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"Menomonee Falls - Once every few weeks this past school year, kindergarten teacher Tiffany Fadin corralled her squirmy young charges at Valley View Elementary to get feedback about their recent math lessons. "What specific things did we do in this unit that helped you learn?" she asked recently. "What things did not help you learn?" Behind Fadin, data points flashed on a board, showing how many more students could add and subtract within five digits than in weeks prior. The exercise was deliberate, underscoring a major shift in Menomonee Falls that's training everyone to use data to make decisions, from teachers and custodians to kindergartners. The strategies employed over the past four years have attracted national - even international - attention to Menomonee Falls, including visitors from Sweden and researchers from the Carnegie Foundation. Other districts around the state and other educational institutions, such as the State University of New York, are taking notes. Armed with promising new outcome data, Menomonee Falls Superintendent Pat Greco said she believes what they're doing is working, and that the district is the case study for how K-12 systems can increase achievement and efficiency. And they're doing it by employing methods rooted not in education, but in the manufacturing and health care industries. "Teachers were reticent about posting student performance data. They were reticent to invite feedback from students," said Greco, who began engaging a small core of staff in the work in 2011. "Now, student performance is the highest it's ever been," Greco said."

" Because the summer usually offers many freedoms -- later nights, lazier mornings and space in between to just be a kid -- the structure of a fall schedule can be a bit jarring for the under-20 crowd. And while I am no David Letterman (love you, Dave!), I love a good Top 10 List, so below are the Top 10 Ways to Avoid Flunking the Fall."

"Zeen (@zeen_com on Twitter) is a free, online platform in beta for creating digital magazines. The website lets you quickly pull photos from Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, as well as videos from YouTube and integrate them into slick, multi-page online magazines. Today I created a travelog magazine about our family's recent fall break adventures titled, "Boston & Maine: Fall Break 2012 Highlights & Memories." The screenshot below doesn't do the platform justice: Visit the actual website to scroll down pages and use the navigational table of contents links on the left and right sidebars to move within the document."

"Every student has made this claim at least once before. As students make their way through their academic career, they often question the importance and applicability of their lessons. It is not only evident in this common statement, but also in the many blank stares and falling heads as students fall asleep. Is our content doomed to boredom? How can we present it so that students are excited to learn? Below, I will share with you some questions to ask yourself to help you create a curriculum that students will not be able to get enough of!"

The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros' Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century. Anyone is free to use this video for educational purposes. You may download, translate, or use as part of another presentation. Please share.

"Don't bring your iPad to bed with you if you value your sleep. Researchers at the National Academy of Science published a study on Monday that concludes the "short-wavelength light" (light that's closer to the blue end of the spectrum) messes up the circadian rhythms that govern sleep and suppresses the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. The result? People reported feeling less tired, and took longer to fall asleep. They were also more tired the next day."

"McPherson Square Library, a site that launched Maker programming just last month, held a Fall Festival this past weekend. Maker Jawn was invited to attend and host an activity table. Gavin and I went, ready for some animation with a set of iPads and a big box of Play Doh. We decided to do stop motion animation because the event was projected to have hundreds of attendees and from experience we know that this activity is usually a crowd-pleaser, and one that doesn't require a lot of consumable supplies. Because the theme of the Festival was food and nutrition related, Gavin brought a recent plaster cast of his teeth, which proceeded to eat all different kinds of Play Doh creations."

"If you visit Lighthouse Community Charter classrooms this fall, you'll see kindergarteners using power tools, second graders doing logo programming, third graders building circuit blocks, sixth graders programming microcontrollers to respond to sensor inputs, eighth graders using hot-glue guns, and high school students building chairs, building and programming robots, and using a laser to cut out pieces of wood for prototypes. As we look across our school, we're pretty excited by two things. First, we're pleased to see making (broadly defined as using your hands, heart, and mind to create or improve things) happening as part of our students' core classroom experiences. And second, we're thrilled that our students - poor, urban students of color - have access to making, especially because our educational system so often provides them with experiences filled with seat time and back-to-basics instruction. Lighthouse operates two high-performing, K-12 public schools in Oakland: our flagship campus, Lighthouse, and our brand new campus, Lodestar (to open in East Oakland in the fall of 2016). Our mission is to prepare a diverse, K-12 student population for college and the career of their choice by equipping each student with the skills, knowledge, and tools to become a self-motivated, competent, lifelong learner."

