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"Pre-assessment is a powerful instructional tool. Conducted prior to new learning experiences, the process empowers students as much as it empowers teachers. I became acquainted with pre-assessment during the early years as a classroom teacher. This was when differentiated instruction felt new to everyone. In those days, we used pre-tests, anticipation guides, and student work samples from previously taught units to identify what kids knew, what they were already able to do, and where we should invest our greatest energies. Our pre-assessment practices have evolved quite a bit since then. Many teachers have come to understand that assessment in any context rarely requires testing, and data isn't just a simple set of numbers, and defining strengths and needs serves learners in more ways than we previously understood. Sure, we still pre-assess to compact the lessons we teach, but engaging learners in this sort of reflective work helps them carve productive pathways through student-directed learning experiences as well. Consider some of these approaches as you design learning experiences for your students or prepare to engage them in self-directed projects:"

"3 Reasons Why Faculty Meetings Are a Waste of Time By Peter DeWitt on April 10, 2015 6:50 AM Faculty Meeting.png Many school leaders walk into a faculty meeting with a single idea of how they want to move forward and walk out with the same idea. That's telling... John Hattie talks a great deal about the Politics of Distraction, which means we focus on adult issues, and not enough time...if ever...on learning. That is happening around the U.S. for sure. Recently the Assembly of NY State only furthered those distractions, which you can read about here, which means that school leaders and teachers have to work harder to maintain a focus on learning. Quite frankly, well before mandates and accountability, school leaders focused on the politics of distraction and not on learning. Compliance is not new in schools. Faculty meetings were seen as a venue to get through and something that teachers were contractually obligated to attend. During these days of endless measures of compliance, principals can do a great deal to make sure they don't model the same harmful messages to staff that politicians are sending to teachers. Jim Knight calls that "Freedom within form." In Talk Like Ted, Carmine Gallo quotes Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo) when he writes, "Creativity is often misunderstood. People often think of it in terms of artistic work - unbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect. If you look deeper, however, you'll find that some of the most inspiring art forms - haikus, sonatas, religious paintings- are fraught with constraints. (p. 190)" Clearly, constraints have a wide definition. There is a clear difference between the constraints of compliance and the stupidity of the legislation just passed by the assembly in NY. As we move forward, principals still are charged...or at least should be...with the job of making sure they offer part...inspiration, part...teacher voice...and a great deal of focus on learning. There is never a more important tim

"Protecting student privacy and making sure online environments are safe and secure is a very big deal. We have digital landscapes that are constantly evolving and students who are more and more confident exploring online without instruction or supervision. The below five tools are not just a starting point to help your students manage and maintain their online privacy, they should be the beginning of an ongoing discussion detailing the importance, consequences and risks associated with online privacy and security."

"As social media has evolved it has crept into academic work. I've even given research assignments in which I've asked my students to seek out and cite quotes from people on Twitter. More and more I'm asked, "how do I cite a Tweet?" In fact, I was asked this in an email last night. If you're citing for a blog post, you can just embed the Tweet. If you're citing for a more formal work you will want to follow guidelines of MLA, APA, or Chicago Style."

"Can the act of making or designing something help kids feel like they have agency over the objects and systems in their lives? That's the main question a group of researchers at Project Zero, a research group out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, are tackling alongside classroom-based teachers in Oakland, California. In an evolving process, researchers are testing out activities they've designed to help students to look more closely, explain more deeply and take on opportunities to change things they see around them."

"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."

"When I first started my makerspace at Stewart Middle Magnet School back in January of 2014, I was figuring everything out as I went along.  The term was still brand new, I couldn't find any maker sessions at conferences, and there were only a handful of other school libraries sharing about their makerspaces.  Armed with a couple of books on the growing Maker Education Movement and a dream to create an engaging environment in my library,  I gathered some supplies, put them out there, and waited to see what would happen.  My ideas and philosophy were constantly growing and evolving as we tried new activities and formats at my school.  Some experiments worked; some failed miserably.  But I learned from each and every one as our makerspace grew into an integral part of our library culture.  Looking back on the last year and a half, I've realized that there's several essential lessons I've learned in getting our makerspace going. Hopefully they can help save you some stress (and reassure you that everything will be awesome)."

"Our Makerspace has changed, grown and evolved since it was first conceived and started in January 2014.  Follow along with the story of our journey here.  Hopefully it will inspire you to start your own Maker journey "

"The iPad is a great device for assistive technology and text to speech is one of the most often used accessibility feature by teachers in special education and general education classrooms. Many teachers are not aware that it exists, but it does, and it has evolved to become a very usable solution with lots of valuable options to customize it to meet your needs. Here's what you need to know to get started with text to speech functionality on your iPad."

"I'm in Minecraft, of course-the phenomenally popular, open-ended game that places players in a world in which they can live and build things infinitely. Marcus "Notch" Persson, the Swedish creator of Minecraft, started out by creating a simple game, allowing players to construct whatever they wanted, using a few different colored blocks, each equivalent to one cubic meter. Released in 2009, it has evolved into a massive, world-building video game in which players uses those blocks to create anything they can think of, from houses, caves, and machines to a scale version of the Death Star. Microsoft purchased Minecraft from Notch and his team for $2.5 billion in November 2014. There aren't any express objectives or any real way to win in Minecraft. It's a "sandbox," in gaming speak-offering free play without a specific goal and currently used by more than 18.5 million players, with some 20,000 more signing up every day. Users may choose between Creative Mode, in which they can build using unlimited resources by themselves or with friends, with no real danger or enemies, and Survival Mode, where they fend off enemies and other players and fight for resources and space. They can trade items and communicate using a chat bar. Modifications (or mods) can add complexity by creating things like economic systems that let players buy and sell resources from in-game characters using an in-game currency system. These downloadable mods can also add computer science concepts and thousands of additional features."

