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"Hackathons, tech shops, makerspaces: These terms are increasingly prevalent in today's vernacular, and for good reason. They represent a burgeoning global movement with people of all ages developing, designing, and often marketing their creations. In the age of the maker, anyone can be an inventor. Their potential impact on the world is enormous. Innovations and discoveries are no longer produced exclusively by scientists in white lab coats or research and development departments of major corporations. Thanks to affordable technologies and online environments, individual makers can launch small companies to manufacture and market their goods. This shift in industry is influencing the way we learn, shop, sell, and interact. Here are four ways this movement is changing our world. "

"A key goal of maker-centered education is to help young people and adults feel empowered to build and shape their worlds. Acquiring this sense of maker empowerment is strongly supported by learning to notice and engage with the designed dimension of one's physical and conceptual environment-in other words, by having a sensitivity to design. This sensitivity develops when young people and adults have opportunities to: look closely and reflect on the design of objects and systems, explore the complexity of design, and understand themselves as designers of their worlds."

Google announced an admirable initiative called Project 10100 (pronounced "Project 10 to the 100th") yesterday. Everyone around the world is invited to submit ideas for changing the world by helping as many people as possible. Google has committed 10 million dollars to help make 5 ideas come to fruition (good word!).

Phones and computers contain dangerous metals like lead, cadmium and mercury, which can contaminate the air and water when those products are dumped. It's called electronic waste, or e-waste, and the world produces a lot of it: 20 to 50 million tons a year, according to the UN - enough to load a train that would stretch around the world. The U.S. is by far the world's top producer of e-waste, but much of it ends up elsewhere - specifically, in developing nations like China, India and Nigeria, to which rich countries have been shipping garbage for years.

Food Force 2 has been designed to educate and motivate people to solve world hunger. Since the laptop reaches out to the developing and third-world countries, it educates children and teachers in a village on how to achieve self sustenance in a fun and non-intrusive way. It also provides awareness about the work WFP has been doing for the past many decades to abate the problem of world hunger.

Students create murals to establish the Guinness Book of World Records for the Longest Children's Mural in the World. MUSAIC: Originally Composed Music by Youth from around the world.

"John F. Kennedy is often reported to have said "The only reason to give a speech is to change the world." Over the years this has been paraphrased by many speaking and training professionals. Not surprisingly, people occasionally mock this kind of statement as being just so much hubris or pomposity. "Surely," they proclaim, "not every presentation or speech is important enough to even make the slightest difference." However, when we say "change the world," we do not mean necessarily to change the world in a monumental, earth-altering, life-changing way. The operative word in that phrase is change. Affecting a change is a necessary condition of an effective speech. "A presentation that doesn't seek to make change is a waste of time and energy," says business guru Seth Godin. "

"To me, blogging is about flattening classroom walls and making connections with the world outside of the classroom. After attending a professional development session with Kathleen Morris (who taught me almost everything I know about blogging) and Kelly Jordan, I had made my decision that I would create a class blog and it would be open for the world to see. Blogging is about flattening classroom walls and making connections with the world. "

"One of the challenges we face as educators is providing students with opportunities to engage in meaningful learning experiences that show them how they can connect the knowledge and skills learned in school to the real world. This is particularly true in the area of traditional math instruction if most of the time spent is focused on solving a set of problems in a textbook."

"In a digital world of links, likes, tweets and pins, there are very few mechanisms for connecting our ever expanding digital world with the physical one around us. QR codes are one of the simplest and most well established ways to make this connection, and for students it can create a number of unique and fun learning opportunities, meshing the digital and physical classroom. In the below presentation, cutting edge educator Denise Webster shares the tools she uses, as well as some real world examples for making the most of QR codes in the classroom."

"The embracement of the maker movement is being seen in K-12 schools and districts across the world. As a result, makerspaces are being instituted to allow students to tinker, invent, create, and make to learn.  A makerspace can best be defined as a physical place where students can create real-world products/projects using real-world tools in a shared work space. With natural connections and applications to STEAM areas as well as a focus on self-directed, inquiry-based, and hands on learning, it is difficult not to appreciate and admire the positive impact that makerspaces can have on all students.  In times when many schools and districts have cut programs such as wood/metal shop and agriculture, makerspaces provide a 21st Century alternative to meet the learning needs of our most at-risk students.  "

"I've been writing about apps for a long time, but they are not of equal importance. Microsoft's free Seeing AI app may be a game changer for people with visual impairments.  The research project is designed to turn "turn the visual world into an audio experience," narrating the world for those who cannot see it, in real time using artificial intelligence."

"Teaching in a digital world, while essential, can be a difficult task. The digital world is constantly evolving, and it can be hard to keep up with new trends. And while students often enter the classroom with a high degree of digital awareness, it is often confined to the world of social media. How then, do educators learn about digital literacy, so they can model and teach it to their students?  Thankfully, there are tons of apps, tools, and resources that can help. We decided to profile the best ones."

"Trust is like the air we breathe; it is essential to our wellbeing and survival, but we barely notice or think about it until it's in short supply. In many different parts of the world, trust in public and public-serving institutions - especially the news media - has declined alarmingly over at least the last decade. Its absence is creating enormous disruption around the world, threatening politics, public health, social relations and many of the other foundations of well-functioning societies. One of the contributors to this state of affairs is the internet. It promised access to a vast ocean of data, news and information, to liberate us from the media's traditional gatekeepers and to make us smarter, more engaged citizens. The internet revolution delivered on some of that promise. But it also unleashed a flood of disinformation and, well, junk. And with weakened gatekeepers, it eventually made it harder than ever to know what and whom to trust."

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." ― Calvin Coolidge Growing up, I had a copy of this quote on my wall. It is one of those things that stuck with me over the years. For a long time I might not have truly appreciated its wisdom. Now as a teacher in times of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, its significance seems to have grown. When we can instantaneous consumers of the all of the worlds information, as we access anything and everything at the speed of light, how do we learn the value of persistence?

"Makerspaces and maker projects can be amazing catalysts for connecting your students with others. The Imagination Foundation's Global Cardboard Challenge is one of my favorite maker activities to help my students feel connected to the world and see the power of making. Combine that with a Skype call with another school and you create amazing opportunities for global connections."

"Take part in the World's Largest Lesson during the week of 18th September 2016  In September 2015 World Leaders committed to the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. 17 goals to achieve 3 extraordinary things in the next 15 years. End extreme poverty. Fight inequality and injustice. Fix climate change. To realise these Goals everyone, however young they are, needs to take part. So join our movement, teach young people about the Goals and encourage them to become the generation that changed the world."

"Many educators and school leaders alike often wonder how students can be appropriately assessed in maker environments. One of the questions that I am asked most frequently is: How do we assess in a makerspace? In my book, Worlds of Making:  Best Practices for Establishing a Makerspace for Your School, I touch upon assessment and say that a makerspace can have activities associated with the Standards and even can be assessed; however, making doesn't always have to be-indeed, I would argue, MUST not always be-tied to traditional assessment.  All too common is the mindset that traditional methods of assessment are the only valid means to measure learning.  "

"Google's Data Arts Team came up with a series called "Virtual Art Sessions" that documents the Tilt Brush experience in a way so that people all over the world can see the actual virtual reality experience, even when watching through flat screens."