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"One of the most exciting parts of my day as a resource teacher and co-teacher is to spend time with students who are in the midst of thinking through a problem and figuring something out.   One of the most effective thinking and learning environments is MIT's Scratch environment. Late last fall, I was working with students in a grade 8 class. Some of them were taking on the challenge of building a working analogue clock in Scratch. Others were figuring out multiple methods by which circles and disks could be drawn in Scratch.  "

"The iPad is the professional artists dream. No more carrying around massive portfolios of work - you can just carry around all of your work, analogue (photos of your work) or digital (created on your iPad) all on your iPad. It fits in with Art education in that way too. Students can photograph, blog, eportfolio, document, review, collaborate and share their artwork using iPad and that's before you even start thinking about the plethora of Art apps for drawing, designing and creating. There are lots of apps that support the teaching of Art and many many apps that support learning too."

"Minecraft is a simple, clumsy-looking little game full of blocky graphics and unclear terms of play. It is essentially a giant sandbox of digital legos that players can do with what they wish-tear stuff down, dig holes, or build dizzying towers of complex design and architecture. And it's a perfect analogue for what's possible in learning. First off, let's be clear-it's a huge, huge hit. Minecraft has sold over 20,000,000 copies to date. It is available for iPad, Android, PC, and Xbox (though sadly, not the PS3), and is quickly becoming a cultural phenomenon. What makes it popular with children is tempting to oversimplify, but five characteristics really stand out."

"Regardless of whether you think every infant needs an iPad, I think we can all agree that technology has changed education for the better. Today's learners now enjoy easier, more efficient access to information; opportunities for extended and mobile learning; the ability to give and receive immediate feedback; and greater motivation to learn and engage. We now have programs and platforms that can transform learners into globally active citizens, opening up countless avenues for communication and impact. Thousands of educational apps have been designed to enhance interest and participation. Course management systems and learning analytics have streamlined the education process and allowed for quality online delivery. But if we had to pick the top ten, most influential ways technology has transformed education, what would the list look like? The following things have been identified by educational researchers and teachers alike as the most powerful uses of technology for learning. Take a look. 1. Critical Thinking In Meaningful Learning With Technology, David H. Jonassen and his co-authors argue that students do not learn from teachers or from technologies. Rather, students learn from thinking-thinking about what they are doing or what they did, thinking about what they believe, thinking about what others have done and believe, thinking about the thinking processes they use-just thinking and reasoning. Thinking mediates learning. Learning results from thinking. So what kinds of thinking are fostered when learning with technologies? Analogical If you distill cognitive psychology into a single principle, it would be to use analogies to convey and understand new ideas. That is, understanding a new idea is best accomplished by comparing and contrasting it to an idea that is already understood. In an analogy, the properties or attributes of one idea (the analogue) are mapped or transferred to another (the source or target). Single analogies are also known as sy