the other groups in volleyball, softball, kickball, and on the final night -a chariot and Olympic flame opened an epic Olympic Game contest at midnight. The director, or 'game master' as we were inclined to call him, even made everyone reset the clocks and watches-so we never knew what the real time was, the entire schedule was set on some sort of crazy alternate schedule. Now I realize that it probably allowed him to sleep in and us to stay up later, but we were none the wiser. Daily we played games, wrote skits, went swimming, and competed for cleanest cabins. We did all the regular stuff, but it was more fun because there were rules and boundaries and points and collaboration and competition and a clear, mutual understanding of goals and performance and criteria for success. As a student, I got to learn more about the power of 'gamifying' something, and what effect it had on learners."

"Your classroom probably has a bulletin board. It's the perfect spot to organize information and show off great work. Increasingly, learning is happening online, and so it's no surprise that the bulletin board has moved online. Enter Pinterest. Teachers of young students are using the online application to find lesson ideas and stay organized, while middle and high school teachers are getting their students to use the app themselves for planning projects or collecting materials for class discussions. And librarians are running reading programs and creating book lists with that handy little Pinterest button. If you're wondering whether you should join Pinterest, read on. We'll show you how to get your account set up, how other educators are using Pinterest, and where to find inspiration on the app."

"The UK is on a mission to create a nation of coders. A new GCSE for programming is set to launch and everyone from business leaders to celebrities are getting behind the campaign to boost the country's tech talent. The current trend follows the influential Next Gen report, which warned that the UK was losing out to overseas developers through the lack of technology specialists at home. The move from infrastructure to the cloud and the boom in smartphones and tablets have further increased demand. To meet the challenge, the government is spearheading a push to get more kids coding and to increase vocational skills. Education secretary, Nicky Morgan, recently told teenagers to stay away from the arts and to opt for science and maths if they want access to the widest range of jobs. Every child should learn to program, but not necessarily how to code Read more As an employer of more than 85 staff at a fast-growing UK tech company, I consider Morgan's approach as potentially short-sighted. For Potato, while coding expertise has been essential, employing staff from a variety of backgrounds has also been key to our success."

"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."

"The flipped classroom model is here to stay. This model, although not a golden bullet, puts the student firmly into the educational process. Think back over the last few years that you have been teaching or learning about teaching. What did you do when you came across a new idea? Did you investigate on your own? Did you seek others who had experiences they could share? This is what the flipped classroom is all about: Putting students in charge of their learning process and allowing them to wrestle with ideas and topics before coming back to class with their own specific questions and seek guidance from the teacher. Often (but not always) there is some sort of online activity outside of the school day that students are responsible for. This could be a video lesson, a video about a lab set up, a discussion board inside of a learning management system (LMS), or any other vehicle that communicates the topic of the lesson outside of the normal class time instruction. "

"Google Chrome, the free web browser, offers applications (but if you don't want the kids to laugh at you, be sure to call them apps), that function like software programs in the computer. With these apps, you and your students can get work done more quickly and easily. Although many apps are mostly for fun, others can be extremely effective in helping students stay organized and productive."