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"December is one of the most exhausting months of the year for teachers. The days are shorter. The weather grows colder and (at least here in Oregon) wetter. Students are anxious - whether it's a buzzing excitement for vacation or a sense of dread that some kids feel in homes that are unsafe during the holidays. And teachers are tired. They're tired of redirecting behaviors and tired of the mid-year pressure of the test and simply tired of the sheer energy it takes to be a teacher. It's no wonder that so many teachers begin playing holiday movies around this time of year. They want to create a sense of fun and escape and enjoyment, and a motion picture promises exactly that. Maybe that's okay. Maybe that's a part of creating a culture of joy. But for me, movies always fell flat. For my first few years, I showed a movie the day before the winter break. However, within minutes, kids were disengaged. They were passive. It wasn't special. My students could go home and watch a movie whenever they felt like it. It had me wondering . . . was there something that they could do in my class that they couldn't do anywhere else? Was this actually the chance to do something epic and make something memorable?"

"I used to teach a class called photojournalism. I usually referred to it as "digital journalism," because people assumed we were a photography class. Students created videos, podcasts, documentaries, and blogs with the goal of sharing their work with an authentic audience. On the surface, this might not seem all that practical. After all, newspapers are slashing their budgets and laying off staff. Why teach an elective class in a subject that doesn't connect to a decent job market? But here's the thing: whether we feel like it or not, we are all citizen journalists. We are all researchers. We are all sharing information online and publishing it on social media. We are all curating and producing content even if only a fragment of the population creates videos, podcasts, or blog posts. Social media is a fusion of space (social) and publishing (medium). Although it can simply feel like a place to hang out, every social media platform uses elements of traditional media. Just look at the terms: subscribers, news feed, followers, publish."

"Work based skills are changing as more and more jobs are displaced by digital technologies.  Software, apps and online technology such as Uber, Airbnb, Legal Zoom and TurboTax to name a few has already had an impact on many professions.  Online shopping has eliminated tens of thousands of retail store positions. And with self-driving vehicles on the way, how many taxi, trucking, express delivery-and even aviation jobs-will go the way of the telephone switchboard operator? If history is a reliable guide, the technologies that are eliminating one set of jobs will create others: jobs that require twenty-first century-mainly digital-skills.  The explosion in industrial robotics, for example, is eliminating thousands of assembly line jobs but it is creating a demand for people who can design, manufacture, program and maintain those machines.  The questions are -  what will the net impact on jobs be and how well are our schools preparing young people for those new, higher skilled jobs as we head toward the fourth industrial revolution?"

"Creating great infographics need not be a chore, no matter if you're a teacher or a student. Taking information and presenting it in an artful and visually appealing way has never been easier, thanks to the infographic tools you can use today. Before you dive in, here are some quick tips: Collect your data. If you have been collecting data, compile it all in a spreadsheet. Decide the best way to present your data (flyer-style, bar charts, line charts, Venn diagrams, histogram, scatter plot charts, flow charts, timelines, etc.). Design a rough sketch so you don't end up flying blind. Pick your app and get to work! Now that you've got basic tips on how to get started, it's time to get creative. Here are 9 great infographic tools to help you get started creating great infographics."

"Dumpster diving and dollar stores. Purse-shaped post-it's and animal lubricant. When you're building a makerspace on a budget, you learn that resources are everywhere-and they aren't always what you expect.  Dumpster diving and dollar stores. Purse-shaped post-it's and animal lubricant. For three years I and my fellow cofounders Kim Martin and Beth Compton, have created, developed, and run Canada's first mobile makerspace-the MakerBus. As an entirely community-driven (pun intended) makerspace, we have had to master doing a lot with very little. As we have learned, while money is extremely useful, no amount of it can replace the value of an engaged, creative community. Below I share some ideas for creating makerspaces at various price points, offering advice for building a $100 and a (nearly) $0 community makerspace."

"At its simplest, making is the act of creating. Making can spur creativity, curiosity, collaboration, and confidence. Consider what can happen when making becomes an integral part of learning. Maker education harnesses the power of making to create an engaging and motivating learning experience. It is an interactive, open-ended approach that is learner-driven and allows for the time and space needed to develop diverse skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking. At Maker Ed, we believe that the design of any learning opportunity must recognize and celebrate every learner's ability to experience and influence their world. Maker education can achieve this ideal because it embodies these core values and goals."

"BROOKLYN, New York - I'm sitting on the floor at The Academy of Talented Scholars (PS 682) in Bensonhurst, watching kindergarteners create robots on an iPad. It's one of the cutest things I've ever seen, and I don't even like children. The exercise is part of the curriculum led by co-teachers Stacy Butsikares and Allison Bookbinder, focused on helping the 5- and 6-year-old students come up with ways to solve problems. The first step is to identify a problem happening in the school. The kindergarteners come up with ideas like kids horsing around in the lunch line, or not throwing trash away properly, or making too much noise at recess. Students are instructed to create a robot that could solve the problem, and draw the robot on a piece of paper. Once the robot is sketched out, the real fun begins. Using the app The Robot Factory, these pint-sized problem-solvers bring their robot ideas to life."

