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""When you hire me, you don't just get me, you get my network." At least, that's what I argued four years ago when I interviewed for the superintendency. An hour prior to the start of the interview with the board of education trustees, I was given a question. And without hesitation, I was on my computer sharing the question on Twitter."

"One of my favorite activities with my students was having them keep daily journals. Each day, they knew the routine. Grab their journals, grab a pillow, sit where they want and spend 5 minutes responding to the prompt on the board. Nowadays, technology provides us more engaging ways to encourage writing. Students can journal online with blogs or use mobile technologies to capture images, record videos, and post podcasts. They can make their voices more engaging, spread their ideas, and receive comments from around the world. Below are a few ideas and resou"

"When Stanford Professor Lee Shulman was first enmeshed in the research that led to Board certification of teachers by NBPTS, I asked him - in a hotel bathroom, of all places - what interesting findings were turning up about great teachers as compared to the rest. He replied: "Well, you might not find this such a big deal, but a big indicator is the degree to which a teacher accurately describes what happens in her classroom.""

"While critical thinking is a foundation rather than a brick, how you build that foundation depends on the learning process itself: exposing students to new thinking and promoting interaction with that thinking in a gradual release of responsibility approach. Question stems can be a powerful part of that process no matter where the learner is. Assessment (pre-assessment, self-assessment, formative and summative assessment), prompting and cueing during discussion, etc. In that light, the following 25+ question stems (we found on Kris McElroy's pinterest board) framed around the early, non-revised Bloom's Taxonomy are worth a gander."

"Your credential could be elementary or secondary. Your classroom could have algebra all over the board, or pictures of the Civil War on the wall. Your students could be taking Cornell notes on the scientific method. You are still a reading teacher."

"Professional Learning Board just released a Self-study iPads in the Classroom course I wrote. It is a self-directed course to take in your own time and at your own speed."

"Take a moment to think about how you learned to write. What steps did you go through? What was your process? Most of us learned the same core set of skills on paper: organize, draft, edit, revise, turn in. Our teachers then marked up what we had handwritten or typed, and returned our writing. From there, maybe it ended up tacked to a bulletin board, stuck on the refrigerator door, stuffed into a notebook, or tossed in the nearest trash can. Let's call this Writing 1.0. When computers entered into the equation, we digitiz"

Last year, we began a program that can best be described as "classroom modernization" across the district. Our Board of Education recognized the importance and education need for the modernization and made a commitment through its budget to support the purchase of technology to support the professionals in our classrooms. The first decision we made was to ensure all teaching staff had access to a current, mobile device. While often the focus is on ensuring all students have access to current devices (a continuing effort in our district) we realized that if we wanted classes to be engaging with digital tools, teachers needed to have access and feel comfortable with them as well."

"Below is a wonderful classroom poster I came across in Edutopia's Pinterest board.The poster outlines 5 things students should pay heed to when engaged in writing tasks. You can print and use this poster in your class with your students. It can be used as a self assessment checklist that students draw on when working on their writings. It can also be a good way to initiate discussions around areas that pose real difficulties to students writings."

"Last fall I wrote an ABC/25 Foundation grant through my district for the supplies for Green Screen Stop-Motion Animation Stations. My ideas for what to purchase evolved a bit with more research to include green display board from BLICK and iPad stands from Anker. We will have two stages of production. "

"If you've read my previous post about how we've been using Instagram in kindergarten, you'd know that we've been avid Instagrammers for the last couple of months. #mathphotoaday and #eduphotoaday have provided the basis for many terrific mini-lessons, and captioning photographs has provided authentic early writing practice. I've been amazed at how successfully my students have used Instagram and supporting apps such as Pic Collage, InstaCollage, and Color Splash. Last week, we were viewing our Instagram pictures on our SMART Board, and the kids were commenting on how beautiful a lot of them were. One little boy put up his hand and said, "Mrs. Caldwell, our Instagram pictures are so beautiful. I think that we should print them out and sell them and make money for our new playground." And just like that, a new project was born! Why does this always happen at the end of the school year when we have a million and one other things to do? But their enthusiasm was contagious and I agreed that it was a fantastic idea! And when a 6 year-old shows entrepreneurial spirit like that, who am I to stand in his way?"

