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"There are several evolving spaces in which we are seeing the blending of the digital and physical successfully fostering critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity."

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?

"​The purpose of Makerspace for Education is to provide educators with a hands-on, creative, user friendly, "anytime, anyplace", professional development tool that can be used as part of a community of practice. It allows educators to inform themselves, with tools at their fingertips, on the various aspects of the makerspace as they are ready. Using interactive tools that allow access to necessary information, directly from a user-friendly interface and based on the key frameworks of constructionism and constructivism, makerspace, design thinking and media literacies, teachers will have the tools they need to begin, or continue, their makerspace journeys. This site will evolve and grow as the participating educators add to the content and support the construction of knowledge. "

"The gap between the skills people learn and the skills people need is becoming more obvious, as traditional learning falls short of equipping students with the knowledge they need to thrive, according to the World Economic Forum report New Vision for Education: Fostering Social and Emotional Learning Through Technology. Today's job candidates must be able to collaborate, communicate and solve problems - skills developed mainly through social and emotional learning (SEL). Combined with traditional skills, this social and emotional proficiency will equip students to succeed in the evolving digital economy."

"This paper captures the evolution of the Mozilla Web Literacy Map to reach and meet the growing number of diverse audiences using the web. The paper represents the thinking, research findings, and next iteration of the Web Literacy Map that embraces 21st Century Skills (21C Skills) as key to leadership development. As technology becomes more ubiquitous, and more people come online, Mozilla continues to refine its strategies to support and champion the web as an open and public resource. To help people become good citizens of the web, Mozilla focuses on the following goals: 1) develop more educators, advocates, and community leaders who can leverage and advance the web as an open and public resource, and 2) impact policies and practices to ensure the web remains a healthy open and public resource for all. In order to accomplish this, we need to provide people with open access to the skills and know-how needed to use the web to improve their lives, careers, and organizations. Knowing how to read, write, and participate in the digital world has become the 4th basic foundational skill next to the three Rs-reading, writing, and arithmetic-in a rapidly evolving, networked world. Having these skills on the web expands access and opportunity for more people to learn anytime, anywhere, at any pace. Combined with 21C leadership Skills (i.e. critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving, creativity, communication), these digital-age skills help us live and work in today's world. Whether you're a first time smartphone user, an educator, an experienced programmer, or an internet activist, the degree to which you can read, write, and participate on the web while producing, synthesizing, evaluating, and communicating information shapes what you can imagine-and what you can do. follows:"

"The role of the teacher is changing. From the 'flipped class' discussion to the curriculum 'focus', a teacher's remit is evolving. There is a developing pedagogy with new technology and the phrase '24/7 learning' permeates discussion. There are always opportunities to learn for students but the confines of the classroom are no longer the perceived determinants of education."

"Our blog has been a little quiet for a while (okay.. a LONG while..), which I attribute to an abundance of activity, not a lack thereof! A wonderful visit this year by teachers from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Champaign, Illinois reminded us of the importance of documenting and sharing our iPad journey, so the Burley team is making a resolution to post more frequently in 2014. Now in year four of iPad implementation, our approach to apps has evolved considerably. We started where many teachers start: by combing through the app store, looking for apps for just about everything. And we still get excited when we discover a cool new app -- who doesn't? But as time has passed, we find ourselves settling in to workflows and tools that can be used again and again across the curriculum. We've realized that a powerful, effective technology program can be implemented with just a few simple, well-chosen workflows."

"No matter how old the profession, those who work in a particular field have always had the ability to communicate with one another to compare notes and improve services. The form of communication began with face-to-face contact in early civilization and evolved to a more digital form in today's age of technological advances. Technology has always improved communication methods by enabling all-not just professionals-the ability to consult, collaborate, and learn from others. This has progressed from the earliest printing presses to the most recent smartphones."

"In this four-part series, we are using the Someday/Monday concept to explore four dimensions of using tablets, such as iPads, in educational settings. We will do this by examining how teachers can take students on a journey from the consumption of media to curation, creation, and connection. In the first part of this series, we used the Someday/Monday template to explore Consumption. During the second, we examined Curation and the evolving role of the teacher as a curator of learning objects. This week, we will address Creation, examining what is possible when we empower students and teachers as innovators with iPads and other mobile devices."

