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What will tomorrow bring? What will life be like in 2028 as our youngest students of today exit school? What occupations will they enter and what challenges will they face? These are not new questions but with the rate of change in society and the pace at which technology evolves they are questions without clear answers. How then do schools prepare students for this uncertain tomorrow? What shall we teach our children today such that are well prepared for the challenges and opportunities of their tomorrow?

"When you're entering the United States, whether at an airport or a border crossing, federal agents have broad authority to search citizens and visitors alike. And that can include flipping through your phone, computer, and any other electronic devices you have with you. As US Customs and Border Protection outlines in a tearsheet it provides to people at the border, federal agents can seize and search your phone, and even make a copy of it to have forensic experts analyze its contents off-site."

"Care. Think. Design. Act. These words are the first thing that people see when entering Digital Shop, our middle school makerspace. This mantra anchors the threshold experience, a visitor's first visual impression of the space. But what do the words really mean, individually and collectively? Why those words, in that order? And how do they resonate with our learners and with my colleagues in regard to their impressions of the program?"

" lot of words have been added to the dictionary over the past few decades thanks to social media, but few have become so widely used and accepted as "hashtag." For a long time, the hashtag symbol (#) was known simply as the "pound" symbol. Now, I could swear that the only time I hear it referred to as a pound symbol is when I enter my PIN number to pay my cell phone bill. Manage and plan your social media content with the help of this free calendar template. While hashtags were originally made famous by Twitter, they're now used on many major social networks, including Facebook and Instagram. Let's explore what a hashtag is, why they're so great, and how they work on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram."

"At Burlington High School in Burlington, MA, we are entering our eighth month of a 1:1 iPad initiative that began in September 2011. Don't get me wrong, we think the iPad is a great device for learning and gives each of our students a dynamic learning tool that can be used across the content areas and to accomplish a variety of tasks. Many of the critics claim that we are backing our students into a corner by giving them one brand and one skill set to learn exclusively on one device. This is not the case at Burlington. Furthermore, I have support. "

A Google Chrome extension that lets you enter a search phrase and then lets you click and click on results from 9 different searches (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Wikipedia, YouTube, Wolfram, Amazon, Ebay, Twitter). Nice way to make comparisons.

"In a big leap into a new but adjacent market, Silicon Valley digital education start-up Kno said entering the K-12 space, expanding from its college-only focus."

"Don't get me wrong - given my Twitter ID it's a given that I believe very strongly in using technology to support and enhance learning. The OED states that an evangelist is "a person who seeks to convert others to the Christian faith, especially by public preaching", so ok… I might not be doing the Christian faith bit, but as an 'ICT Evangelist' I do believe that technology has the power to change our world and certainly the learning that takes place in our classrooms and beyond. There's a problem though. There is a dichotomy of experiences, skills, beliefs and abilities when it comes to using technology in our classrooms. It's written in to the United States Declaration of Independence that, "all men are born equal", but it's certainly not true when it comes to the experiences that our students receive in their lessons at the hands of some of our teachers and that's before you even think about entering technology into the equation."

"If you wish to create a multi-touch iOS app for the iPhone or iPad, then you will need to know how to use xCode (Apple development software) and the programming language Objective-C. While this is a bold endeavor, it is a massive time and learning commitment that most teachers can't make. The average teacher with a creative idea for an app that supports learning may never see it come to fruition due to lack of know-how or lack of resources to invest in its development. Enter iBooks Author."

"Most children enter kindergarten as technology users, but their knowledge of how to use it safely and appropriately varies as widely as their abilities to print their names and tie their shoes. As their first teachers, it is unquestioningly our duty to develop digital citizenship alongside scissor skills and sharing. Collaborative, project-based learning experiences provide many authentic opportunities for students to acquire and practice digital citizenship skills that will see them safely into adulthood as they begin to develop and manage their first digital footprints. In Manitoba, we have a Literacy with ICT Developmental Continuum that fosters critical and creative thinking skills as students learn to use ICT safely and responsibly. How does this actually look in kindergarten? "

"In my last post, I began a celebration of brains and made the argument as to why teachers need to brush up on their knowledge of brains in order to reach that all-too-allusive 'tween noggin. During this, my second of three posts in this series, I'll bring up a few key terms you should know in your own neurologic education. Then, we'll follow a history-related fact as it enters the brain of an average middle schooler, weaving its way towards the blessed long-term memory. "

"Take a moment to think about how you learned to write. What steps did you go through? What was your process? Most of us learned the same core set of skills on paper: organize, draft, edit, revise, turn in. Our teachers then marked up what we had handwritten or typed, and returned our writing. From there, maybe it ended up tacked to a bulletin board, stuck on the refrigerator door, stuffed into a notebook, or tossed in the nearest trash can. Let's call this Writing 1.0. When computers entered into the equation, we digitiz"