"Polar Bears International Fall Tundra Connections- FREE Live Webcasts!"

"Are kindergarteners too young to start using iPads in schools? The Lower Merion School District in the suburbs of Philadelphia doesn't think so. "

"Join us in our next ThingLink Creative Challenge to investigate, create and share interactive images that explore the hidden side of the things we use everyday by deconstructing products and analysing them. We are pleased to announce the Product Deconstruction Challenge, a creative challenge designed by Ed Charlwood. Ed is the Head of Design and Director of Digital Learning at an Independent school in West London. About Product Deconstruction This challenge is designed for individual students or small groups of students, but we encourage teachers to sign up to receive communication. The goal of Product Deconstruction is to learn about the hidden world of products by taking them apart to understand how they are designed, made and used. We will be deconstructing products by taking them apart and finding out what they are made of and why they are the way they are. We encourage teachers to sign up and submit entries on behalf of their students."

"A while back, I was asked, "What engages students?" Sure, I could respond, sharing anecdotes about what I believed to be engaging, but I thought it would be so much better to lob that question to my own eighth graders. The responses I received from all 220 of them seemed to fall under 10 categories, representing reoccurring themes that appeared again and again. So, from the mouths of babes, here are my students' answers to the question: "What engages students?""

"Teachers instinctually know that art, music and drama add value to kids' lives. But in the era of high-stakes exams, the arts often fall to the bottom of the list, whether we intend them to or not. Below, explore research that shows the arts actually improve test scores-and enrich kids' lives in a million other ways-along with simple tips for incorporating more creativity into the regular classroom."

"We often talk about iPads in K-12 classrooms, the availability of information on the web for college students to access, and a host of other similar topics in too many categories to mention. But we don't often broach the topic of technology in early childhood education classrooms. While we've seen some statistics on kids and technology usage, that information doesn't usually fall into the 'classroom usage' category. So we were interested to see this handy infographic which looks at the technologies early childhood teachers and administrators use (or don't use) in their classrooms, including how often they're used, what tech is used, and why they are used. Keep reading to learn more."

"We have been noticing that more and more students have been bringing their own iPads to school and thus the decision was made to purchase 20 iPad Minis instead of 30 with the anticipation that enough students would fall into the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) category to make it work."

"Loopster is a video editing tool that I first tried as a web app last fall. Recently, I learned that Loopster has a free iPad app. The free iPad app offers all of the same features that are available in the web version of the service. The Loopster iPad app provides a four track editor. There are tracks for video and images, transitions, sounds, and text. You can import images and videos from your iPad's camera roll or shoot a new video with the app and edit it. On the video editing track you can trim clips and combine clips. On the text track you can add speech bubbles and other text effects. Loopster has a slow motion effect that is available on the iPad app too."

"Apple's engineers are working hard towards meeting their Fall 2013 release date for iOS 7. However, their PR department is also working hard to ensure that educators know the full extent of the changes that are coming, and how they will impact iPad management in the classroom. The full list of changes can be found here, but I discuss some of my favorites below and share why they are a good move for Apple to make…especially in light of the forthcoming Android Google Play for Education Store. "

"The use of rubrics in the classroom falls in and out of favor, as do other trends. This infographic demonstrates why rubrics, unlike other trends, should be here to stay. Rubrics, in essence, are an easy way to score student work objectively. They are succinct scoring charts that allow for student work to be fairly evaluated. Therefore, it can improve teaching methodologies and ensure unbiased assessment. Rubrics can also be used to help increase student agency and intrinsic motivation, a constant struggle in today's reward based culture. This infographic is neatly split into two sections, "Why Use Rubrics?" and "How to Use Rubrics?" This allows the use (presumably a teacher) to easily refer back to relevant information as needed to help deliver quality education, regardless of experience or expertise."