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"The suggestion that global warming has stopped is "nonsense," climatologist Richard Alley of Penn State University said last fall. The fact that the year 2012 was no warmer than 2002, he said, ignores the long-term trend of warming. But scientists say that trend has been partially obscured by the ocean, which is likely absorbing the excess heat."

"Teachers need to reinvent themselves, like Miley Cyrus. We need to come in like a wrecking ball and smash our traditional approach. Like Miley did. Hannah Montana was great! But her audience changed. With time, her fans grew up and started to leave Hannah behind. So what did she do? Cut her hair, ramped up her wardrobe and engaged her audience again. Please understand, I do not align myself with any of the twerking or ridiculously bizarre on and off stage behaviour. But as one of my smarter senior students pointed out, she is the consummate marketer. Gimmicks aside, she did grab her audience back."

"Most people have heard of homeschooling - kids are educated by parents or caregivers at home, rather than at school, for a variety of reasons. But within the homeschooling community, the growing "unschooling" subset has a somewhat different, amorphous, definition. Depending on whom you ask, unschooling is centered around what the child wants to learn using any and all resources available, not just fixed, school-prescribed curriculum. The general idea behind unschooling is this: getting kids to develop a love of learning for its own sake rather than for grades, and giving kids the opportunity to experience "valuable hands-on, community-based, spontaneous, and real-world experiences.""

"Augmented reality is a new technology with some promising potential for education. The basic premise behind augmented reality is the extension of the physical world to include components of the digitally virtual world. According to Drew Minock, Co-Author of Two Guys and Some iPads , augmented reality is :"

"The main arguments behind the push for students to learn to code, usually center around preparing students for future jobs. There is a skill shortage in the computer science industry which determines skilled job seekers can walk into lucrative contracts. This trend is predicted to rise. The other aspect to the usual argument is that even students who do not work in the technology industry will also benefit throughout their life and careers by learning computer science, as all industries now involve some component of programming. While these arguments are perfectly valid, there are many more reasons why kids should learn to code. They include:"

"Back in primary school I remember learning about the internals of the human body by constructing a digestive system out of toilet rolls. Needless to say, that summer I probably used more toilet tissue than I needed too in an effort to get enough toilet rolls together. The results were awesome though. I plonked a marble through the cardboard oesophagus and proudly demonstrated to my parents the wonders of the human digestive system. I'm assuming my model had the equivalent of the runs as my marble got through in about 5 seconds. Now, the days of such eco-unfriendly learning are behind us and Zybright have released a great app called My Incredible Body, which I would say is aimed at ages 4-13."

"There are about a million different ways to use all the great Google tools available for free in your classroom. Whether you're bringing your classroom into the 21st century by making it paperless or AppSmashing, even the simplest of Google tools offers you a wide array of ways to use it. The Google suite of tools can be useful when you're working with your students but also in more of a behind the scenes sort of way. We've put together a short list of some of our favorite ways these tools support teachers. "

"Unlike the numerous graphics I shared here on the topic of flipped learning which were substantially theoretically based, the one I have for you today provides a practical demonstration of how Dr.Russell flipped his classroom . The graphic also features some of the activities and procedures he drew in his flipped instruction. Another section of this graphic highlights some of the bearings of this flipped methodology on students performance particularly in terms of the enhanced test scores. The purpose behind sharing this visual is to provide you with a concrete example of how you can go about integrating a flipped learning methodology in your instruction. This is only a paradigmatic example which you can adapt with due modifications to your own teaching situation."

"One of the essential parts of the digital citizenship I have been long talking about in this blog is about digital footprints. Students need to know that whatever they do or create online leaves behind a trail or digital breadcrumbs that others can trace. This "others" can be anyone from prospective employers, to college admission boards, anything you do online should be vetted by a critical lens and if "you don't want your parents to know about it then better not do it"."

"Admit it: you only read the list of the six levels of the Taxonomy, not the whole book that explains each level and the rationale behind the Taxonomy. Not to worry, you are not alone: this is true for most educators. But that efficiency comes with a price. Many educators have a mistaken view of the Taxonomy and the levels in it, as the following errors suggest. And arguably the greatest weakness of the Common Core Standards is to avoid being extra-careful in their use of cognitive-focused verbs, along the lines of the rationale for the Taxonomy."

