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"Cult of Mac wanted to know how those iPads get into schools - which ones want them, how they get paid for, what schools are doing with them - so we caught up with Brayden Wardrop. Wardrop is a CTO for Utah-based company called iSchool (yeah, iKnow!), currently getting those tablet computers to schools in Texas, Colorado, Utah, Minesota and Nevada. Wardrop manages around 500 iPad2s, 50 Macbook Pros and 75 iMacs for Colorado school Legacy Academy, the kind of deployment that costs around a million dollars "for a total technology overhaul.""

"For every kid who is caught hiding beneath his covers with a flashlight and a novel at midnight, there is another who has to be begged and pleaded with to read.  And the latter might need a little extra-shall we call it encouragement?-to become a great reader. To help, we've rounded up a list of the top apps that not only teach essential reading skills but also motivate kids-even the most book-phobic-to read, read and read some more."

When is it cheating? When is it collaboration? This thoughtful article from Common Sense Media provides fine advice for parents (or teachers) on how to talk to kids about digital media and ethics.  

""ICE CREAM!" A group of six year olds are grinning as a small girl holds a laminated picture in her hands. Calmly, she puts it down and picks up the robot bee sitting in front of her. It has five buttons on top: forwards, left, right, back and go. The girl prods a few of them in turn, puts the bee down and presses go. It trundles across a colourful mat, turns left and stops on a picture of an ice cream cone. Everyone cheers. This short exercise has just taught her basic vocabulary, logic, sequencing and navigation. The robotic bee is one of four high-tech toys being trialled with pre-school children across Singapore. It is part of a new scheme - called Playmaker - using technology to give the next generation skills the they require. GI caught up with with the educators, technologists and government officials behind the scheme to find out more."

"One of the hottest new education books is The Innovator's Mindset by my friend George Couros, a division principal of Teaching and Learning with Parkland School Division, located in Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada. He's also a highly-sought-after teaching, learning, and leadership consultant. I caught up with George recently to talk about his book"

"About two decades ago The MIT Media lab introduced the concept of block-based programming. The idea was to develop an interface that allowed computer programs to be built by simply dragging and dropping puzzle blocks to represent complex programming constructs and commands. With this new method for teaching and learning computer science, the hugely popular Scratch platform was born. This approach lowered the bar for experimenting with programmatic thinking, making it possible for students to create interactive animations and small games without writing a single line of code. This simple concept removed the need to learn the syntax of a formal programming language, and made teaching and learning the basics of computer science accessible to younger learners and to teachers with no formal coding background. Outside of the classroom though, coding has always been, and still remains, a process of typing letters, numbers and symbols. This text-based programming, used in programming language such as C, Javascript and Python, requires coders to obey and conform to formal syntax. Despite the pain of dealing with typos in names of variables and inevitable syntax errors, no other coding method designed to be more "user friendly" has really caught on. Tools have been offered for managers to define business logic through a graphical user interface without writing lines of codes. Or for web developers to add interactive behaviors to their websites without learning Javascript. But in reality, neither of those substitute the power and flexibility of text-based programming. And with neither winning significant adoption, the demand for the classic skill of text-based coding continues to grow and grow."

"Makerspace is a rapidly growing trend in schools across the country, but to be honest, I've never implemented one myself, and I can't quite picture the logistics of orchestrating a Makerspace. How do kids know what to do? How can you find out what they're learning? How do you make time for that with all the other tasks crammed into the school day? And how do you keep the Makerspace from turning into a chaotic mess? I wanted to get answers to these questions from teachers who have extensive Makerspace experience, and not just at the secondary level. So, I invited Cheryl Nelson and Wendy Goldfein of Get Caught Engineering to share how they've managed Makerspaces in their own classrooms and helped other elementary and middle school teachers get started, too. Thank you, Cheryl, for sharing your experiences below! "

" ANJALI MULLANY 03.30.16 8:20 AM Two years ago, model Karlie Kloss enrolled in Flatiron School's two-week pre-college coding course and caught the programming bug. She started taking regular private coding classes with Flatiron dean and cofounder Avi Flombaum (who she already knew socially) and enjoyed the experience so much that she decided to underwrite 21 Kode with Karlie scholarships so other young women could take the same two-week pre-college coding course at Flatiron that had kicked off her own programming education. This summer, Kloss is taking it up a notch by launching her own Kode with Klossy coding camps for young women aged 13-18 in Los Angeles, New York, and her hometown of St. Louis, using Flatiron's Learn.co curriculum and learning platform. Unlike last summer's Kode with Karlie program, this year's 80 scholarship recipients will participate in their own program, separate from other Flatiron School students. By the end of the camp, which is being taught by independent instructors, students will have learned the fundamentals of Ruby on Rails and built their own web app. Kloss is not underwriting this latest round of scholarships herself but instead, in partnership with Flatiron School and CSNYC, has pulled together a number of partner brands as fiscal sponsors for the program."

