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"Peering up, a teacher asked me, "What are we going to use it for?" as I flew our shiny new drone up between the umbrellas on the quad, past the roof of the gym, and into the low scattered clouds. The camera projected back to my iPhone, and I could see the newly planted trees in our quad, the only green for miles in the Mondrian concrete grid that is our local community. The students and teachers in the quad all looked up too, shielding their eyes to see the drone fly. Our custodians pulled up in their cart, and my assistant principal whooped like one of the middle schoolers on my campus. Get the best of Edutopia in your inbox each week. It's my job this year to answer questions like the one above. As a teacher on special assignment currently serving as curriculum coordinator for my school, I get to learn what's coming our way and devise methods of implementation. I specialize in technology and project-based learning, and I began thinking about implementing the drone immediately upon hearing that our district had purchased it. And I'm not the only one thinking about this issue. In the book Drones in Education, the International Society for Technology in Education touts the engagement factor but also sees academic potential in using drones. To guide schools to successfully implement the technology, the book promotes the SOAR model, which stands for Safety (ethics and legal use), Operation (flight and maintenance), Active learning (engagement in problem solving), and Research (practical applications)."

"A couple of years ago I featured Jeopardy Rocks. Recently, Jeopardy Rocks changed its name to Factile and added some more features. At its core Factile is a free platform for creating Jeopardy-style game boards to use in your classroom. Factile lets you create games and save them in your account to use whenever you need them. When you create your game you can include images in the answer display. One of the new features is a gallery of templates for creating games. You can browse the template gallery and make copies of the ones that you want to use in your classroom."

"Higher-level thinking has been a core value of educators for decades. We learned about it in college. We hear about it in PD. We're even evaluated on whether we're cultivating it in our classrooms: Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching, a widely used instrument to measure teacher effectiveness, describes a distinguished teacher as one whose "lesson activities require high-level student thinking" (Domain 3, Component 3c). All that aside, most teachers would say they want their students to be thinking on higher levels, that if our teaching kept students at the lowest level of Bloom's Taxonomy-simply recalling information-we wouldn't be doing a very good job as teachers. And yet, when it's time to plan the learning experiences that would have our students operating on higher levels, some of us come up short. We may not have a huge arsenal of ready-to-use, high-level tasks to give our students. Instead, we often default to having students identify and define terms, label things, or answer basic recall questions. It's what we know. And we have so much content to cover, many of us might feel that there really isn't time for the higher-level stuff anyway. If this sounds anything like you, I have a suggestion: Try a curation assignment."

"Close your eyes and picture the most recent math class you taught. Who is doing the math? Who is doing the talking? Who is doing the thinking? Three years ago, my answer would have been "me"-the teacher. My students were doing math, but I was probably telling them how to think and what to do most of the time. My big aha moment was being introduced to the research of Peter Liljedahl, a professor at Simon Fraser University. Liljedahl proposes three strategies that you can implement in order to create what he calls the thinking classroom: Start with good problems, use visibly random groups, and work regularly on vertical nonpermanent surfaces. I started using these three strategies in my math classes, and they have been an absolute game-changer. I can confidently say that my students now do most of the thinking and talking in my classroom."

"The collection of prompts below asks young writers to think through real or imagined events, their emotions, and a few wacky scenarios. Try out the ones you think will resonate most with your students.  As with all prompts, inform students that their answers should be rated G and that disclosing dangerous or illegal things they're involved in will obligate you to file a report with the administration or school counselors. Finally, give students the option of writing "PERSONAL" above some entries that they don't want anyone to read. We all need to let scraggly emotions run free in our prose sometimes."

"If you'd asked farmers a few hundred years ago what skills their kids would need to thrive, it wouldn't have taken long to answer. They'd need to know how to milk a cow or plant a field. General skills for a single profession that only changed slowly-and this is how it was for most humans through history. But in the last few centuries? Not so much. Each generation, and even within generations, we see some jobs largely disappear, while other ones pop up. Machines have automated much of manufacturing, for example, and they'll automate even more soon. But as manufacturing jobs decline, they've been replaced by other once unimaginable professions like bloggers, coders, dog walkers, or pro gamers. In a world where these labor cycles are accelerating, the question is: What skills do we teach the next generation so they can keep pace?"

"What does maker education look like in today's schools - and how can you bring it into yours? To answer these questions, USC Rossier teamed up with edtech expert and teacher advocate Leah Levy to create "The Guide to Maker Education" - every teacher's handbook for bringing the maker movement into their classroom."

"While John Spencer and I were developing the LAUNCH Cycle, we came up with a few areas that were likely stumbling blocks in the creative (design-thinking inspired) process. One of the keys to the Launch Cycle is taking the time to Look, Listen, and Learn throughout the entire process (that is the L in the LAUNCH acronym). In talking with George Couros about the Launch Cycle we had a good conversation about when it was appropriate to share that learning. The quick answer: all the time. From start to finish you can be learning and sharing during the process. Whether it is students doing a Genius Hour Project, teachers creating their own PD, or school leaders implementing an initiative - the key is to be transparent with that learning process."

