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CLRN makes it easy for you to find the standards-aligned software, video and Internet learning resources you need.

Very neat collection of online art creation tools.

"June is a busy month for many educators. Conferences. End of the year professional learning. Curriculum alignment. Standards training. In my case, June is full of mobile devices training. Over the next six weeks or so, I get the chance to spend time with a variety of folks around the country, working with schools that have latched onto the idea of tablets, clouding computing, and educational apps. But in the rush to get the latest shiny tools, I think it's easy sometimes to forget that the end in mind is teaching and learning, not the gadgets. So today a few things to remember when using apps in the classroom:"

"Happy New Year! I'm beginning a bunch of curriculum design work in districts this year, and I thought I'd share a few things that are emerging from the process. As I explained before the holidays, the teachers that I know are eager to get their hands on simple but powerful units for primary writers. They have little time to unpack lengthy documents, and while many appreciate the sort of tight guidance that fully articulated plans provide, others prefer to craft their own while aligning to agreed upon targets. This first unit engages K-2 writers in research and information writing. You'll find the overview, calendar, and very first lesson in the document below. I'll be adding another each day until the entire unit is complete."

"As teachers and educators, we are constantly required to review, evaluate and renew our teaching strategies to align them with  the cultural, technological and pedagogical ethos of the era we are living in. In today's era, the digital component is at the foreground which obviously calls for a new mindset, a novel conceptual framework that views technology not as an end itself but solely a mean to an educational end. It is a truism that digitally has opened a new horizon of unprecedented learning opportunities and experiences  but we can only tap into its full educational potential when we equip ourselves with the proper mindset: a growth and open mindset that as much as it adapts it also disrupts the century-old orthodoxies underlying teaching and learning practice. Teaching is a dynamic concept which is constantly evolving and expanding and that is why teachers and educators are forever learners. Engaging in such a life-long learning journey entails that teachers develop a set of robust thinking habits that allow them to fit in the rapidly evolving educational landscape.These habits are, according to Reid Wilson, what make the profile of a modern educator. Below is an awesome visual created by Wilson featuring some of the characteristics of a modern teacher which I want to bring to your attention. Have a look and share with us what you think of it. Enjoy"

"ReadWorks is a free service that I have been recommending for about a year now. It provides teachers with hundreds of lesson plans and more than two thousand reading non-fiction and fiction passages aligned to Common Core standards. Recently, ReadWorks expanded again. The latest expansion includes poems and question sets. The collection is organized by grade level. In the collection you will find poems by Frost, Dickinson, Stevenson, and other notable poets. "

"Jackie Gerstein's User Generated Education is a favorite of ours, with her ideas on self-directed learning, connectivity, experiential learning, and other strands of progressive teaching and learning very much in aligned with our own thoughts on what a modern learning experience should look like. At the core of Gerstein's thinking is the idea of making-hands on creation of compelling stuff that reflects what's important to students. She has recently released a new book on this idea, The Educator as a Maker Educator. Among the ideas offered up in the book is exactly what you might expect from the title-reenvisioning the role of the teacher, this time as a "maker educator.""

"Workflow is as much about inspiration and elegance as it is function and efficiency. Ideally a workflow for learning would promote curiosity and ambition as much as it supports students in accomplishing goals, turning in work, and other procedural events. Any workflow should also be aligned with the tools of the trade-in this case the hardware and software of an iPad. That's where Create, Publish, Promote comes in-three words that clarify a basic sequence that can realize the potential of mobile technology."

"A quality five-minute movie project will suck weeks away from your class time, if done right. Then again, with the right technology--a coupla iPads, apps, and Web 2.0 accounts for example--a decent 30-second video can be churned out in a class period often with just the technology half your kids carry in their pockets. There are three basic categories of movie project: basic non-edited, edited nonscripted, and scripted edited. that more or less align with different levels of assessment: practice, formative, and summative. The products of these project types are also suited to different audiences: self, teacher/peers, public. Since Christmas came in July, and I now have my very own set of 10 class iPads, I've selected an iPad app to focus on for each movie making level."

