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"Any book lover can tell you: diving into a great novel is an immersive experience that can make your brain come alive with imagery and emotions and even turn on your senses. It sounds romantic, but there's real, hard evidence that supports these things happening to your brain when you read books. In reading, we can actually physically change our brain structure, become more empathetic, and even trick our brains into thinking we've experienced what we've only read in novels."

"Studies have shown that typing notes requires shallower levels of cognitive processing than handwriting, as subjects often tend to type verbatim what they hear without really engaging with its substance to the level that is required for greater understanding and better recollection. In contrast, handwriting appears to be more cognitively demanding. According to these studies,  subjects who use handwriting are generally forced to rephrase what hear into their own words, thus creating "more effective memory cues by recreating the context (e.g., thought processes, emotions, conclusions) as well as content (e.g., individual facts) from the original learning session". The evidence against typing your notes is pretty compelling. And then there were tablets Tablets introduce another level of complexity to this problem, since they can be used both to type and handwrite notes. So what are we to do? Are we to avoid using the tablets and stick to pen and paper? If we do use tablets for note taking, are we to force students to handwrite notes on their tablets using a stylus? And are we to ban students from typing up notes on their tablets? After all, that is what the research appears to suggests."

"The premise is simple: start with a quick tour of the facility and very brief show-and-tell of the tools (less than 30 minutes!), follow with a group brainstorming session around project ideas (less than 30 minutes!), then form groups to jump into projects. Even before lunch on the first day, groups were already sketching and tinkering with Hummingbird Robotics kits, MaKeyMaKeys, cardboard and MakeDo's, and more. For two days, I jumped in to help groups, learned new tools myself (LittleBits!), fetched tools and supplies as needed (copper tape! wire strippers!), recommended resources and suppliers (Sparkfun! DigiKey!), and acted as cheerleader for teachers pushing themselves to learn incredible new skills and create amazing artifacts of their learning. The final projects blew ALL of us coaches away! The absolute best part, from my perspective, is that every single project was immediately applicable back in the participant's classroom. Most of them are generally applicable in any learning environment! Serious high school science content, literature and history, elementary grades, even social/emotional learning… This was absolutely the most excellent collection of practical and academically-oriented maker projects I've seen!"

"In honor of Autism Awareness Month, this week's featured Top Picks lists highlight the best edtech for kids on the autism spectrum. For these kids, technology can act as a bridge -- helping them unlock their potential by improving verbal communication, developing social skills, enhancing the ability to learn and organize information, and improving their overall understanding of their environment. Technology can also be extremely helpful for parents and teachers of kids with autism, as apps, games, and websites can replace more expensive specialized devices. The lists here include more than 40 apps, games, and websites focused on four important areas of growth: executive function, social skills, language skills, and emotional intelligence."

Anti Social Networking??

HOME is an ode to the planet's beauty and its delicate harmony. Through the landscapes of 54 countries captured from above, Yann Arthus-Bertrand takes us on an unique journey all around the planet, to contemplate it and to understand it. But HOME is more than a documentary with a message, it is a magnificent movie in its own right. Every breathtaking shot shows the Earth - our Earth - as we have never seen it before. Every image shows the Earth's treasures we are destroying and all the wonders we can still preserve. "From the sky, there's less need for explanations". Our vision becomes more immediate, intuitive and emotional. HOME has an impact on anyone who sees it. It awakens in us the awareness that is needed to change the way we see the world. (HOME embraces the major ecological issues that confront us and shows how everything on our planet is interconnected.)

"For the typical American kindergartner, unstructured free play during the school day consists of 20 to 30 minutes of recess, and perhaps some time at indoor "stations" - perhaps creating with building blocks, costumes, or musical instruments. But what if there was more? What if the answer to "what did you do in school today?" was, "I climbed a tree, played in the mud, built a fire"? That is exactly the kind of learning going on in the Swiss Waldkindergartens, or forest kindergartens, where children ages four to seven spend all of their school days playing outdoors, no matter the weather. With no explicit math or literacy taught until first grade, the Swiss have no set goals for kindergartners beyond a few measurements, like using scissors and writing one's own name. They instead have chosen to focus on the social interaction and emotional well-being found in free play."

