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"Here is another awesome back-to-school  resource. This is basically a graphic from ASCD featuring seven reminders on how to drive motivation. These reminders are quotes from popular thinkers which provide some smart tips on how to ignite learners motivation. Below is a round-up of these 7 reminders and you can download this free poster from this link. "

" "Even young kids have gotten very adept at Minecraft, so it can be quite intimidating for teachers," said Jason Schmidt, an instructional technologist for Bennington Public Schools who will teach the four-week MinecraftEdu MOOC, in a prepared statement. "If I can help get teachers over that hump, imagine how delighted students will be to have a learning environment tailored to their interests for a change." The other, Minecraft for Educators, "is a course for teachers who are wishing to gamify their learning experiences and deliver a unique pedagogy that will engage, enthuse and keep learners coming back for more," according to information released by the company. Both MOOCs are available through the Canvas Network. Minecraft for Educators will start January 26, 2015 and run through March 9. The company has also released a Minecraft app to allow students to submit assignments to the Canvas learning management system from within the game. Using the app, students can tag what they've made in the game for their teachers to visit, upload books they've written in game directly to the speed grader or use the game's circuitry tool to complete assignments that will be automatically graded. A video demonstration of the app is available at YouTube. Other MOOCs for teachers in the suite include: Digital Literacies 1; Digital Literacies 2; Five Habits of Highly Effective Teachers; Teachers without Borders: Educating Girls; and Tinker, Make and Learn. Among the other MOOC offerings in the new suite is a course designed specifically for parents, Parenting in the Digital Age, which aims to help them address issues such as cyberbullying, digital citizenship, exposure to inappropriate content, media literacy and screentime. Taught by Andrew Swickheimer, director of technology at Noblesville Schools, the self-paced course opens September 22. "Parental involvement in K-12 education has one of the biggest impacts on a child's commitment to learning," said Jared Stein, vice pres

"t's not unusual for educators to use analog games in the classroom, but as more classrooms gain access to technology, digital games are also making a strong showing. A recent Joan Ganz Cooney Center survey of 694 K-8 teachers found that 74 percent of those surveyed use digital games in the classroom, up from 50 percent two years ago. Many of the teachers finding the most success are good at creatively connecting the game back to the curriculum, while allowing it to maintain the qualities of a good game. These teachers are often more comfortable with games themselves, playing for fun in their spare time, and are thus more likely to see valuable classroom connections. It's one thing to have empirical evidence that digital games are growing in popularity and another to get an in-depth look at how and why teachers see them as a valuable use of precious class time."

"One of the great advantages of the internet is the convenience of cloud based services where you can store documents, pictures, bookmarks or notes and access them on any device with an internet connection. Despite this level of convenience it is still important to maintain backups of your data in the case of unforeseen circumstances, such as your account being hacked or a service shutting down. Here we will take a look at a few ways to backup your online data from some of the most popular services like Diigo, Google and Evernote."

"GeoCraft enables schools and local businesses to work together to encourage learning about sustainability through Minecraft,  a hugely popular video game set in virtual 3D worlds made up of cubes of different materials. Using Ordnance Survey data, it would stimulate children to think about environmental challenges and ideas to solve these, and could be fed back to the local business to implement. Zoe tells us what's been happened since winning funding form GeoVation."

A superb assessment resource which allows you to gain real-time feed back through tests, quizzes and even allowing students to annotate a document that you upload. Set up your quiz/test using true/false statements, longer text answers or students can draw the answer. You can setup a marking key meaning that the site will mark the answers for you and give instant data on who is correct. Your student can either have there own free account or they can access the material using a link. The site works across a wide range of devices.

