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"I have recently discovered Twitter, and it has supercharged my professional development. The reason? Twitter education chats! Two months ago I would have said, "No, I don't have a Twitter account." I may even have been able to vaguely explain why I really don't have space or reason for Twitter in my life. It certainly did not seem relevant to my work as an educator. However, during the last two months, my perspective has completely changed. I now eagerly ask fellow educators, "Have you experienced Twitter education chats? They are amazing!""

"Jean Piaget once said that "play is the answer to how anything new comes about." As educators in the digital age, it is important that we embrace the power of play in our classrooms. One of the ways that we can redefine our practice is by using game education in our schools. Game education is a powerful way to engage 21st century learners in a variety of cognitively complex tasks that lead to deeper levels of understanding. Educational games help students to learn about certain subjects, expand their thinking on specific concepts, and reinforce skill development while they play while increasing engagement, empathy and excellence in the classroom."

"As a follow-up to that post, I am amplifying my call to action to say that I believe it is the responsibility of every educator in this era of learning to share . . . resources, ideas, success, challenges, ahas, student insights, anything education related. Sharing takes on many forms. Educators can talk to colleagues, write blogs, tweet, present at conferences - both virtually and face to face, talk to the media, and/or create a media product - video, podcast, photo essay - and post online."

An unavoidable element of the discourse around educational disadvantage or equality is how we define and assess equality. One definition will see this as being in equality of access to education, funding for education and/or resources. Such an approach has largely been seen in government funding models however subtle variations on this theme have resulted in significant differences in resulting policies.

Education exists in an uneasy domain and the teaching professional is forced to navigate between a multitude of conflicting tensions. Our education systems are dominated by abundance of voices all shouting for attention and offering a solution to the problems they have diagnosed. Each individual claims expertise and insights gained from years as a student is sufficient experience to allow one to speak with authority. - Educators need to find their voice. 

A significant shift continues to occur within global education markets. It is signified by the manner in which it makes sense to speak of a global education market. It is driven by neo-liberalism and the expansion of markets into all aspects of our lives and it is made possible by manipulation of the third messaging system within the educational triad of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. It is a drive towards accountable, comparable and productive education systems fine-tuned to maximise the return on investment and provide industry with the workforce it desires. What must be asked is how does this trend impact students and are these the forces that should be driving change in our education systems?

"Minecraft in Education is on the cusp a new era.  A new dawn of integration into classrooms and learning environments across the globe and we eagerly await the launch of the full, licensed product that schools will stump up valuable cash for.  The marketing has been done, the conferences have been spoken at and the webinars delivered.  You've experienced the "wow", so what about the "How"?  While for many will mean "How do I get started?" or even "How do I do X?", for me it has led me to ask… …"How would I do Minecraft Education Edition?".  With a blank canvas to work on and a bottomless pit of resources, what would my Minecraft Education Edition look like?  For me there are 7 C's that are at the very core of my vision of Minecraft in Education.  Read on and let's reignite this discussion of growth and development starting, as every learning experience should, with the curriculum."

"I've been playing Minecraft Education-mostly with students or other teachers-for about four years now. My experience came to a head two weekends ago, when I attended MINECON, the annual Minecraft convention and fan fest held this year in Anaheim on September 24-25. I go to a lot of educational technology conferences, but I don't have a lot of experience with "fandom conventions." Experiencing MINECON 2016 as an educator, I found it to be a melding of the two-and a clear indicator as to why the education world is obsessed with Minecraft."

"Thanks to the successes of campaigns like the Hour of Code and this week's Computer Science Education Week, educators, policymakers, and families around the country are realizing the value of coding and computer science in K-12 education. But how do "code," "computer science," and, "computational thinking," fit together? What is motivating their introduction into schools, and how might they change education?"

"I love educational technology. When technologies were first available online, I was an early adopter, and often got brutally criticized by administrators and colleagues in my K-6 settings for having students use the internet for research, use web tools, create webpages in wikis, and work virtually with schools in other states and countries (for example, see their work from 2008 at http://weewebwonders.pbworks.com/). Now, similar work is often seen as innovative by colleagues. Boy, have times thankfully changed, but I have not. I still am an early adopter of technologies in that I believe many can benefit students in their learning. As many in education know, commentary about ChatGPT is appearing on the news, social media, and the internet. As I always do, I am exploring its use in my classes (elementary-level gifted education). This post describes its use in education from the perspectives of ChatGPT, itself, and from a handful of educators. Later, I describe and show the work of my students. I conclude with tools for detecting machine-generated text, and provide a parting shot."

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"Please take the following survey and share your thoughts, then pass the link on to your colleagues and friends. I'm writing a new column for the Appealing Apps for Educators series in Appolicious and I'd love to get gather the opinions of educators and students on their favorite apps that they've used this year. These apps do not have to be new to the education market this year. Vote for one app per category only; apps can be listed in multiple categories. You also are not required to submit an app in every category. K12 classes may want to consider discussing the following categories, and making one group entry. NOTE: This is not a survey for app developers to promote their own work. Do not take this survey if you are not a K12 student, a K12 class or educator."