"When it comes to brain development, time in the classroom may be less important than time on the playground. "The experience of play changes the connections of the neurons at the front end of your brain," says Sergio Pellis, a researcher at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. "And without play experience, those neurons aren't changed," he says. It is those changes in the prefrontal cortex during childhood that help wire up the brain's executive control center, which has a critical role in regulating emotions, making plans and solving problems, Pellis says. So play, he adds, is what prepares a young brain for life, love and even schoolwork."

"MADISON, Wis. - Over the course of 12 weeks, twice a week, the prekindergarten students learned their ABCs. Attention, breath and body, caring practice - clearly not the standard letters of the alphabet. Rather, these 4- and 5-year-olds in the Madison Metropolitan School District were part of a study assessing a new curriculum meant to promote social, emotional and academic skills, conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (CIHM) at the Waisman Center. Researchers found that kids who had participated in the curriculum earned higher marks in academic performance measures and showed greater improvements in areas that predict future success than kids who had not. The results were recently published in the journal Developmental Psychology."

"ome widely held ideas about the way children learn can lead educators and parents to adopt faulty teaching principles Jan 1, 2015 Credit: Kiyoshi Takahase segundo MYTH HUMANS USE ONLY 10 PERCENT OF THEIR BRAIN FACT The 10 percent myth (sometimes elevated to 20) is mere urban legend, one perpetrated by the plot of the 2011 movie Limitless, which pivoted around a wonder drug that endowed the protagonist with prodigious memory and analytical powers. In the classroom, teachers may entreat students to try harder, but doing so will not light up "unused" neural circuits; academic achievement does not improve by simply turning up a neural volume switch. MYTH "LEFT BRAIN" and "RIGHT BRAIN" PEOPLE DIFFER FACT The contention that we have a rational left brain and an intuitive, artistic right side is fable: humans use both hemispheres of the brain for all cognitive functions. The left brain/right brain notion originated from the realization that many (though not all) people process language more in the left hemisphere and spatial abilities and emotional expression more in the right. Psychologists have used the idea to explain distinctions between different personality types. In education, programs emerged that advocated less reliance on rational "left brain" activities. Brain-imaging studies show no evidence of the right hemisphere as a locus of creativity. And the brain recruits both left and right sides for both reading and math. MYTH YOU MUST SPEAK ONE LANGUAGE BEFORE LEARNING ANOTHER FACT Children who learn English at the same time as they learn French do not confuse one language with the other and so develop more slowly. This idea of interfering languages suggests that different areas of the brain compete for resources. In reality, young children who learn two languages, even at the same time, gain better generalized knowledge of language structure as a whole. MYTH BRAINS OF MALES AND FEMALES DIFFER IN WAYS THAT DICTATE LEARNING ABILITIES FACT Diffe

"For those out there who debase Humanities and Arts, evidence on the importance of subjects pertaining to these disciplines on the overall intellectual, mental and emotional wellbeing of learners is amply proliferating. Today we are taking a close look at the benefits of music education on students. According to University of Florida, music learning is a highly engaging learning task that has several benefits including :"

"Sifting through the app stores trying to find the cream of the crop isn't easy, so we've done it for you! Though plenty of other awesome apps are out there, kids should play these at least once. From art to coding, preschool skill building to problem solving, and social-emotional learning to endless runners, dive in with this list of 50 standout apps across all age groups. Check out our Essential Apps Guide for even more titles, or find a curated list that fits your kid's specific interests."

"As a parent and an educator I strive to invite joy into my classroom and my home everyday. Joy is much more than happiness. Joy is a process in and of itself where we creatively learn to embrace all our emotions including disappointment and failure. Here I offer 5 entry points based upon the influential work of Marta Davidovich Ockuly (2015) and Catherine Camden-Pratt (2008), where we may foster and cultivate JOY in our own lives and the lives of those we influence."

"This piece was actually sparked by an interview of Lady Gaga by Soledad O' Brien at the Born This Way Emotion Revolution Summit where Gaga stated, "It's time to stop telling learners what to do and start listening for we can do for them." One of those accepted practices, sadly, in most educational settings is that the teacher is the authority to be respected and listened to without question. Listening to students is not a practice that is often taught in teacher education programs. There is a current movement, in some circles, to promote and honor student voice.  But, and this is a huge but, if educators are serious about honoring student voice, they need to first learn how to listen, really listen to their students."

