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"The Educational and Mobile Learning site highlighted a great step by step iPad task tutorial by the folks over at iSupport. They outline five tasks that "every modern teacher" should be able to do and use in their classrooms. It's a great list: A PDF A presentation An interactive book A podcast A movie I really like how they put together an easy way to see how using iPad tools can lead kids through low level to high levels of thinking and doing. But the list isn't comprehensive. And it might start past the point where some teachers are right now. So I've added five extra iPad basic skills that I think every teacher using iPads needs to have: Edit Photos"

"One of the new iOS 8 features that Apple demonstrated at this year's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) was the upcoming changes to the native Photos app. One of the biggest changes involves the ability to keep all of your photos from iCloud available anywhere, anytime using iCloud Photo Library. Plus, Apple has added some basic editing tools and filters to the app and even made it possible for you to edit with third-party apps directly in Photos."

"Today I want to share with you this awesome read I came across in Global Citizen Education. The article is entitled " 21st Century Fluencies" and is basically based on Crockett et al.'s book Literacy is Not Enough. The main argument in this paper is that 21st century fluencies are process skills that students need in order to thrive in a rapidly changing world. These process skills include things such critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and innovation to mention but a few. "The 21st century fluencies", as the authors of this work state, "are not about hardware, they are about headware and heartware"."

"Let's say you have a big paper coming up, a presentation that involves some in-depth online research, or perhaps something completely pointless to look up on Google. Whatever your reason for diving into the bottomless pit that is online searching, it's important to know about the resources and guides that are out there. Lucky for you, the people basically running online searches (Google) have you hooked up. If you're a student of any age, then listen up. Check out the guides and free Google tools available at 'Search Education,' a free site filled with anything you could ever dream of … if you dream of helpful guides to Google searching."

"Blended learning uses both in-person and online methods to teach students, and there are several different models for implementing it in the classroom. These resources explain the basics of blended learning, but they also dig deeper and can help you decide which approach may be best for your students."

"Internet of Things (IoT) is a relatively new concept that is making such a buzz online. I have come across it in several instances but never really inquired deeply about its meaning. However, today I read a really interesting article by Jacob Morgan entitled " A Simple Explanation of 'The Internet of Things'. In this article, Jacob defined IoT as "the concept of basically connecting any device with an on and off switch to the Internet (and/or to each other). This includes everything from cell phones, coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable devices and almost anything else you can think of.  This also applies to components of machines, for example a jet engine of an airplane or the drill of an oil rig.""

"Carol Dweck's famous book, "Mindset", was one that was (is) hugely popular with educators, not only in helping shape their work and thoughts on students, but also pushing learning in educator with their peers.  There were two simple concepts shared that resonated with many readers; the "fixed" mindset and the "growth" mindset. Here is how the two differ according to Dweck: "In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it." The great thing about Dweck's work is that she found that you can move from one to the other.  You may have a fixed mindset, but it is not necessarily a permanent thing.  The other aspect is that you do not necessarily have a "fixed" or "growth" mindset and fall into one of those two categories in all elements.  I have a growth mindset on (most things) education, but have a fixed mindset on fixing things around my house. So what I have been thinking about lately is the notion of the "innovator's mindset".  This would actually go one step past the notion of a growth mindset and is looking at what you are creating with your learning.  SImply it would go look this:"

"Hour of Code is a week-long promotion of the teaching and learning of computer coding. "The Hour of Code is designed to demystify code and show that computer science is not rocket-science, anybody can learn the basics," said Hadi Partovi, founder and CEO of Code.org. "In one week last year, 15 million students tried an Hour of Code. Now we're aiming for 100 million worldwide to prove that the demand for relevant 21st century computer science education crosses all borders and knows no boundaries.""

"LittleBigHistory is a good history app to help students grow their history knowledge. It is basically an interactive timeline that features major historical events from the Big Bang to the present time. Students can browse through this timeline and learn about places and people, follow their lifespan and discover new insights about them."

"The handy graphic below synthesizes the overwhelming to-do list of flipping your classroom into 6 easy steps that make the whole process a little less daunting. The big take home: Start small. Flip one lesson to start. Learn from what you've done, and go from there if you want to (or need to) keep trying. Once you've got the basics, there are so many resources you can draw from to refine the flipped classroom experience and add and modulate the nuances of this type of learning experience."

"Google has recently released a new game called Smarty Pins which uses Google Maps for its layout. This is basically a game that tests players geography and trivia skills. I have been tinkering with it for sometime today and thought it ideal for classroom use with students."

"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. "

"If you are planning to incorporate iPad in your classroom teaching then you definitely need to work on some preliminary stuff before anything else. These are basically formalities and conventions students need to abide by when using iPad in class. Making students explicitly aware of their responsibilities behind using iPad in class will certainly help you tap into the full educational potential of this versatile gadget. I have gone through my archive and picked out these handy visuals for you to use with your students."

"Since many people are returning to school during the next couple of weeks, I thought I would re-visit and share some of last year's more successful projects in case you want to try one. Today's post is about something I tried last year with the goal of impressing upon my students how much they matter to others - in this case, their parents. What I did not realize was that I would also develop new and deeper connections with my students and their families with this project. The basic concept was this: ask parents to secretly record videos of themselves telling their children how important they are to them and what they hoped the children would accomplish in school that year. The parents would send me the videos, and I would use Aurasma Studio (here is a link to Aurasma tutorial videos in case you need it) to attach them to still images of the parents. When my students scanned the images with the Aurasma app on the iPad, they would see and hear their parents' videos. They kept the photos in their folders all year so they could scan them whenever they wanted, and as a reminder of their parents' personal messages."

"I've previously posted several times about how much I love the Shadow Puppet app - there isn't anything out there that's an easier tool for creating a quick audio-narrated slideshow. It's perfect for English Language Learners. Today, the company behind Shadow Puppet has just released another new and free educational app that looks like it could be very useful. It's called Seesaw, and basically lets students easily create digital portfolios that can be shared with teachers and parents. It's free for teachers and students, and has a free and paid version for parents."

"MIT App Inventor provides the fastest way to build apps for Android phones and tablets. Even with no prior experience, you can learn to build apps within hours. Here, you'll learn from USF Professor David Wolber, who has been teaching beginners programming with App Inventor since its inception in 2009. With step-by-step video screencasts, Wolber starts with the basics then leads you through the development of successively more complex apps, teaching you programming concepts as you go."

"One of the biggest learning trends you should know about is project-based learning. Basically, students are given a task and allowed to work in groups to deliver solutions to a problem. This is an applicable methodology in science, technology, math, arts, etc. You name it, project-based learning could likely be used. But how do you get started with a new way to teach? That's a major question that often stops teachers right in their tracks. It's hard to switch up what's been working in the past. It's impossible to figure out how to integrate a new classroom structure in the small amount of time available to educators around the world. In an effort to help solve this issue, our friends at EdTechTeacher have created what's essentially a crash course in project-based learning. The video is about an hour long and is by Suzy Brooks, a third-grade teacher in Massachusetts."

"The UK's 11-year-olds will be issued with a basic computer by publicly-funded broadcaster the BBC this year, to encourage them to get into coding. The simple Micro Bit computer will be given to 1 million children starting UK secondary school in this coming autumn term. Coding has been on the school curriculum in Britain since last year as part of a move to give kids a foundation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. In secondary school, children learn two or more programming languages as well as related subjects like Internet safety."