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"I began using Dragon Dictation a few years ago when my work with a group of struggling writers left me searching for a tool that could help them get the great ideas they were sharing aloud onto a page. I wanted something elegant: a tool that wouldn't interrupt students as they were speaking but rather, quietly capture what they were saying and flip it into text."

"Storytelling has been around as long as humankind. It is one of the most effective ways to communicate an important truth to another person. It is a connection point between two people. It gives meaning, context, and understanding in a world that is often filled with chaos and disorder. Because of this, educators must use stories if they hope to reach their students. Stories will stay with people much longer than facts or statistics. If a teacher becomes an excellent storyteller, he or she can ensure that any concept they teach will be remembered for years to come. Stories don't just work well for narratives; they can be used to illustrate scientific or mathematical processes as well. Take for example the difference between learning a formula, and the ability to solve that problem in the context of a real-life example. Stories bring information, knowledge, and truth to life."

"Last month, TIME and Felix & Paul Studios launched VR cameras to the International Space Station (ISS) in a new project to bring viewers an intimate look aboard one of the most exclusive places in human existence. Dubbed The ISS Experience, over the course of the next year VR cameras will provide what the makers call "unprecedented access to a participatory experience-one that will culminate with the first-ever filming of a spacewalk in cinematic virtual reality." The year-long project was announced at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah this weekend. The project's first VR scene was filmed on Friday, January 25th."

"In January 2004, NASA announced it was canceling a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. In light of dangers associated with the Columbia tragedy the previous year, it was considered too risky. As a result, the Hubble, lauded as one of the most influential scientific instruments of all time, would have only a few remaining years to survive. Over the following months, the plan was intensely debated. Petitions garnered thousands of signatures from members of the public. Congressional committee meetings and hearings were held. Citizens and scientists alike, inspired by the discoveries and images the telescope had produced, clearly weren't ready for the telescope's premature retirement. By that point, the Hubble had nearly fulfilled all its mission objectives since its launch in 1990. With 100,000 observations, it had measured the universe's expansion, studied planetary origins, and produced a vast trove of pictures like the iconic Deep Field (seen at the top of this piece) and Pillars of Creation, which changed the way we see our place in the universe. These images, taken for science and re-mastered by astronomers, captured the public's imagination in a way no telescope had before. "

"We've talked about how and when to use inquiry-based learning-and apps for inquiry-based learning, too. What we haven't done-explicitly anyway-is looked at the reasons for doing so. While the benefits might seem obvious (student-centeredness, critical thinking, self-directed learning, etc.), the graphic above by famed sketch-noter Sylvia Duckworth based on a session by Trevor Mackenzie captures a lot of these ideas in a single visual."

"Another cardboard activity along the side of the Large scale & Small scale stop motion animations in the event of Infinite Versatility of Cardboard was Making Cardboard Costumes. This time, we set up our favorite "Tinkering photo frame" for people to capture their cardboard costumes, and to take this photo booth experience online, we also set up a hashtag #cardboardtinkering and used a social media wall "Walls.io" so that we could collect all the pictures with the hashtag and display them as a live-updating photo album on the large monitor during the event."

"We have designed a Mathematical Mindset Guide to help teachers create or strengthen a growth mindset culture. This guide contains five Mathematical Mindset Practices along with links to teaching videos.  The videos all show Jo and Cathy teaching middle school students. There are different stages described in each practice to help capture the journey of a mathematical mindset classroom and the evidence teachers may collect along the way for their own reflection or for discussion with colleagues.  The guide has been designed for teachers to use in the process of self-reflection, or for coaches or administrators to use to encourage a mindset teaching culture. In the interactive version of the guide on this web page, you can click on the arrow buttons in the Expanding descriptors to see a short extract of Jo/Cathy teaching in the ways described. Our goal for the guide is to support a mathematical mindset journey of learning and growth. Teachers can work with the guide individually or in collaboration with others. The guide is intended to be non-judgmental, non-evaluative, and iterative in nature. When using the guide consider the classroom community as a whole rather than the teacher alone. It is also important to note that while the goal of the guide is to communicate all aspects of a mathematical mindset classroom, it is not always possible to find evidence of all practices in one lesson. We encourage teachers, coaches, and administrators to use this guide, and our reflection suggestions iteratively over multiple lessons."