"I still miss that beautiful visual presentation, but you can still use Google News to search contemporaneous news. Contemporaneous news offers students unfiltered, personal connection to the past and forces them to wrestle with issues of bias and historical perspective. Contemporaneous news focuses a media literacy lens on how news is/was reported. How many different ways is the same story reported? How does the story evolve over the course of days, weeks, years? How do stories reported at the time differ from the way a story is reported with the benefit of hindsight or without the homongenization of textbook coverage? We can engage learners in considering why a story is placed where it is placed in a newspaper, why a particular headline was crafted, how our language has shifted, and why search terms may be time-contextual. (For instance, why searches for World War I, African Americans, the Holocaust, might not be effective in contemporaneous sources.)"

"In The eLearning Coach New Year's tradition, I'm presenting another list of compelling ways to learn online this year. Opportunities for learning seem limitless, applications get smarter and the content gets richer. I just hope we don't all evolve into robot heads at some point. Enjoy! At the end you'll find links to lists from the three previous years."

"One of the most pure and deeply inspirational relationships is that of a devoted teacher and a willing student. Almost everyone has a favorite teacher, and those we liked less. What causes us to still cherish these relationships and harbor powerful sentiments of respect and affection (and sometimes a shuddering dislike) for those individuals who were responsible for mentoring us? The answer is quite simple. It's how the student teacher relationships were developed, nurtured, and given space to evolve."

""Imagine a classroom where everyone started off an academic year with an "A" grade, and in order to keep the grade, a pupil had to show continuous improvement throughout the year. In this classroom, the teacher would have to dock points from a pupil's assessment when his or her performance or achievement was inadequate, and pupils would work to maintain their high mark rather than to work up to it. How would this affect effort, expectations, performance, and assessment relative to current practice?" This is one of the questions we pose in our report Everyone Starts with an A, which explores the application of behavioural insight to educational policy and practice. Using research from behavioural science and our evolving understanding of human nature, we explore how effort, motivation, learning enjoyment, resilience, and overall performance at school can be influenced in ways not often traditionally recognised."

"As of late it seems that I have been blogging a great deal about our makerspace here at New Milford High School and with good reason. Not only is the space being overrun with students during their lunch periods, but teachers here have begun to explore how the process of making can enhance the learning experience for the students in their classes. Just last week I shared on my blog how physics classes were exploring concepts related to circuitry in a more hands-on, authentic fashion in our constantly evolving space through a collaboration between Mr. Fowler and Mrs. Fleming. It seems that this might have been a catalyst for even more collaborations in order to fully take advantage of what a well-designed makerspace can provide."

"Last fall I wrote an ABC/25 Foundation grant through my district for the supplies for Green Screen Stop-Motion Animation Stations. My ideas for what to purchase evolved a bit with more research to include green display board from BLICK and iPad stands from Anker. We will have two stages of production. "

"Claire Handscombe has a commitment problem online. Like a lot of Web surfers, she clicks on links posted on social networks, reads a few sentences, looks for exciting words, and then grows restless, scampering off to the next page she probably won't commit to. "I give it a few seconds - not even minutes - and then I'm moving again," says Handscombe, a 35-year-old graduate student in creative writing at American University. Gallery Lynda Barry: The 20 stages of reading: If there are stages of grief and steps to recovery, isn't the act of reading a complicated, evolving thing over time? Cartoonist Lynda Barry, one of scores of writers at the National Book Festival on Sept. 21-22, certainly thinks so. (Related: 12 authors, 12 reasons why they write) Click here to subscribe. But it's not just online anymore. She finds herself behaving the same way with a novel. "

"Hi everyone, I have been looking at the future of play for about 5 years and have spoken about the topic at MIT and written about it in Fast Co. Design, Parents Magazine and The Atlantic. Recently, I summed up the research into a poster for parents and teachers to help them frame the value of play in education (see below attachment). I think this excerpt from my Atlantic article said it best, "Someday, rather than measuring memorization as an indicator of progress, we will measure our children's ability to manipulate (deconstruct and hack), morph (think flexibly and be tolerant of change), and move (think "with their hands" and play productively). Standardized aptitude tests will be replaced by our abilities to see (observe and imagine), sense (have empathy and intrinsic motivation), and stretch (think abstractly and systemically). We will advance our abilities to collaborate and create." The future favors the flexible. And that's another reason this poster has + signs at the top of each category - because the superpowers of play we will need for a constantly evolving world is always changing and it encourages everyone to add their own powers of play. I look forward to your thoughts and comments. Laura http://www.lauraseargeantrichardson.com LinkedIn: laurasgt "

"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.""