"As parents and teachers, we encourage our kids to become well rounded people who love learning.   In our world of cell phones, ipads, and computers, it's easy for kids to become passive consumers of media and technology.   We, however, want are kids to be active, curious, and creative.   Since I'm a musician and a software engineer, I hope that my kids learn to express themselves emotively and become creative thinkers.   We're trying to foster a family culture where we are active, encourage tinkering, and building physical things with our hands.    With these ideas in mind, I wanted to share a great video I found by Vinnie Vrotny and Sheryl Peterson entitled "STEAM: Creating A Maker Mindset."   In this conference talk from the K12 Online Conference in 2013, they share their experiences encouraging a "maker" mindset in the Quest Academy .   Their school has a very unique class teaching design thinking to kids.    It's giving me lots of ideas for building a maker environment for our family.    In this class, Sheryl encourages her students to invent a creative design problem and solve it.   With the tools and support of the teacher, the kids are encouraged to build their design.    In some cases, the kids ask Sheryl to assign a problem to them.    The kids aren't used to having creative freedom to design and make.    In these cases, Sheryl encourages the students to keep thinking."

"You were just getting used to your kid's obsession with Fortnite, and now, all you hear about is V-Bucks. V-Bucks, like Robux on Roblox, are Fortnite's in-game currency. Players use them to buy the fun "skins" (characters and outfits) and "emotes" (those hilarious dances like "Flossing" and "Take the L") that kids will say they totally need to make Fortnite even cooler. For the record: You don't need V-Bucks to play Fortnite, and if you do spring for them, they cost real money. Also, online scammers are all over V-Bucks. Fortnite's incredible popularity among kids has made it an easy target for rip-off artists trying to make some actual bucks while the game is hot. A recent study from online security company ZeroFox discovered more than 4,700 fake Fortnite websites, and the company sent out more than 50,000 security alerts about Fortnite scams in a single month. Kids are particularly vulnerable to requests to turn over personal information, including names and email addresses or even credit card numbers. Here's how you can spot the scam and protect your kids."

"Feedback is crucial for learning and improving, but it's rarely fun to be on the receiving end of it when it's critical. Many people have a negative reaction to feedback, especially feedback on their creative work. In a study of seven companies and 11,471 days of creative work, researchers found two striking patterns: First, getting feedback was incredibly rare, indicating that people seemed to avoid it; and second, when people did receive feedback, it generally left a negative emotional residue. So what might good feedback for creative work look like? By "good feedback," I mean feedback that creative workers actually want and that leads to changes that improve their creative output."

"Bias is a fundamental human characteristic. We are all biased, by our very nature, and every day we make countless decisions based on our gut feelings. We all have preconceived ideas, prejudices, and opinions. And that is fine, as long as we recognize it and take responsibility for it. The fundamental promise of AI, besides the dramatic increase of data processing power and business efficiency, is to help reduce the conscious or unconscious bias of human decisions. At the end of the day, this is what we expect from algorithms, isn't it? Objectivity, mathematical detachment rather than fuzzy emotions, fact-based rather than instinctive decisions. Algorithms are supposed to alert people to their cognitive blind spots, so they can make more accurate, unbiased decisions. At least that's the theory…"

"When you're the big fish, it's not OK to pick on the little fish just because you can. That's an important lesson for everyone. But some Houston first-graders got a particularly vivid demonstration in the form of a musical puppet show, which featured fish puppets and an underlying message about why it's wrong to bully others. The show left an impression on the students at Codwell Elementary, according to their teacher Shelea Bennett. "You felt like you were in that story," she said. "By the end of the story they were able to answer why [bullying] wasn't good, and why you shouldn't act this way." The puppeteer's show was part of an effort to expand arts education in Houston elementary and middle schools. Now, a new study shows that the initiative helped students in a few ways: boosting students' compassion for their classmates, lowering discipline rates, and improving students' scores on writing tests. It's just the latest study to find that giving students more access to the arts offers measurable benefits. And adding time for dance, theater, or visual arts isn't at odds with traditional measures of academic success, according to the research - which amounts to one of the largest gold-standard studies on arts education ever conducted. "Arts learning experiences benefit students in terms of social, emotional, and academic outcomes," write researchers Dan Bowen of Texas A&M and Brian Kisida of the University of Missouri. The study, released Tuesday through the Houston Education Research Consortium, looked at elementary and middle schools - which predominantly served low-income students of color - that expressed interest in participating in Houston's Arts Access Initiative. There appeared to be significant need: nearly a third of elementary and middle schools in the district reported lacking a full-time arts teacher."