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"Recently I have been inspired by listening to some great speakers at some of the Apple events I have been privileged to attend.  Bill Rankin in particular spoke a lot of sense and it got me thinking about how education needs to adapt to the changing world. The traditional style of education is based around content, teachers deliver the content and students learn it.  This is changing, slowly, but it is getting there.  Schools are starting to focus on the context, what does the information mean in the world that they live in? The next stage for me has to be creation."

"There are thousands of different ways to introduce programming to your class in fun and interactive ways for the upcoming Hour of Code (December 8-14). While most apps and tutorials do require internet connected computers or mobile devices, it does not mean that schools without this level of technology cannot get involved. In fact, coding with paper can be an even more engaging and meaningful way to introduce students to early programming concepts."

"With iOS 9, Apple has introduced a new feature called Multitasking that takes the iPad to the next level. By running two apps side by side, you can be more productive (or have more fun) than ever before. While this feature is only fully compatible with the iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4 and iPad Pro (and in limited ways on some older iPads), it's an incredibly powerful feature that might be worth the upgrade. (Note that Multitasking does not work on any model of iPhone.) Multitasking comes in three forms: you can have two apps running fully side by side in Split View mode; you can peek at an app and use it in limited ways with Slide Over; and you can run a video in a window all its own in a mode called Picture in Picture."

"A student-centered classroom allows students to be an integral part of the assessment development process. This doesn't necessarily mean every assessment is created and designed by students, but it does mean there is a collaborative and joint venture of teachers and students in the planning and implementation stages of assessments. Students who help to design and create their assessments will find the assessments to be more meaningful, and typically students end up creating assessments that are more rigorous than what teachers would have created anyway..."

"Now that you have such a good curated list of the best storytelling apps and tools how do you go about teaching your students to create good stories? A good story does have to abide by certain rules and these rules are learned through practice. Andrew Stanton, the Pixar writer and director behind both Toy Story and WALL-E, talks some of these rules in his popular TED Talk, The clues to a great story."

"Forming and supporting professional learning groups can be particularly important in maker-centered contexts, as maker-based activities often occupy a precarious space in the structure and curriculum of traditional schools. That maker education is not yet a formal discipline and does not have the backing of a professional and organized network makes it especially important to develop learning communities that scaffold and connect educators who often work in isolated siloes."

"How does the Maker Movement Power STEM Skills and student curiosity? Take a look at this Australian infographic for the why and how to implement a maker space and adopt maker education at your school! "

"If you build it, will they come? Just because you create a makerspace (PDF) in your school doesn't guarantee that your community will embrace it. Students who have had all personal choice removed by traditional educational models can be passive and feel overwhelmed when faced with real-world problems or design challenges. Academic passivity is common in schools where students swallow content and regurgitate it on multiple-choice tests. Students simply want to know how to get the "A." This type of learning does not stick. Teachers may find the role of facilitator (or "guide on the side") uncomfortable if they are used to being the "sage on the stage." New technology in these spaces may be intimidating. Teachers need encouragement and professional development to change their mindsets and become facilitators of learning. How do you change your culture and ensure that your shiny new makerspace will empower students to acquire 21st-century skills? How do you change the culture of student apathy to encourage a mindset of doing? Follow these steps and design tips to build a culture of making and active learning."

"Instructional rigor is a concept we can agree is important, despite the debate about the use of the word itself. Rigor is "creating an environment in which each student is expected to learn at high levels; each student is supported so he or she can learn at high levels; and each student demonstrates learning at high levels (Blackburn, 2008)." But how does technology relate to rigor? As with any instructional tool, educational technology is critical to increasing rigor in the classroom.  There are five ways technology can be used to increase rigor."

"Want to turn your kid into the next Ray Eames or Errol Morris? MoMA Design Store-that wondrous place brimming with all things sleek, modern, and covetable-has you covered. Here are seven tools for engendering the sort of creative play that does wonders for a growing mind."

"There's no doubt that students find making to be a creative and engaging activity. But as they tinker, design and invent, are they actually learning anything? Making is too young a phenomenon to have generated a broad research base to answer this question. The literature that does exist comes from enthusiastic champions of making, rather than disinterested investigators. But there are two well-established lines of research within psychology and cognitive science that can inform how we understand making and help us ensure that making leads to learning. Taken together, these two strands of empirical evidence provide the best guide we presently have for maximizing the learning potential of maker activities."