"Two years ago, I was asked to write an article for Knowledge Quest about how I created a maker space at Lamar Middle School in Flower Mound, TX. That first year of programming is so different from what I do now that I thought it pertinent to chart how our maker programming (#Makered) has evolved. During my first year as a librarian in 2012-13 my Teen Advisory Board (TAB) helped me redecorate a small office located behind our circulation desk. My director bought us some reading rockers, chalkboard paint, rain gutters, and 25 licenses for Minecraft."

"Old people are out of touch with technology. That's the stereotype, anyway. With adages like "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" and "He can't change, he's already set in his ways", many of us assume that certain pursuits are for young people only - and programming is no exception. It's easy to see why this mentality is so pervasive. As a relative youngster myself, the programming world evolves so quickly that even I find it difficult to keep up. Most of what I learned in school was obsolete by graduation. So if youngsters like me have trouble, is there any hope for the older generation? Yes! If you - or someone you know - have ever wondered if you're "too old" to start learning how to program, the simple answer is that anyone can pick it up as long as they have determination, persistence, and an open mind. The real question is, should you give it a shot? I think you should, and here's why."

"I often wonder if what we see as teaching at professional learning events would be acceptable in a high school classroom. If the purpose of professional development (Pro-D) is professional learning, then what is our evidence that learning does, in fact, occur? Are we using effective teaching practices in Pro-D? Although Pro-D is evolving, the "Sit'n'Git" way of learning seems to still be alive and well in many conferences and workshops throughout Canada and the U.S. In the past five years, I cannot tell you how many times I've sat in a large conference room for a number of hours with hundreds of other dedicated educators and not been provided with the opportunity to even talk to the person beside me. People are spending hundreds and thousands of dollars to attend these events to listen to a series of lengthy lectures without the opportunity to network and wrestle with the presented ideas. I'm not opposed to a keynote address to start off the day with some inspiring, thought-provoking ideas; however, if there is no opportunity to take these ideas and move deeper, many of the thoughts that are initiated in the keynote get lost as I move on to the next session or listen to the next presenter. It's no secret that in order for deeper learning to occur, we must DO something with a new concept; we must apply new learning to take it from an idea to implementation. Our current typical model of Pro-D makes deeper learning a challenge and often only leaves participants with a few ideas that are unfortunately left on the shelf with the many glossy white binders from workshops of years past. At some point we need to stand up and say that a high volume of "Sit'n'Git" style of Pro-D is no longer acceptable and is an insult to those who have spent money, time, and effort to attend. While doing this, we also need to rethink the conference model and professional learning so that it better aligns with what we want to see in classrooms."

"Join a network of fellow maker educators on our Google+ Community. We welcome your ideas, successes, stories, and challenges as you engage in making experiences with the youth in your community. Anyone interested in topics surrounding making and education are encouraged to participate. Please spread the word! If you're interested in contributing to Maker Ed's Resource Library, don't hesitate to submit your favorite resources directly to the Google+ Community by posting a link and short description to the "Resources" category. This Resource Library is an ever-changing, evolving collection, and using its guidelines, Maker Ed is excited to regularly review incoming resource submissions from the greater community of educators and makers. We will let you know if/when we add it to the library!"

The WikiEducator is an evolving community intended for the collaborative: * planning of education projects linked with the development of free content; * development of free content on Wikieducator for e-learning;

"I grew up on a healthy regimen of Choose-Your-Own Adventure books, Nintendo, and role playing games, but even I am intimidated by the new brand of interactive storytelling that is flooding the iPad. More designers are exploring how the frenzy around Apple's tablet computer is evolving e-books into something new. Sure, you can find traditional children's picture books directly translated onto the iPad that simply let you flip through on a touchscreen, but there's so much more the medium allows. Embedded games, interactive backgrounds, responsive audio, non-linear stories - "books" on the iPad have become something much better: immersive experiences. I've got a host of videos to show you what I mean, check them out below. Combining games, books, music, and voices in compelling ways, these early attempts to revolutionize storytelling on the iPad are exciting…but they're just the beginning. Give it a few years and the lines between these different ways of telling stories will blur so far we'll have to come up with a new name. 'Books' just doesn't cut it anymor"

"The evolution of the web from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and now to Web 3.0 can be used a metaphor of how education should also be evolving, as a movement based on the evolution from Education 1.0 to Education 3.0."

"The American Museum of Natural History's (AMNH) research library last month hosted the official launch of its new online image database for Digital Special Collections. Begun as a project to digitize 1,000 of the museum's photos and rare book illustrations using grant funding from the New York Metropolitan Library Council, the Digital Special Collections program has evolved into a long-term project that will offer the public free online access to the museum's research library collection. The new database includes more than 7,000 archival images that document the Museum's efforts in New York and around the world, dating back to scientific expeditions from the 19th century."

"The noted educational futurist describes his "holodeck" classroom -- an environment that supports project-based learning -- and makes the case for why the role of the teacher must change from lecturer "