"We're excited to be partnering with Google / YouTube to bring you PROJECT ROCKIT TV - creating conversations around the kind of stuff we don't often get to talk about at school. Through our twelve-part series, we answer questions from students, like: How do I handle hate in online gaming?  How can I better support friends when times are tough? What should I do if someone is pressuring me to send private photos? How can I make good stuff go viral?"

"Why is it that some people seem to make constant progress in their professional and personal lives, while others appear to be doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over? While the answer isn't cut and dry, I've noticed an interesting mindset difference between these two groups: they approach obstacles and challenges very differently. The first group approaches life with an open mind-an eagerness to learn and a willingness to be wrong. The second group digs their heels in at the first sign of disagreement and would rather die than be wrong. The way each group approaches obstacles, it turns out, defines much of what separates them."

I am currently reading "Thank you for being late: An optimist's guide to thriving in the age of accelerations" and have found in this the answer to these questions. In essence we are confronting two types of change, one that we have always faced and one that is unique to our current times. 

"The collection of prompts below asks young writers to think through real or imagined events, their emotions, and a few wacky scenarios. Try out the ones you think will resonate most with your students.  As with all prompts, inform students that their answers should be rated G and that disclosing dangerous or illegal things they're involved in will obligate you to file a report with the administration or school counselors. Finally, give students the option of writing "PERSONAL" above some entries that they don't want anyone to read. We all need to let scraggly emotions run free in our prose sometimes."

"Google's Chrome is now the biggest browser in the world, with half the world using it as their default browser. But that doesn't mean everyone is using it right. There is a lot more to Chrome than meets the eye. This guide looks at the fundamentals of Google Chrome and the advantages you get when you use its features well. It is meant for the beginner who wants to explore what the world's most popular web browser is all about. So, let's answer this first…"

"Have you ever considered letting your students listen to hardcore punk while they take their mid-term exam? Decided to do away with Power Point presentations during your lectures? Urged your students to memorize more in order to remember more? If the answer is no, you may want to rethink your notions of psychology and its place in the learning environment. Here are 35 critical thinking strategies, straight from the mind of Sigmund Freud."

"The technologies of 3D printing are as varied as they are cool. But the one area you hear of less than other is 3D printing food. What even is 3D printing food? What purpose does it serve and how does it happen? We answer all that and more in this, our guide to the delicious world of 3D printing food."

"AS A PHYSICS professor, I have two jobs. The first, obviously, is to help students understand physics. That makes me something of a coach. But I want to talk about my second job: evaluating what students understand about physics. You might call this grading them. Evaluating a student's understanding of a topic is like taking a measurement. However, it requires measuring something that is difficult to see. It's not like I can stick a ruler into a student's brain to determine the size of their physics stuff. Now, most teachers use indirect means, usually a multiple-choice test or an exam in which students work through a problem. These are poor measures of student understanding. Someone could simply guess, or flub the answer through a silly mistake. So how can I accurately assess a student's understanding of physics? Until someone invents a way of reading a student's mind, I must do something else. I use a combination of written tests and video assessments."

"Michael Fullan (2013) describes critical thinking as the "ability to design and manage projects, solve problems, and make effective decisions using a variety of tools and resources" (p. 9).  Papert (1980) supports exercises that "open intellectual doors" (p. 63).  Minecraft tasks can be used to create experiences that can be otherwise challenging to design, which according to Drake (2014), should address real-world problems that may not necessarily have one clear answer.  Digital tools such as Minecraft demand higher order thinking skills, which include "the ability to think logically, and to solve ill-defined problems" and "formulating creative solutions and taking action" (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2016, p. 12)."

"But when I see what my kids do in school for "reading," it doesn't really look like reading. I ask them what books they are reading in school, and a lot of times they give me a blank stare. What they do in reading, they tell me, is mostly worksheets about reading. Or computer programs that ask them to read passages, not books, and answer multiple-choice questions." Some helpful tips to stop taking the fun out of reading. Enjoyment needs to be the priority.

"rance is to impose a total ban on pupils using mobile phones in primary and secondary schools starting in September 2018, its education minister has confirmed. Phones are already forbidden in French classrooms but starting next school year, pupils will be barred from taking them out at breaks, lunch times and between lessons. Teachers and parents are divided over a total ban, however, with some saying children must be able to "live in their time". In France, some 93 per cent of 12 to 17-year-olds own mobile phones. "These days the children don't play at break time anymore, they are just all in front of their smartphones and from an educational point of view that's a problem," said Jean-Michel Blanquer, the French education minister. "This is about ensuring the rules and the law are respected. The use of telephones is banned in class. With headmasters, teachers and parents, we must come up with a way of protecting pupils from loss of concentration via screens and phones," he said. "Are we going to ban mobile phones from schools? The answer is yes." Studies suggest that a significant number of pupils continue to use their mobiles in class and receive or send calls or text messages."