"So, then, what does it really take to be a modern teacher? This term has been cropping up since the general consensus seems to be that the term '21st century teacher' is outdated and a bit awkward. Some make the same argument for the 'modern teacher' mind you but that's about semantics. You want to know what it takes to be a progressive and always-learning teacher who knows how to get students to think, contemplate, and explore. Well, here goes!"

"Gone are the days when kids would get in trouble for passing notes in class. Today's youngsters are much more sophisticated, technologically speaking, than those who grew up in the days of flip phones and CD players - let alone those whose only access to a phone growing up was a spin-dial one. This means there's a lot more texting, tweeting, and Facebooking on smartphones in your average high school or college classroom than ever before. Does this also mean that kids today are way more distracted by the bombardment of information reaching them via their tablets and iPhones? A new study out of the National Communication Association wanted to find out whether increased smartphone and social media use in class impacted student learning - and what they found was that it had both negative and positive effects. In the study, researchers analyzed kids who were using phones in class to respond to text messages - both relevant and irrelevant to the class material. They measured the type of messages and the frequency of them, and found that students who were texting about the material actually scored higher on multiple choice tests about the subject than those who were texting about non-class related things."

"One of the things I was keen to do this year in setting up an in-house research centre at Wellington College was to have a small number of students partner with us on our project with Harvard faculty on Growth Mindsets and Grit. A key point for me was what does this research actually look like in the classroom and and at the level of the student? Another goal was to have them help us in designing a survey by having them pilot test some of the more problematic questions so we could get as reliable data as possible. We asked the students to read some of the literature and research in these areas and then had a series of group discussion with them where we discovered a huge range of things that was really helpful in helping us understand Growth Mindsets from multiple perspectives. "

"Coding is having it's 15 minutes of fame. Journalists regularly quote facts about the shortage of computer programmers in the US, entrepreneurs fund coding camps for low opportunity kids and even the President has given learning to code a thumbs up. For many parents and teachers this new focus on learning to code feels like an overhyped fad that will be replaced any day now by "learning particle physics" or "learning solar energy storage." And does anyone really believe that turning a whole generation of kids into programmers would be a good outcome for society? What about artists, doctors, musicians and mechanics? What about chefs, writers, electricians and plumbers? Why exactly do kids need to learn to code?"

"With the announcement today of an Apple Special Event scheduled to take place on September 9th 2015, rumours have been making the rounds on the Internet for months as to what new products we can expect to see unveiled. One thing we can be pretty certain about is the release of iOS 9. It was first unveiled and demoed at WWDC 2015, with a full release touted for fall of this year. I've been playing with with the iOS 9 beta on a secondary iPad Air for a couple of weeks now to get to grips with it ahead of this. It's not radically different in the way iOS 7 was, however what it does is make the operating system feel even more polished and refined. In the main, there are lots of features which have each been made a bit better. However this adds up to make a noticeable difference! Rather than focus on all of them (there are just too many), I'll focus on some of the key new features and improvements and in particular what they may bring to iPad classrooms."

"Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology unveiled a new 3D printing method on Friday that employs transparent glass as precursor instead of plastic. The method, called 3DGP, works basically the same way that conventional 3D printing does though the team found that they could modulate the light transmission, reflection and refraction qualities by precisely varying the thickness of the print."

"Rigor is a fundamental piece of any learning experience. It is also among the most troublesome due to its subjectivity. What does it mean? What are its characteristics? Rigorous for whom? And more importantly, how can you use to promote understanding? Barbara Blackburn, author of "Rigor is not a 4-Letter Word," shared 5 "myths" concerning rigor, and they are indicative of the common misconceptions: that difficult, dry, academic, sink-or-swim learning is inherently rigorous."

"The point was simple: The more frequent the update in direction, the easier it is to adjust and locate one's goal. Even if the student had a serious disadvantage (i.e. the professor could scurry away), the feedback loop was sufficient guidance. Take the analogy back to academic assessments: How often are students updated about their performance in a typical class? How informative is feedback? Assessment software is not the answer. It is only a component. The underpinning instructional strategy necessary to capture technology's potential to accelerate learning is a micro formative assessment. We need to integrate small checks for understanding into almost every stage of our classroom agendas. And it can't be a teacher asking students, "Does that make sense? Any questions?""