"Excitement about school makerspaces has been in the air, but many educators eager to create hands-on learning spaces in their schools still aren't sure how to get started or why it's worth the effort. New Canaan High School librarian Michelle Luhtala recently jumped headfirst into creating a makerspace in her library and documented what she learned, how her space changed and how it affected students along the way. Her experience was very different from elementary school librarian Andy Plemmons, whose makerspace started with a 3-D printer obtained through a grant and blossomed into a core teaching resource at his school."

"I wrote in my book about the power of using word clouds in the classroom. They are such a good tool for activities linked to literacy, problem solving and much more. The classic Wordle and Tagxedo still rank highly in my estimation but as more and more use of technology moves to tablets and other mobile devices; so the search for a decent word cloud generator moves from the desktop to the mobile device too. Over time, more and more Apps have become available on the App Store and so in this post I'll explore my top six Apps for creating word clouds using iOS devices. Note, not all of these apps have Android alternatives although some have."

mysimpleshow create explainer videos https://t.co/BCplYRXxSu #elt #edtech #edtools #esl #efl #k12 #ell #clil

"According to Wikipedia, a QR code is " a specific matrix bar code ( or two-dimensional code ), readable by dedicated QR bar code readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL, or other data." Teachers can use this technology for a wide variety of educational purposes. In this excellent video tutorial, Red Squirrel demonstrates 11 ways you can use QR codes in your class (e.g: create handouts with links to online content; enrich your content by adding links to online videos, documents and PDFs where students can access more information about topics taught; create QR codes that can show answers to a specific exercise or instructions on how to carry out a certain activity …etc, make books interactive and many more)."

"Today, technology is becoming more and more prevalent in education, and that means students are losing the ability to create and invent with their hands because they now have technology such as iPads that do all the creative work for them. Makerspaces are popping up in schools for just that reason - to help students learn by creating and inventing their own learning!"

"In our innovative classrooms across America, students are using technology in ways that were unheard of just ten short years ago. In a small elementary school in Northwest Baltimore, students use their Makerspace to create 3D printed materials, learn to code and engage in other making activities. In another school in Philadelphia, a student fulfills his senior capstone project requirement by creating a "Smart Beehive" that uses sensors and a camera to track the health of a bee colony. While there are some schools of education that prepare pre-service teachers to excel in these types of technology-rich environments on their first day of in-service teaching, there is still room for growth in our teacher preparation programs as a whole, particularly as more schools shift towards digital learning. "Education-Creative Commons" by NEC Corporation of America licensed under CC BY 2.0" This is why the 2016 National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) asks us to refine educational technology's place in teacher preparation programs. It makes the bold statement that "no new teacher exiting a preparation program should require remediation by his or her hiring district."¹"

"96 percent of Americans use the internet daily, and 62 percent of working Americans rely on the internet to do their jobs. We live in an internet age - an age that requires specific skills. Digital literacy skills have become essential to academic, career and interpersonal success. Digital literacy is defined as the ability to find, evaluate, share and create content using the internet - but it's much more than that. Digital literacy skills (also referred to as "21st century learning skills") have permeated the classroom, becoming requirements for both teachers and students. To address this need, we worked with education expert Leah Anne Levy to create USC Rossier's Toolkit for Digitally-Literate Teachers. This toolkit provide teachers and school administrators with how-to guides, actionable strategies and real-life examples of the benefits of digital literacy in the classroom."

"Besides the multitude of resources we have covering reviews of hundreds of educational apps, from time to time we create lists featuring our favourite picks from the piles. Our purpose is to provide teachers with tested educational iPad apps that they can try out in their instruction. The last thing to ask an overburdened teacher is to spend hours in iTunes apps store searching  for apps to use with students. We do the curation job for you and it is your turn to integrate and make the best of these resources in your teaching. That being said, here is a handy visual we created a few months ago featuring some of the best educational iPad apps to consider in your teaching. We know our selection is subjective and many other wonderful apps are missing but for practical reasons we only included a limited number of 20 apps. More educational apps are to be featured in future collections"

"The Classroom Evolved: Creating an Active Learning Environment"

"TinyTap, Moments Into Games 1.0 allows parents and their kids the opportunity to turn the moments they share together into personal educational games. Creating a game is super easy - add a photo, record some questions, trace the answers and you're ready to play! "

How to Create Social Media Guidelines for Your School http://t.co/11t78TNg8g

"The iPad is the professional artists dream. No more carrying around massive portfolios of work - you can just carry around all of your work, analogue (photos of your work) or digital (created on your iPad) all on your iPad. It fits in with Art education in that way too. Students can photograph, blog, eportfolio, document, review, collaborate and share their artwork using iPad and that's before you even start thinking about the plethora of Art apps for drawing, designing and creating. There are lots of apps that support the teaching of Art and many many apps that support learning too."