"This morning, I spent a happy 20 minutes wandering around my back garden taking photos of grass, flowers and trees to decorate a virtual patchwork elephant. I am 37 years old, and not ashamed. The Elmer's Photo Patchwork app isn't really for me, though. It's a children's app released this month by developer Touch Press, based on the popular series of Elmer books. And it's one of a growing number of apps trying to encourage kids' real-world play, rather than cannibalise it. The best iPad apps for kids of 2014 Their features vary, but their common goal is to get children to look up from their screens, whether it's taking photographs, making papercraft animals or spotting constellations in the night skies. Here are 10 worth investigating with your children. It's iOS-heavy, which sadly reflects the priority being given (or, rather, not given) to other platforms by developers of these kinds of apps"

"It's been a heady first month in Northfield Community Middle School's Technology, Engineering, and Design program. Kids are raving, parents are beaming, and it was a great start. But . . . what assumptions have we made that were valid? Or not? What's going well? What could be better? What adjustments are we making now that "Design Experience Zero" in Digital Shop has wrapped up, and our gamified learning management system, Black Mesa, is in full swing? Finally, what's ahead for the program longer-term? Back when our fantastic new learning space was still all gleaming and ready for kids to experience, compliments started rolling in, but I reminded people that creating the space and even building our LMS had been the easy part. The hard part would be (and is!) creating authentic learning experiences that purposefully engage the kids in mindful exploration (the Manifesto, remember?). Our goal: make the kids "life ready" by challenging them to take charge of their own learning -- something that school had never really asked them to do."

"FacebookTwitter26 If you're about to head off to holiday break, congratulations! You've made it! You deserve to kick back, play with friends and family, and recover from the hectic start of the school year. But after you've had your hot cocoa, opened up all your presents, and realize school is resuming soon … what then? Don't let that wave of panic hit you like it did last year. Get prepared for the new year by enrolling in half a dozen edtech courses from Skills Genius. It's an online learning platform the editors of Daily Genius are developing. We want you to help us kick the tires of some of our early courses and are making all 6 edtech courses totally FREE for the month of December."

"If there is one digital tool that's become our go-to this school year, it's been Book Creator.  Last summer we were researching ways to incorporate digital interactive notebooks into our literacy blocks.  All of our research kept pointing us back to Book Creator!"

"LEGO Bricks are toys. They're items that students willingly seek out to play with and get excited to receive as gifts under the Christmas tree. That's one of the things that make them so useful to teachers. Lessons taught using LEGO Bricks don't feel like dull schoolwork. On the contrary, students might feel like they're getting away with something. They actually get to play with LEGO Bricks in class? The idea that students can learn something valuable from play isn't new, or even controversial. A sizeable body of research has been conducted to back up what many teachers already knew to be true.  Fun and learning don't have to be mutually exclusive, and it really works better for everyone involved when they're not. As such, making LEGO Bricks part of your lesson plan can help you teach concepts that students might otherwise find tedious, in a way that doesn't feel like work to them. Many educators have already been putting this idea to the test with success. Here are a few ideas to get you started."

"The history classroom was a mess. There were wires, nails, brads, and wooden pieces on every desk, and students around me struggled with a difficult task. I knew that, in the middle of the mess, I had reached a good balance between student independence and teacher instruction, between hands-on experience and historical material, when one of my students looked up and said, "Mrs. Pang, this is fun! It's really hard, but it's fun." She looked back down at the length of wire in her hands and kept winding it onto a large nail. She was following instructions to create the electromagnet on a telegraph machine. This student and her partner got theirs to work on the second try. Through this small making project, they were exploring the history of innovation and communication. At the same time, they were learning about making electrical connections, how to use tools, and how to troubleshoot their work when it failed. And they said it was fun. In my mind, they were referring to Seymour Papert's kind of fun: hard fun."

"When Jennifer Lanier began working as a media specialist at Summit Parkway Middle School in South Carolina's Richland School District Two, the school library looked like one most of us remember from our own school days. "There were large heavy tables and chairs with shelves lining all walls," she says.  "It was a very fixed space."  After a period of intensive research, she was ready to make some major changes. "My library is now split into two main sections," Lanier explains, "with the circulation desk as the dividing point.  I focused on renovating the back half first.  This would become the Creative Commons area.  I removed the shelves from the corner, purchased six tall mobile tables, a few stools, six white boards, and twenty beanbag cubes." The idea, Lanier explains, was not to set up the tables, stools and cubes ahead of time but, rather, to leave the furniture out of the way and let users (both students and staff members) grab it and reconfigure the space to meet their needs.  "The arrangement of the space does not dictate the way collaboration is carried out; instead the collaboration can freely flow in the direction it takes.  Users can gather around on the cubes to discuss an idea.  They can break out to a project table and visualize it on a white board.  The simple act of moving allows the brain to be more creative." "