"It's a familiar classroom ritual - every June, teachers assign summer reading. And every September, students come back to school having read too few books. This is frustrating for teachers, and challenging for students. When kids aren't in school, they forget crucial skills they learned during the year - at least a month of reading achievement, on average. This so-called "summer slide" is particularly pernicious in children from low-income families. Low-income students often walk through the door of their kindergartens already behind their more fortunate peers because of a mix of poverty, poorer health, less parental education, and higher rates of single and teenage parents. With limited access to books and other academic opportunities in the summer, these children experience the summer slide threefold. Over time, this adds up. By third grade, children who can't read at their grade level (a whopping 73 percent of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch) begin to struggle with other subjects. Students living in poverty who cannot read proficiently by third grade are 13 times less likely to graduate from high school. By ninth grade, some have estimated that two-thirds of the reading achievement gap can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities. There is good news: Stemming the summer slide isn't impossible. Students who read just four to six books over the summer maintain their skills (they need to turn more pages to actually become better readers.)"

"The philosophy behind the maker movement is to explore and create with purpose. It's about embracing a child's natural curiousity and supporting the notion of learning by doing. As it should be in every classroom, play is a key component in the maker movement. Makers believe it you can imagine it you can make it."

"Menomonee Falls - Once every few weeks this past school year, kindergarten teacher Tiffany Fadin corralled her squirmy young charges at Valley View Elementary to get feedback about their recent math lessons. "What specific things did we do in this unit that helped you learn?" she asked recently. "What things did not help you learn?" Behind Fadin, data points flashed on a board, showing how many more students could add and subtract within five digits than in weeks prior. The exercise was deliberate, underscoring a major shift in Menomonee Falls that's training everyone to use data to make decisions, from teachers and custodians to kindergartners. The strategies employed over the past four years have attracted national - even international - attention to Menomonee Falls, including visitors from Sweden and researchers from the Carnegie Foundation. Other districts around the state and other educational institutions, such as the State University of New York, are taking notes. Armed with promising new outcome data, Menomonee Falls Superintendent Pat Greco said she believes what they're doing is working, and that the district is the case study for how K-12 systems can increase achievement and efficiency. And they're doing it by employing methods rooted not in education, but in the manufacturing and health care industries. "Teachers were reticent about posting student performance data. They were reticent to invite feedback from students," said Greco, who began engaging a small core of staff in the work in 2011. "Now, student performance is the highest it's ever been," Greco said."

"Move over, Space Camp: Coding is quickly growing as a popular activity for kids, and not just for those who dream of being programmers when they grow up. The logical thinking required to code can help kids succeed in school and other day-to-day activities-it's no wonder why big companies are getting behind the effort to help students learn the needed critical thinking skills.  If you want to help them get started, there are a number of visual, kid-friendly apps that teach users how to build games and code other simple activities on their own."

"Minecraft is a cultural phenomenon. The block-based exploration and crafting game was snapped up by Microsoft for $2.5 billion last year and has helped inspire competitors from giant toy companies like Lego. Even the government is interested in building on Minecraft's success: The Department of Education is helping fund a project known as "Eco" that looks a lot like Minecraft, except with a few added twists: There's a looming ecological disaster and players must band together to make a community -- agreeing on laws and living in harmony with the environment. If they fail, the world dies forever. Strange Loop Games, the company behind the game, describes it a "global survival game" and says failure results in "server-wide perma death.""

"Submit the Documentary exposes the most epic struggle in the digital, Internet age: cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is bullying by means of electronic technology committed through email, instant messaging, mobile applications, social media, chat rooms, and blogs or through messages and images sent through a cell phone. Because of the anonymity, kids who never thought of being a bully are becoming harassers. By exploring the complicated dynamics behind cyberbullying, Submit the Documentary describes the impact and outcomes of advanced technology and human nature in a lawless, new, social frontier."

"Now that you have such a good curated list of the best storytelling apps and tools how do you go about teaching your students to create good stories? A good story does have to abide by certain rules and these rules are learned through practice. Andrew Stanton, the Pixar writer and director behind both Toy Story and WALL-E, talks some of these rules in his popular TED Talk, The clues to a great story."

"We are about to launch our Maker Space in our school library media center - it is going to be what is referred to as a 'soft launch.' Our technology facilitator and one of our classroom teachers are really the driving force behind this initiative, and much more familiar with the items we have purchased. While I'm more than happy to house the materials and provide space for them to be used, I know almost nothing about them. So, I'm hopeful that I will be able to form a team of interested students to help manage the project. Tomorrow after school we will have our 'Maker Team Interest Meeting.' From the students who show up, we're planning on forming a team to rotate being on hand when the maker space is open. They'll be in charge of answering questions, helping students figure out directions, and keeping everything orderly.  Wish us luck!"