"When Apple announced Airdrop this past June, I knew it would be a great feature for teachers with iPads. A common complaint about iPads in the classroom was that it wasn't necessarily easy to transfer student work in the Camera Roll to the teacher. With no USB connection and no SD card slot, how was a teacher supposed to collect student work? Email would work for small files, but videos were much too large to send. Dropbox could be a solution, but that would require students to set up their own accounts, problematic if they are under a certain age. Enter AirDrop, a seamless and very quick way to transfer files via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections between "nearby" devices. "

"Math 42 is a neat iPad app that I tried earlier this week. The app is one part calculator and one part mathematics tutorial. When students enter an equation into Math 42 they not only receive the answer they also receive a break-down of the steps needed in order to solve the equation. Along with an illustration of the steps students can see alternative approaches to solving a problem."

"The iWork suite of productivity apps include Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, and each of them allow users to password protect individual documents. In practice, this means that a document created within iWork in iOS, OS X, or iCloud, can be safely locked with built-in encryption, and the document can not be opened or viewed without entering the defined password on any other device. For example, you can set a password to a Pages document on your iPhone, then open it again on the Mac from iCloud and it will require a password, and vice versa."

"Despite their popularity, tablets get knocked on productivity-largely because entering data on them is slow and cumbersome. But that doesn't mean you have to boot up your laptop every time you need to type a lengthy document. From add-on keyboards to alternative on-screen keypads and general screen-typing tips, here's a host of ways to speed up data entry on your iPad or Android tablet. "

"Siri is the name of Apple's personal digital assistant. It's basically voice control that talks back to you, that understands relationships and context, and with a personality straight out of Pixar. Ask Siri questions, or ask Siri to do things for you, just like you would ask a real assistant, and Siri will help keep you connected, informed, in the right place, and on time. You can even use Siri's built in dictation feature to enter text almost everywhere by simply using your voice."

"The learn-to-code movement is aiming younger. MIT and partners, for example, recently released a free iPad app with its visual programming language ScratchJr., so kindergartners could use it to code stories and games even before knowing how to read. Vikas Gupta, a former Google executive who founded the startup Wonder Workshop (formerly called Play-i), has taken a slightly different path. "We learned that in order to make programming of interest to young children, it has to be a tangible product. It can't be just software," he told Co.Exist last year. Enter Dot and Dash-Wonder Workshop's two new robots that teach coding skills to children as young as five that are now being field tested in a few dozen elementary school classrooms nationally. And they are definitely tangible: Dash hears and responds to sounds, navigates around a room and avoid obstacles, and comes to life with sound and lights. He can even play the xylophone. Dot, on the other hand, doesn't have wheels and is meant to interact with Dash via Bluetooth and act as a controller. Both have their own customizable "personalities." On the back end, through four apps that control both robots, they are secretly teaching coding skills such as "event-based programming, sequencing, conditionals, and loops.""

"In his popular TED talk, Ken Robinson made the powerful point that most of the students doing work in your classrooms today will be entering a job force that none of you can visualize. That talk is from almost ten years ago, so we already know he was right and can only assume he'll continue to be so in the years to come. Learning a specific skill set doesn't have the value in today's world that it once did. Learning how to be more creative (and thus adaptable) - now that's what prepares students for life beyond the classroom."

"My objective with this wide-ranging set of skills, and involving the community so closely in their development, is to give kids the chance to practice whatever makes them passionate now and feel encouraged -- even if they're obsessed with making stuff exclusively with duct tape. It's crucial that kids learn how to be passionate for the rest of their lives. To start, they must first learn what it feels like to be simultaneously challenged and confident. It's my instinct that we should not try to introduce these experiences through skills we value as much as look for opportunities to develop them, as well as creativity and literacy, in the skills they already love. MAGICIANS CRAFT ILLUSIONS THAT BAFFLE THE SENSES AND CONFUSE OUR REASONING. THEY PLAN LIKE SCIENTISTS, BUT PERFORM AS ARTISTS. ONLY THROUGH LONG AND DISCIPLINED PREPARATION DO THEY SUCCEED. It's difficult to predict which skills will be valuable in the future, and even more challenging to see the connection between our children's interests and these skills. Nothing illustrates this better than Minecraft, a popular game that might be best described as virtual LEGOs. Calling it a game belies the transformation it has sparked: An entire generation is learning how to create 3D models using a computer. Now, I wonder, what sort of businesses, communication, entertainment or art will be possible? Cathy Davidson, a scholar of learning technology, concluded that 65% of children entering grade school this year will end up working in careers that haven't even been invented yet. I bet today's kids will eventually explore outcomes and create jobs only made possible by the influence of Minecraft in their lives. Why take any chances and build your dream house with blueprints alone? The Minecraft kid could easily make a realistic 3D model of one for you to walk through before you build. That's why DIY treats Minecraft as a tool, not a game, and encourages our members to use it to pursue art, architect