"Math teachers of older students sometimes struggle to get students to explain their thinking with evidence. It's hard to get kids in the habit of talking about how they are thinking about a problem when they've had many years of instruction that focused on getting the "right answer." That's why educators are now trying to get students in the habit of explaining their thinking at a young age. The Teaching Channel captured kindergarten and first grade teachers pushing students to give evidence for their answers in situations where there are several ways to think about a problem."

"You've read about the Holocaust in books and seen it portrayed in films. But it's another experience entirely to walk through the site of a concentration camp in virtual reality, led by a survivor who lost his entire family there. The Last Goodbye, which debuts at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, follows Pinchas Gutter as he makes his final pilgrimage to Majdanek, a former Nazi Germany extermination camp in occupied Poland. It's a trip he's made many times, but this one has a specific purpose: to capture his account of the Holocaust so we never forget that it actually happened. "

"The Remake Learning Playbook is an ambitious project to open source the project code for learning innovation ecosystems. Created by The Sprout Fund as a digital & tangible product, the Playbook documents the process and outcomes of both the Pittsburgh region's efforts to create a community-wide learning innovation network, and specific projects the network has catalyzed. The Playbook captures the spirit and substance of the Remake Learning Network in action. It covers the theory and practice of building learning innovation networks, the resources and strategies required to put networks into action, and the impact of the network in schools, museums, libraries, communities, and more."

"It's hard to feel connected to someone who's gone through a static photo. So a company called MyHeritage who provides automatic AI-powered photo enhancements is now offering a new service that can animate people in old photos creating a short video that looks like it was recorded while they posed and prepped for the portrait. Called Deep Nostalgia, the resulting videos are reminiscent of the Live Photos feature in iOS and iPadOS where several seconds of video are recorded and saved before and after the camera app's shutter is pressed. But where Live Photos is intended to be used to find the perfect shot and framing that may have been missed the exact second the shutter was pressed, Deep Nostalgia is instead meant to bring still shots, even those not captured on a modern smartphone, to life."

"Bookmarking tools are key to the effective management of digital resources. They allow you to capture  and save important information to read later. Most of these tools provide organizational features enabling users to organize their bookmarked content into boards and collections that can be shared with others. Other tools  even go a step further to provide collaborative features that allow a group of people to collectively bookmark and share online resources. Based on our long experience with reviewing educational web tools, we went ahead and curated for you what we believe are some of the best bookmarking tools for teachers. These are tools you can use to bookmark, annotate and share resources you come across online. We invite you to check out our updated below and share with us your feedback in our Facebook page. Links are provided under the visual."

"If only everything could be simple.  Life is anything but an easy journey.  While this, for the most part, has been manageable in the past, the pandemic has upended professional and personal lives.  Just when there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, a new variant materializes.  For now, Omicron is the current curveball.  As I write this post on the first day of 2022, I can't help but reflect on the resilience educators showed the year before.  They stepped up to the plate every time for kids and each other because that is in their DNA.  As the curveballs kept coming, they hit them.  In the midst of immense adversity, they persevered.  What the future holds, no one can know for sure.  Many schools have or will be making the decision to revert back to some form of remote learning.  While this can be frustrating and challenging, educators have been here before.  The silver lining is that lessons learned in the past can be leveraged to make it a smoother process.  There were many successes when it comes to remote learning that have value now and will for years to come.  I made sure to capture these in chapter 6 of Disruptive Thinking in Our Classrooms.  Good teaching and leadership shine through no matter the circumstance.  If you are in need of remote learning resources I have you covered. Just click HERE. "