"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"

"The following is an excerpt from the book The App Generation: How Today's Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis. Let's dive directly into the world of educational apps. Our survey suggests that the majority - one might even say, the vast majority - of educational apps encourage pursuit of the goals and means of traditional education by digital means. They constitute convenient, neat, sometimes even seductive pathways to accomplish what were already goals in an earlier era: mastering concepts, learning arithmetical operations, identifying geographical locations or historical figures or key biological or chemical or physical processes. We could dub them "digital textbooks" or "lectures" or "pre-programmed educational conversations." Decades ago, major behaviorist B. F. Skinner called for teaching machines that would automate the traditional classroom, allow students to proceed at their own rate, provide positive feedback on correct answers, and either repeat a missed item or present that item via another pathway. Those sympathetic to Skinner's brand of psychology and to its associated educational regimen would easily recognize many apps today and would likely nod in approval at their slick, seductive interfaces."

"Below are some of the new educational video resources I have recently discovered. I am adding them to the list of top video resources I have compiled here in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning. The purpose is to help teachers and students lay their hands on some useful educational documentaries, tutorials, clips and many more."

"This is the last post in a series of posts on Tony Vincent's " iPad As Teacher's Pet". In today's post, I am sharing with you a list of some of the top educational iPad apps that teachers favour to use at school. The apps you will see below are based on a March 2014 survey delivered on Twitter to 558 iPad-using teachers. These teachers were asked about their favourite apps to use in school and they came up with this selection. As an educational app reviewer, I find this selection to be highly relevant and contains the best educational apps that teachers should know about. The apps are arranged in order of priority."

"We believe in a future where every child leaves school knowing how to code. It's not realistic to expect educators to achieve this on their own, developers and the wider community must help. The amazing thing is that many developers believe in our cause and want work with educators to make this happen- someone just needs to bring them together. That's where we step in. We provide a platform where educators can post code-related projects, request a custom project or pick from our growing base of pre-defined projects. Developers can browse projects in their local area and connect with the educators to take discussions further and bring authentic learning opportunities to the classroom. So, we're currently looking for our founding partners to get the ball rolling. If you know anyone or would like to become a founding partner, please get in touch with us (team@codefuture.org)!"

"Googler to Googler places employees from across departments into teaching roles. Classes taught Googler to Googler-everything from kickboxing to parenting- are initiated and designed by employees. Telling your employees that you want them to learn is different than asking them to promote that culture themselves. Giving employees teaching roles makes learning part of the way employees work together. It's a remarkable thing to put someone in teaching mode. In a way, you get to see the best of them. (Here's A Google Perk Any Company Can Imitate: Employee-To-Employee Learning)"

"The maker zeitgeist has evolved far beyond the day when an educator might set objects-say, a box of robotic LEGOs-in a library corner and call it a "maker lab." Educators are now focusing on how the maker movement can be truly meaningful: it's not about where making is happening, but about how creating, experimenting, and collaborating impact education. In addition, some high schoolers tinkering their free periods away can discover a passion-sometimes leading to a future educational focus or even scholarship money. "The maker movement…encourages a growth mind-set, which tolerates risk and failure and maybe even encourages it," says Laura Fleming, library media specialist with the New Milford (NJ) High School. "It has been the great equalizer within, and in some ways against, our modern education system by allowing opportunities for creativity and innovation to take place through informal learning.""

"In his new book To Sell is Human, author Daniel Pink reports that education is one of the fastest growing job categories in the country. And with this growth comes the opportunity to change the way educators envision their roles and their classrooms. Guided by findings in educational research and neuroscience, the emphasis on cognitive skills like computation and memorization is evolving to include less tangible, non-cognitive skills, like collaboration and improvisation. Jobs in education, Pink said in a recent interview, are all about moving other people, changing their behavior, like getting kids to pay attention in class; getting teens to understand they need to look at their future and to therefore study harder. At the center of all this persuasion is selling: educators are sellers of ideas."

"Last summer at the Apple developer conference, WWDC, we learned that there were more than 1.2 million apps in the Apple App Store alone. That's a lot of choices. In a sea that large, understanding how to find apps for the classroom can be challenging. In speaking with numerous educators, we learned that most app downloads result from a colleague's recommendation (i.e., word of mouth) or from choosing the first app in the search results. These are both sound strategies given the limited time educators have to explore each new app. But a larger point has become clear: learning to swiftly evaluate apps has become an essential skill in the fast-growing, ever-changing mobile classroom. The Great App Checklist, go.sas.com/MobileLearning. We offer this checklist to help educators zero in on the app they need and to judge how well it performs key functions. This rubric can help developers understand how educators choose apps, what information would help someone in this audience, which details to mention in the app store summary, and what is the essential functionality. The checklist's themes - Purpose, Alignment, Pedagogically-based, Personalization, Sharing, Ease of Use, Privacy, App Citizenship, and Access - are those discussed throughout Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Developers, Educators, and Learners."