"As teachers, we all have assumptions -- and likely some opinions -- about teenagers and social media. But are those assumptions correct? Well, now we have research to help us find out. This week, Common Sense is releasing its latest research report, Social Media, Social Life: Teens Reveal Their Experiences, a deep dive into the social media habits of American teenagers. This research is the second wave in an ongoing study tracking teens' attitudes about social media; we released our original report in 2012. Back then, Snapchat was just a fledgling start-up, and Facebook was a top choice for teens. But how -- and how much -- teens use social media has evolved almost as quickly as the technology itself. This year's report doesn't just tell us about teens today; compared with our original data, it shows us just how much things have changed. It might seem like teens are using social media more than ever (it's true -- they are!). Teachers work with teens every day, so it makes sense that we have our own opinions and anecdotes about their social media use. But it's important to remember that our personal perceptions about social media might not always reflect what our students experience online. And that's why this research is so important. The results of this latest study help us question our assumptions and start addressing real issues that help our students. "

"Jacqueline Prester was a self-proclaimed hustler in middle school. Mowing lawns, babysitting-she took the initiative to earn her own money. But she was also a responsible moneymaker, using the envelope system to budget every cent before she knew it was an actual budgeting strategy. Back then, her friends rolled their eyes when she tried to share her financial savvy. Fast forward two decades and Prester is a popular business and technology teacher at Mansfield High School in Massachusetts, working to give students real-life financial skills. Only this time her audience is keen to learn. (Her Personal Finance classes always reach their 28 student capacity.) Students are learning about personal finance, but not just because that's the name of the class. They're making it personal. Prester's passion is infectious, and the content she chooses-like Pathway To Financial Success created by Discovery Education and Discover-immerses students in authentic lessons with videos, interactive modules and real-world connections. Pathway To Financial Success Video: Being Financially Responsible EdSurge caught up with Prester to find out how she packs her classes with willing learners and to uncover her secret to finding compelling financial literacy content. She also shared how and why she helped pass a new Massachusetts bill focused on financial literacy."

"However, the most nerve-wracking moment occurred when I sat in a radio studio recording my script. I would play the giant magnetic tape back and use a razor to cut it and Scotch tape to splice it together. I listened to my voice and hated it. At one point, I threw my hands up in the air. "I'm not doing this," I said. But Mrs. Smoot looked me in the eyes and said, "I'm not going to let you get away with that. Your voice is good. What you say matters. And when you hide your voice, you rob the world of your creativity.""

"Snapchat has changed a lot in the past few years. Frequent updates means the app looks and works almost nothing like it originally did.  Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is so aggressive with making changes to the app that it can be hard to keep up with how Snapchat really works, even if you're a regular user. To make things easier for you and newbies, Pocket-lint has compiled this straightforward guide. By the end of it, you'll know every facet of the app. And when the next update arrives, be sure to check back here, because we'll explain that, too."

"Storytelling may be as old as the hills but it remains one of the most effective tools for teaching and learning. A good story can make a child (or adult) prick up their ears and settle back into their seat to listen and learn. But despite the power a great story can have, storytelling has an endangered status in the classroom - partly due to a huge emphasis on "active learning" in education. This is the idea that pupils learn best when they are doing something - or often, "seen to be doing" something. Any lesson in which a teacher talks for 15 or more uninterrupted minutes would be regarded today as placing pupils in too passive a role. Indeed, even in English lessons teachers now very rarely read a whole poem or book chapter to pupils, something which now worries even OFSTED. "

"The days are getting shorter and the nights are becoming cooler up here in New England. And you know what that means: Back to School is nigh! Lazy mornings are quickly giving way to the familiar rush of anticipation mixed with bewilderment at the clocked speed of fading summer days (no, really - where did July go?). As I begin to review plans and imagine new learning opportunities for the year ahead, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on some of the important lessons I've learned over the past few years as a maker educator."

Across Australia students are returning to school. Armed with fresh stationery, new books full of promise, shoes that are not yet comfortable and uniforms washed and ready to go, students will be heading off for the first day of a new year. What do they hope to find and how might we make sure their first day back sets them up for a successful year of learning?