Microsoft Word processor offers a range of tools and features to customize your documents. You can modify fonts on all possible verticals including size, look, style, color, alignment, etc.

"This is the second article I posted here on SAMR iPad apps in less than two weeks. Why? I love SAMR and I find it a very good pedagogical framework that teachers can draw on to not only integrate technology into their instruction but also assess the efficiency of this technology. And since iPad is a leitmotif in  today's learning, its alignment with SAMR model will definitely assist teachers in making the most of the educational potential of this versatile device. To this end , I am sharing with you this wonderful illustrative chart I stumbled upon on Apps in Education."

"Motivating and engaging students is the goal of most teachers-priming them to receive instruction, or otherwise align themselves to a pre-set process you've sketched out that you hope will yield a learning goal you selected beforehand. But I've also been thinking recently of how learning actually happens-the causes of learning. Learning events, maybe. Eh. So I came up with 60 (of millions) of these "learning events" (for lack of a better term)-circumstances in which students seem to learn effortlessly. They can learn when they are coerced-to start, to increase the pace, to finish, to revisit. But what kind of conditions or contexts promote effortless learning? Learning when they don't even know it's happening? When they're (essentially) tricked into deep understanding?"

"Today's teachers are key to the next generation's success. Barefoot supports primary educators with the confidence, knowledge, skills and resources to teach computer science. Resources aligned to the curricular for all UK nations. This includes FREE high-quality lesson plans and local CPD Workshops, all designed to help teachers gain confidence in bringing computer science to life in the classroom. CAS and BT are working together to support teachers in delivering the computing curriculum. BT - Barefoot Computing is part of BT's commitment to help build a culture of tech literacy and use the power of communications to make a better world. Find out more at www.techliteracy.co.uk CAS - For teachers who have found Barefoot Computing the first entry point on their CPD journey, Computing At School can be found by clicking here http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/"

"The Learning Studio Project Guides are designed to support students in developing important skills in the Learning Studio. The Project Guides are categorized in alignment with the Webb's Depth of Knowledgeframework to indicate the complexity of the project."

We rely on an assessment measure without taking a close look at what it is measuring and we obfuscate the information we need to evaluate the utility of these measures by reducing the results to numerical values.

"When I was a kid, my dad taught me how to make paper airplanes. I remember two designs in particular-a sleek 'jet' plane and a more-square stunt plane. I liked the stunt plane but was fascinated with the power and design of the jet version. It was so simple and pure. I can still remember the feel of the creases beneath my forefinger on my right hand, eyes studying my work closely, making sure the edges lined up just so. If it was off even a little, I had to start again. There's a lot more design that goes into duplicating n existing paper airplane model than you'd think. First and foremost, the aforementioned precision of the folds. If the paper isn't aligned perfectly, it won't fly perfectly-and that sort of linear cause/effect is strangely fulfilling."

"Math Playground is a great website containing hundreds of mathematics games appropriate for K-8 students. I first reviewed the site back in 2008. Whenever I have returned to it since then, more games and other helpful features have been added to it. Math Playground offers a huge variety of math games for students. You can locate games according to suggested grade level, by topic, or by question type. Students who need a refresher on a skill, can probably find one in Math Playground's video library. Math Playground's video library offers more than 100 instructional videos organized according to topic. To the right side of each video students will see some suggested games aligned to the topic covered in the instructional video."

The Bebras cards are designed to enable pupils to develop their computational thinking skills, whilst at the same time providing an introduction to more advanced computing concepts. Computational Thinking Each card is aligned to one of the following computational thinking concepts, which are indicated in the top right-hand corner of each card.  Patterns  Algorithms  Logic  Abstraction Task Difficulty The difficulty of the task on each card is indicated by the icon in the bottom right-hand corner.  = Easy  = Medium  = Hard Answers and Other Materials Answers to tasks, ideas for teaching and national curriculum links can be found at: www.bebras.uk Tip: pupils will need an exercise book or a piece of paper in order to record their answers to each activity