"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"."

"Today, Makey Makey gets a smaller sibling called Makey Makey Go, the latest version of our favorite interface board designed to allow people to quickly take everyday objects and use them to control their computers."

"Pinterest has established itself as one of the most addictive content curation tools on the web. Users from all walks of life maintain boards on everything from appetizers to graphic design ideas to tattoos. I keep some of my favorite recipes there, right beside my collection of Brilliant or Insane pins. Pinterest is a great tool for teachers, too. This is what I love most about Pinterest: it's ability to reveal the variety and complexity of our individual interests. And this is what makes it a perfect tool for curating and crafting literary characters."

"As part of our Back-to-School series, we are sharing chapters and excerpts from the Makerspace Playbook: School Edition. Today, an excerpt from Chapter 9, Startup: tips for funding your Makerspace. One idea not shared in the playbook that has come up time and again is having a Make Sale, where you sell some of the items made in the Makerspace. Hillel Posner's students make cutting boards and necklaces in their woodworking class. Casey Shea at Analy High School recoups some of the high cost of buying and maintaining the school's laser cutter with an annual yearbook-engraving fundraiser. What have you done in your school to raise money to Make? On to our excerpt: Your Makerspace may not need much of a budget to operate, if you have a space you can use for free, tools to borrow, and materials found or donated. For some Makerspaces, the ones with lots of parental involvement, many of the projects are self-funded. But if your Makerspace takes place at a school without as much family support, or if you simply do not have this all in place, you may need to research community or family foundation grants to fill in the gap. It's possible there could be city or other government agency grants available to get your Makerspace what it needs. Sometimes you can find the funding with a "planning grant." If you are partnering with a non-profit, get advice from the fundraising staff who may be able to suggest the right foundations to approach. Ask around. Online tools like Kickstarter and Indiegogo might help you conduct pointed fundraising campaigns towards a specific goal. There are many sites like this - search on "crowdfunding" for more suggestions. While it's not a Makerspace, we know that the Rhode Island Mini Maker Faire used this tactic to launch a Maker Faire. Maybe it could work for a Makerspace too."

"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."

"QR Codes are all around us today. Open a magazine, a catalog, or glance at a bulletin board and you're likely to see a QR code. QR Codes make it easy to jump to a website or download a file on your mobile device. QR codes and QR code reader apps are one of the many ways that cell phones can be used in schools for academic purposes. To that end, Russel Tarr the QR Treasure Hunt Generator."

"I cringe when people ask me, "Are you handy?" Partly because I don't consider myself to be the best with tools, but also because it is asking me to judge whether or not I'm capable of fixing, making, or crafting something. Here's the thing, I didn't know how to put new shower tiles in and patch up my existing dry wall with cement board when we had a leak last year…but I had a friend help get me started, I watched a few DIY Youtube videos, looked at some articles online, and now I know how to do that (although not too well). The same thing happens in high schools all the time. The "handy" kids go to shop class, the "artsy" kids go to art class, the "business" kids go to business classes, the "techy" kids go to web design classes and so on… It's got to stop. We can't continue labeling kids as one thing or another thing. What we know about the future workforce is that creativity, making, and innovating will be at the center of most jobs…and that will require students to be all of the above: 'Experts predict that 50 per cent of occupations today will no longer exist by 2025 as people will take up more creative professions,' said Martin Chen, Chief Operating Officer of Genesis."

"Just a few years ago, mobile devices were almost unheard of in classrooms. Over time, teachers and administrators have been experimenting with how to make mobile devices into powerful learning tools, and have come up with some strategies. A group of administrators from some of the first districts to pioneer Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies and other forms of mobile learning are now sharing their experiences with those hustling to get on board. The Consortium of School Networking, a professional group for district leaders, is trying to make that knowledge more widely available through its Mobile Learning Initiative."

"I have been designing an Operation-type board game that uses the MaKey MaKey to interface with a computer running Scratch. I started with a simple prototype left over from my squishy circuit Operation game. I was curious whether the MaKey MaKey would read a closed circuit on this hardware. Good news: it works! Connect an alligator clip cable from the MaKey MaKey to the game board's foil "game port." Connect the MaKey MaKey board's Earth port to another alligator clip cable."