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"Students are incredibly brave every day. And sometimes, when I am having a difficult time with a class, or specific students, I need to remind myself of these facts:"

"The Brave Programmer"

"What is the best way to ease someone's pain and suffering? In this beautifully animated RSA Short, Dr Brené Brown reminds us that we can only create a genuine empathic connection if we are brave enough to really get in touch with our own fragilities. "

"Experience the sensation of being a modern day Columbus as you travel across the vast spaces of the land of the free and home of the brave. From the hot deserts of the south to the great forests of the north, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 50 states of challenging locations awaits you!"

David Truss's excellent video about teaching with technology and the opprotunities it provides both for us as teachers but more importantly for our students.

"Adam Savage took a few minutes on Sunday at the Maker Faire Bay Area to share what he feels are the 10 Commandments of Making. Braving the somewhat precarious elevated stage of the crowd-favorite Life-Sized Mousetrap, Adam addressed the audience with bits of wisdom and jewels of experience. It was obvious from the laughter that many of these insights and observations struck close to home."

"There's nothing quite as satisfying as the soft, smooth roll of pen on paper. That ability to scribble, strike, crumple and tear. But what about the downsides of this ancient medium? Endless printing cycles. Lack of searchability. A desk stacked to the roof with essays and sheets to mark. It's these frustrations and a determination to streamline the classroom that have led many educators to trade in their pen for a stylus, and begin embracing the the brave new world of digital annotation."

If we are to cultivate the dispositions required in these times of postnormality and post-truth we need to establish cultures in our classrooms which will allow them to thrive. 

"If we collectively want to keep our jobs we must change the way we look at hard and soft skills. We have to find a way to redefine what they are, what is intensely human and what will remain our competitive advantage over the year in the advent of AI and job-threatening-robots.  With research showing that less and less importance is placed on conventional intelligence and with studies indicating that it can actually be counterproductive at work to employ too much of one's IQ while at the same time having organizations move away from formal education, what role does knowledge still play in this brave new world of soft skills and humanity? Professionals who attach a lot of their self-esteem to their intelligence will get bored easily, will get frustrated repeatedly and will feel less inclined to be truly engaged with their colleagues. What's the answer to that? Should they all aim lower to fit in? Is playing dumb a success condition? We have enough trouble getting passion and courage into ourselves and our people - if we now decide knowledge is superfluous what are we left with?"

"We all want our kids to emulate qualities of bravery, strength, and intellect. Modeling these characteristics for our kids is ideal but books can also help to solidify the lessons we want our kids to learn. In fact, according to the 6th Edition Scholastic Kids & Family Reading Report, families seek out books featuring characters who display these traits. "Characters who are 'smart, brave or strong' or 'face a challenge and overcome it' are the most popular among kids and parents," according to the report.  Here are nine books featuring characters who show strength, exhibit bravery, or are incredibly smart."

"Most of us use web browsers out of habit. If you surf the web with Microsoft Edge, that may be because you use Windows. If you use Safari, that's probably because you are an Apple customer. If you are a Chrome user, that could be because you have a Google phone or laptop, or you downloaded the Google browser on your personal device after using it on computers at school or work. In other words, we turn to the browsers that are readily available and familiar. It's easy to fall into browser inertia because these apps are all fast, capable and serve the same purpose: visiting a website. So if the differences are minimal, why bother looking for something else? By the end of this column, I hope to persuade you to at least try something else: a new type of internet navigator called a private browser. This kind of browser, from less-known brands like DuckDuckGo and Brave, has emerged over the last three years. What stands out is that they minimize the data gathered about us by blocking the technologies used to track us."

Film shot entirely on a cellphone - Tropfest NY 2008 winner, "Mankind Is No Island" by Jason van Genderen