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"You see it everywhere in K-12. Kindergarteners design toys for their friends to practice empathy, while learning to use a saw and glue-gun along the way. Second graders deepen their understanding of character traits while designing and sewing puppets to represent a character in a folk-tale. In high school physics, students make wind turbines in order to internalize an understanding of how magnetism can create electricity. The "it" I'm referring to is "Making," and simply put, Making is any activity where people create something, often with their hands. I often define Making by looking at what people bring to the Maker Faire, which does include more technical aspects like 3D printing, physical computing and programming. But Making also includes woodworking, growing food, making art and crafts."

Most schools were built upon the idea that knowledge and teachers are scarce. When you have limited access to information and you want to deliver what you do have to every citizen in an age with little communication technology, you build what schools are today: age-grouped, discipline-separated classrooms run by an expert adult who can manage the successful completion of the curriculum by a hundred or so students at a time. We mete out that knowledge in discrete parts, carefully monitoring students progress through one-size-fits all assessments, deeming them "educated" when they have proven their mastery at, more often than not, getting the right answer and, to a lesser degree, displaying certain skills that show a "literacy" in reading and writing. Most of us know these systems intimately, and for 120 years or so, they've pretty much delivered what we've asked them to.

"When I heard the news that Phil Schlechty had passed away it was sudden and I felt sadness. I've never met Phil but I've been deeply impacted by his work throughout the years. You see it's one of the things I'm learning about education and writing in this whole connected place: We get to know people through their work, we get to know people through their passions, and we get to know people who we actually don't know face-to-face. Schlechty's work around engagement is one of the most enlightening and simple frameworks for educators to use. What I found fascinating about his levels of engagement is that I could see myself in the classroom working towards compliance instead of engagement."

"Earlier in the year I created a Scavenger Hunt for our Open House. It was a HUGE hit in our classroom. My kids keep asking me when they will get to scan again, so I have been working on a few new ways to integrate the QR codes into our classroom as well as looking through a few things my team created last year."

"Recently I've been spending more time in Carrie Both's 1:1 iPad kindergarten classroom. I was so excited to observe how easily these students were able to navigate around an iPad. Not only were they able to easily find, pick up and turn on their device (using a numeration system and strategic placement around the classroom), but they also could do everything from create screencasts to use the AppleTV to mirror their work to a projection via AirPlay. "

"Every new classroom project must satisfy available resources within three dimensions: 1) time, 2) money and 3) physical space. The 2016 New Media Consortium Horizon Report for K-12 Education anticipates that makerspaces will be highly adopted in schools across the country within the next year. Maker education and makerspaces are the hot topic in STEM education right now. Over the last year I have worked with many teachers in a professional development environment who are simultaneously enthusiastic about the idea of a makerspace, and frustrated by the limitations of space in their schedule, budget and classroom layout. We all want a makerspace, but how do we make that happen within these constraints?"

"When teaching with digital natives in a digital world, one question facing many educators revolves around integrating technology to help facilitate learning: How do you work technology into the pedagogy, instead of just using something cool? That task can be especially daunting in language arts literacy classrooms where reading and writing skill development is the crux of daily lessons. However, as 1:1 technology initiatives roll out, integrating technology into the classroom is our reality. With hundreds of sites, apps, Chrome extensions, and platforms available, choosing the right ones can seem overwhelming. As an eighth-grade language arts teacher, I've experienced this myself. Following are four tools that can help provide immediate formative assessment data as well as top-of-the-rotation feedback to help students develop personal learning goals."

"What are the latest emerging trends in education? As trends to do, these are changing almost yearly. Consider how quiet iPads in the classroom have been recently, whereas three years ago they were going to replace teachers and were (unsarcastically) compared to magic. While mobile devices like the iPad can indeed parallel a kind of magic in the learning process, it obviously has to 'fit' into a progressive supporting ecology of assessment, curriculum, and instruction. With that in mind, we've created a list of 15 (the graphic plus 3 bonus items below) new ideas every teacher should try. Not all will fit or work-again, it depends on the ecology of the classroom, school, and so on. But each of these ideas below-some learning models, some concepts, and some technologies-can be transformational for students, and your teaching."

