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"Teens credit social media for helping to build stronger friendships and exposing them to a more diverse world, but they express concern that these sites lead to drama and social pressure"

"No app is more integral to teens' social lives than Instagram. While Millennials relied on Facebook to navigate high school and college, connect with friends, and express themselves online, Gen Z's networks exist almost entirely on Instagram. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 72 percent of teens use the platform, which now has more than 1 billion monthly users. Instagram allows teens to chat with people they know, meet new people, stay in touch with friends from camp or sports, and bond by sharing photos or having discussions. But when those friendships go south, the app can become a portal of pain. According to a recent Pew survey, 59 percent of teens have been bullied online, and according to a 2017 survey conducted by Ditch the Label, a nonprofit anti-bullying group, more than one in five 12-to-20-year-olds experience bullying specifically on Instagram. "Instagram is a good place sometimes," said Riley, a 14-year-old who, like most kids in this story, asked to be referred to by her first name only, "but there's a lot of drama, bullying, and gossip to go along with it.""

"CoderDojo clubs around the world use Scratch both online and offline to enable young people to express themselves, create projects, try new things and learn along with their peers. Scratch has been a vital tool not only in developing creative learning, but in also teaching coding concepts and problem-solving skills. Yesterday the latest version of Scratch was released in Beta. Here are some of the exciting things you have to look forward to and what you need to know!"

"Over the past decade, there has been much discussion of the term computational thinking. The term, popularized by computer scientist Jeannette Wing, is generally used to describe computer-science concepts and strategies that can be useful in understanding and solving problems in a wide range of disciplines and contexts. In a growing number of schools around the world, there are now efforts to help students develop as computational thinkers. In our Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab, we prefer to focus on the idea of computational fluency rather than computational thinking. Why? We want to highlight the importance of children developing as computational creators as well as computational thinkers. In our view, computational fluency involves not only an understanding of computational concepts and problem-solving strategies, but also the ability to create and express oneself with digital technologies."

"A primer on the impact of implicit biases in schools and how they can be expressed by students and faculty."

"As I am coaching teachers in learning how to learn and teach FOR the 22nd century, I realize that the gap between being able to read traditional forms of information, communications materials in geneal and reading on new platforms, in new genres and in general new digital forms is widening drastically. Not too long ago, I wrote a post titled, Our Notion of Literacy and Iliteracy Calls for an Update.  I define literacy as the ability to read and write and being able to express and communicate our ideas to others. So, in our world, which is BOTH analog AND digital, we need to be literate in both. Especially if we are educators, in charge of teaching our students to be literate for THEIR future. The digital world is not going away, nor can it be ignored in terms of being and staying (critically) informed, lifelong learning, communicating, connecting, collaborating and contributing. One realisation for me was that new forms of reading and writing did not ONLY have to do with the skillset of learning the logistics of how to read and write on digital platforms, but had EVERYTHING to do with a new mindset that allows for new forms of reading and writing versus merely substituting the way we have done it in analog form before."

"Coding is an invaluable literacy applicable to virtually any future career or field of study. These high school-level tools will help students build this essential 21st-century literacy by learning how code works and how to write code themselves. Once they're up to snuff, coding will give your students a new way to demonstrate knowledge and express themselves. And teachers, take note: There are tools here for those brand new to code as well as those looking for more of a challenge, so make sure to pick and choose to give every student a window into the world of programming."

As a school librarian, I try to offer spaces where students can create, make, and innovate. Trying to offer a makerspace to 100% of the student population can quickly become limiting due to space. Offering a mobile classroom makerspace solves this problem. A mobile classroom makerspace library program allows classroom teachers to check out 6 to 8 makerspace activities with the needed supplies packed together in one cart. Teachers can check-out a cart for their classroom for a week. During that week teachers can unpack the activities, and create a pop-up makerspace in their classroom when it fits into their schedule.      Last year I tried this at Ed White E-STEM with kindergarten and first grade classes. The teachers and students loved the mobile classroom makerspace carts so much we added a cart for 2nd grade this school year. The 2nd grade teachers want to take it a step farther. They want the library to supply a book with each activity, so they can use the cart as part of a Literacy Station. The students will explore, make, read, and then write about their experience.   The second year of this program has been a learning experience. This year we were able to fine tune the offerings in each cart by teachers expressing what worked, and what didn't work last year. We used teacher input as one measure to create this year's inventory list for the mobile classroom makerspace carts. 5 things to think about when creating a mobile classroom makerspace."

"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."

"Art has the benefit of being not only enjoyable and relaxing, but of encouraging personal reflection, expression and growth. With this in mind, how can we nurture creativity across the curriculum using artistic methods? You may be surprised where and how often art can be made a feature of a lesson. Here are some school crafting ideas that allow children to enjoy all of the benefits of arts and crafts."

The webcam can be a vital tool in helping to support our students' pronunciation habits and helping them to 'see' how words and expressions are pronounced and what particular pronunciation features they need to be aware of. So here are a few tips and examples to help you use your webcam to help with your students' pronunciation.