"Our virtual reality project took shape during the 2017 iPad and Digital Education Summit [in French]. A high school geography teacher presented pedagogical examples of how to use virtual reality to visit tourist sites. One participant pointed out that virtual reality could also be used to create empathy. This idea immediately caught our attention, since our respective courses appeal to this notion and we face challenges in the acquisition and demonstration of this skill by the students."

"Jacqueline Prester was a self-proclaimed hustler in middle school. Mowing lawns, babysitting-she took the initiative to earn her own money. But she was also a responsible moneymaker, using the envelope system to budget every cent before she knew it was an actual budgeting strategy. Back then, her friends rolled their eyes when she tried to share her financial savvy. Fast forward two decades and Prester is a popular business and technology teacher at Mansfield High School in Massachusetts, working to give students real-life financial skills. Only this time her audience is keen to learn. (Her Personal Finance classes always reach their 28 student capacity.) Students are learning about personal finance, but not just because that's the name of the class. They're making it personal. Prester's passion is infectious, and the content she chooses-like Pathway To Financial Success created by Discovery Education and Discover-immerses students in authentic lessons with videos, interactive modules and real-world connections. Pathway To Financial Success Video: Being Financially Responsible EdSurge caught up with Prester to find out how she packs her classes with willing learners and to uncover her secret to finding compelling financial literacy content. She also shared how and why she helped pass a new Massachusetts bill focused on financial literacy."

"THE WHOLE WORLD is exhausted. And it's killing us. But particularly me. As I write this, I'm at TED 2019 in Vancouver, which is a weeklong marathon of talks and workshops and coffee meetings and experiences and demos and late-night trivia contests and networking, networking, networking. Meanwhile, I'm sick as a dog with a virus I caught from my 3-year-old, I'm on deadline for what feels like a bazillion stories, and I'm pregnant, which means I need coffee but can't have too much, and need sleep but can only lay on my left side, and can't breathe without sitting propped up with a pillow anyway, since I can't safely take any cold medication. According to neuroscientist Matthew Walker, I'm doing serious damage to my health-and life-by not sleeping enough."

"Starting to integrate technology can be intimidating.  So many choices, new ideas being shared all of the time through social media, blogs, books, Teacher Professional Development, and more. I find the best time to walk away with new ideas is right after a big event dedicated to edtech. With conference season upon us, maybe you recently attended a conference or edcamp or read something and now have a long list of new ideas which can be overwhelming. Or maybe you just are looking for something to change in your classroom or school and need some quick ideas for new, engaging elements to implement in your classroom or with your faculty even for professional development."

"Our recent article on reading levels and the dangers of using strictly prescribed leveling systems in libraries for young readers sparked much dialogue and debate. One of the most popular and widely used reading systems is the "A to Z" gradient, developed by Irene C. Fountas, professor in the School of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, and Gay Su Pinnell, professor in the School of Teaching and Learning at Ohio State University. Both researchers have been adamant that their leveling system was designed as "a teacher's tool, not a child's label." We caught up with Fountas and Pinnell, who jointly gave their perspective on leveling, libraries, reading comprehension, and what they say to districts mandating leveled collections. "

"Between school closures, learning loss, intensified educator burnout, widespread staff shortages and increased stressors at home, it's been hard not to focus on the negatives in education this year. In fact, it's human nature to get caught up in what went wrong-an innate survival mechanism called "negativity bias" vigilantly draws our attention to worries and risks so we can better remember and avoid threats. While I'm appreciative that my ancestors were wary folks, in 2021, I often saw myself and others trapped in this negative mindset, always tallying the losses and waiting for the next bad thing to happen. However, in my work with educators this year, I began to notice that some were able to metabolize this negativity and keep themselves and their classrooms positive and adaptive despite the obvious hindrances. Interviews with elementary classroom teachers spanning a variety of settings and grade levels revealed that these resilient educators utilized a common strategy: they practiced gratitude in their everyday lives."

"Carol Dweck's work on "growth mindset" has caught the fancy of organizations the world over, and why wouldn't it? The core supposition of a growth mindset is that an individual's talents and capabilities can evolve over time; at its core are the underlying beliefs that people hold about intelligence and learning. It is with deep sadness that we report that the function charged with building this growth mindset in most organizations remains hostage to deeply "fixed mindset" thinking. Although the idea of a growth mindset is commonly discussed in corporate learning programs, many leaders adopt a fixed mindset when it comes to envisioning the learning function's role and capabilities. To quote Dweck, "Our work environments, too, can be full of fixed mindset triggers." Business leaders need to shift their views of what the learning function is and what it can do."

"Welcome to the new age of academic dishonesty. A college professor in South Carolina is sounding the alarm after catching a student using ChatGPT - a new artificial intelligence chat bot that can quickly digest and spit out written information about a vast array of subjects - to write an essay for his philosophy class. The weeks-old technology, released by OpenAI and readily available to the public, comes as yet another blow to higher learning, already plagued by rampant cheating. "Academia did not see this coming. So we're sort of blindsided by it," Furman University assistant philosophy professor Darren Hick told The Post. "As soon as I reported this on Facebook, my [academic] friends said, 'Yeah, I caught one too.'" "

This is a reality for many students outside of an urban environment.