" In addition, it was my students who shared how much they loved how fast they were able to acquire the information and how they could easily put it into their project work. During inquiry learning , the iPads are so intuitive and as a result enable the learning to be so seamless."

"This is a book for primary school teachers of English written by primary school teachers of English. It brings together the experience and expertise of teachers from around the world to provide a range of stimulating and exciting classroom activities for the primary classroom. There are 50 tried and trusted activities which have been refined and improved over the years by teachers working in diverse contexts and environments. Children will enjoy practising their English through these stimulating and motivating activities."

"Think back 20 years. Pay phones still worked, and only doctors carried pagers. Laptops weighed as much as bowling balls, and few of us had Internet access. In fact, much of what we now consider commonplace -- Google, email, WiFi, texting -- was not even possible. If that was 20 years ago, where are we going in the next 20? We are all going mobile! Tablets, smartphones, Chromebooks -- and yet, these devices only serve as the most recent iteration of mobile technology in the classroom. Remember Netbooks? How about those old-school Macbooks that looked like toilet seat covers? What if we go back further? What about chalk and slate?"

"The consistent and effective use of Descriptive feedback in classrooms has become a popular strategy due to its positive influence on student learning. Based on the research of John Hattie, my colleague, Jason Lynn has given me an in-depth look at Hattie's work and how we can use it in the classroom. Although the research suggests that providing students with descriptive feedback has the largest influence on student learning, it can be difficult for teachers to find more time to provide this meaningful assessment as learning and assessment for learning tool with regularity."

"Teachers in today's world have finally begun to embrace technology. This makes sense seeing as we live in a world where the ability to work with technology is key in virtually any profession. Making sure students are equipped for today's world is a huge part of the job. In fact, teachers that don't do so are in many ways doing their students a disservice. And while most teachers now use technology pretty heavily in their classrooms, there are constantly new technologies that you can implement in creative ways. There are a few, though, that have never really caught on the way they might have. Here are six great examples-each potentially powerful learning technologies for you and your classroom."

"Using multimedia is part and parcel of students work in the classroom. Several classroom projects now include curating resources, using images and videos. However, the use of such media materials is regulated and does require complying by certain rules and guidelines. The wrong idea that many of our students hold about using media in class must change. They need to learn that something being accessible, downloadable and free does not mean it is ok to use it with no restrictions. For instance, when using images and pictures from the web, students need to learn how to properly give credit to their owners. The graphic below is a wonderful flow chart created byddd to help teachers teach their students about how to properly credit images they use. Enjoy"

"Sally Hurd Smith, a veteran teacher, held up her brand-new tablet computer and shook it as she said, "I don't want this thing to take over my classroom." It was late June, a month before the first day of school. In a sixth-grade classroom in Greensboro, N.C., a dozen middle-school social-studies teachers were getting their second of three days of training on tablets that had been presented to them as a transformative educational tool. Every student and teacher in 18 of Guilford County's 24 middle schools would receive one, 15,450 in all, to be used for class work, homework, educational games - just about everything, eventually. "

"Why Minecraft? Every day, more and more teachers are using the world-building game Minecraft to engage and educate. The game is a true phenomenon and gamers young and old are using it in countless creative ways. Practitioners of Games Based Education have realized the potential and have embraced Minecraft in classrooms around the world. Now you can too! What is MinecraftEdu? MinecraftEdu is the collaboration of a small team of educators and programmers from the United States and Finland. We are working with Mojang AB of Sweden, the creators of Minecraft, to make the game affordable and accessible to schools everywhere. We have also created a suite of tools that make it easy to unlock the power of Minecraft in YOUR classroom."

"ducators have lots of ideas about how to improve education, to better reach learners and to give students the skills they'll need in college and beyond the classroom. But often those conversations remain between adults. The real test of any idea is in the classroom, though students are rarely asked about what they think about their education. A panel of seven students attending schools that are part of the "deeper learning" movement gave their perspective on what it means for them to learn and how educators can work to create a school culture that fosters creativity, collaboration, trust, the ability to fail, and perhaps most importantly, one in which students want to participate."