"Did you know that January is considered International Creativity Month? This month, remind your students about the importance of being creative. Give your students the ability to creatively express themselves by providing various options for a particular class assignment. For example, instead of assigning the same writing assignment to every student, offer five variations on the topic to give the students more flexibility to choose something they find worthwhile."

"Over the past decade, millions of kids around the world have used Scratch to code their own interactive games, stories, animations, and more. This outpouring of creativity inspires us to continue to extend and improve Scratch, so that kids everywhere have new opportunities to express themselves creatively with new technologies. Today, we're launching Scratch 3.0, a new generation of Scratch that expands how, what, and where kids can create with code. As we've tested prototypes of Scratch 3.0, we've been amazed by the projects that kids have made - like a hedgehog that speaks French, a hippopotamus that dances to hip-hop, and a soccer game you control with your shoe."

"Stress! It's just a part of everyday life, right? But what if that stress is chronic and beyond a child's control? More than half of all students in U.S. public schools come from low-income families. Poverty is associated with chronic stress, which can have a toxic effect on the brain. While there is no silver bullet to solve the problem of poverty, we as educators do have the power to positively influence learning for children experiencing poverty by better understanding their brains."

" I heard a great talk a few months ago. It was Conrad Wolfram (probably one of the world's leading mathematicians) who suggested, that we should stop teaching our kids maths. Whoah! He said, and I'm paraphrasing, we needed to teach them computational thinking instead. What is that? He said every problem needs breaking apart, exploding it into its parts - if we are to begin to properly solve them. And better still that we explain to kids how to put that idea into practice. Explain to them, for example, that to make their bike go faster they might figure out how much bigger the peddle wheel needs to be than than the one on the back wheel. According to Wikipedia computational thinking is an iterative process based on three stages: 1. Problem formulation (abstraction) 2. Solution expression (automation) 3. Solution execution and evaluation (analyses) That REALLY works for me."

"Summer fun. It is the absolute best. Whether you visit Six Flags, Kings Island, a Disney Park, Busch Gardens, or another amusement park, the looping lines of roller coasters offer the perfect lens for getting students to interact with STEM concepts. An old garden hose, duct tape, and a marble: the only materials that you need to build a roller coaster. Cut the hose in half, and then duct tape the two segments together down the back to create a nice groove where the two hoses meet for the marble to ride, on top. Then the materials are ready for students to explore the potential and kinetic energy of roller coasters."

"In India, 41km of highway road was constructed every day for the year of 2016. In the Indian government budget, it estimated the cost just for 2016 to be 19 billion USD. It would be financing any shortfall through tax-free government bonds. Computational thinking would have played an instrumental role in deciding on where the road would go through with taking into account the key hubs and may have saved the government millions, if not billions of dollars. Jeanette Wing (2012) defines computational thinking as the thought process involved in formulating a problem and expressing its solution in a way that a computer-human or machine can effectively carry out. It is the process of abstraction by; choosing the right abstractions, operating in terms of multiple layers of abstraction simulations and defining the relationships between layers guided by efficiency, correctness, and flexibility. Computational thinking can best be related to as writing software or instructionals. Every action or non-action is accounted for in the way computational artifacts are constructed. Computational thinking is great for working out a solution but there is an argument that computational thinking does not put enough emphasis on the problem itself. Design thinking, on the other hand, attempts to understand the intent or problem before looking at any solution - computational or otherwise. Design thinking attempts to identify why the problem exists in the first place before solving it. IDEO defines design thinking as the application of empathy and experimentation to arrive at innovation solutions through making decisions based on stakeholder input and evidence based research. Using the Indian roading example, a design thinker would ask, what is the intent of building the roads in the first place?"

"The internet can be an ugly place, but you won't find bullies or trolls on Stuart Duncan's Minecraft server, AutCraft. Designed for children with autism and their families, AutCraft creates a safe online environment for play and self-expression for kids who sometimes behave a bit differently than their peers (and who might be singled out elsewhere). Learn more about one of the best places on the internet with this heartwarming talk."

"To quote Bob Dylan, the times, they are a-changin'. We wonder, though, if teachers have the dispositions needed to make fundamental changes to their teaching practices in order to respond constructively to our changing times, especially when those changes reveal that what they were doing was less effective than their egos thought they were. The way we teach is often a statement of who we are. If someone questions our practices, it's like they're questioning our value as teachers. Our classroom instruction, including assessment and grading, technology integration, student-teacher interactions, and more, are expressions of how we see ourselves; they are our identity. Can we navigate these frequently troubled waters without invoking self-preserving egos and drowning in resentment?"

"o one is perfect. Not one of us. But if we're not careful, we can fall into the trap of thinking we have to act perfect.  I find it puzzling how students sometimes have the idea that teachers/principals/educators are somehow above making mistake or should be above making mistakes.  I remember when I was teaching 9th grade English how students would jump at the chance to point it out if I misspelled a word on the white board, as if I was suddenly an incompetent teacher. They would express shock and dismay that I would make such a mistake. But without question, I made my fair share of mistakes, and I learned that it was best to admit them and help dispel the myth that teachers don't make mistakes."