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"One of my favorite way to use the iPad is to allow kids to create stories. Recently I found an app that is great for storytelling called Felt Board. The app is $1.99 currently and well worth it. Imagine a typical felt board with hundreds of pieces… just in digital form. "

"The week after my dad passed, I decided to come back. Bereavement time was up and I felt that getting back into my classroom would help. I was wrong. By the third day I was still feeling lost, overwhelmed, and exhausted. I ended taking the last two days of the week off. I came back, what I felt as "refreshed", the following Monday. Only still feeling lost, overwhelmed, and exhausted. As soon as I walked into the school I immediately met with the principal and told him that I couldn't continue. I needed more time away to deal with my emotions and to understand the scope of what took place. I could hear words of my dad echoing in my ear - "take care of yourself… if you don't, you'll end up sick." While my dad's health wasn't that great, and he knew it; he always made sure that everyone else took better care of themselves. Exactly like me. I make sure that others are always put before me. I could not longer do that. I needed to take care of myself before I ended up lying on the floor unable to move, like Izzy in Grey's Anatomy. Those four extra days was what I needed. I processed his death, I cried, I slept (for nearly two whole days), and I remembered the good times. I sat on the couch catching up on missed shows, Netflix, and Days of our Lives. We stress the importance of good mental health to our students, but I wasn't heeding my own words. I knew that being in the classroom too soon after his death wasn't making me a good teacher for my students."

"Regardless of whether you think every infant needs an iPad, I think we can all agree that technology has changed education for the better. Today's learners now enjoy easier, more efficient access to information; opportunities for extended and mobile learning; the ability to give and receive immediate feedback; and greater motivation to learn and engage. We now have programs and platforms that can transform learners into globally active citizens, opening up countless avenues for communication and impact. Thousands of educational apps have been designed to enhance interest and participation. Course management systems and learning analytics have streamlined the education process and allowed for quality online delivery. But if we had to pick the top ten, most influential ways technology has transformed education, what would the list look like? The following things have been identified by educational researchers and teachers alike as the most powerful uses of technology for learning. Take a look. 1. Critical Thinking In Meaningful Learning With Technology, David H. Jonassen and his co-authors argue that students do not learn from teachers or from technologies. Rather, students learn from thinking-thinking about what they are doing or what they did, thinking about what they believe, thinking about what others have done and believe, thinking about the thinking processes they use-just thinking and reasoning. Thinking mediates learning. Learning results from thinking. So what kinds of thinking are fostered when learning with technologies? Analogical If you distill cognitive psychology into a single principle, it would be to use analogies to convey and understand new ideas. That is, understanding a new idea is best accomplished by comparing and contrasting it to an idea that is already understood. In an analogy, the properties or attributes of one idea (the analogue) are mapped or transferred to another (the source or target). Single analogies are also known as sy

"Last night, the culmination of six months of work took place for our AP Environmental Science students. As has been noted in the past here, here, and here, Mrs. Stainton has done a tremendous job of creating a real learning experience with her students and showed the final products to parents, students, and staff. After I introduced Haiku Deck in a Lunch N' Learn time, Mrs. Stainton felt that it was the best tech tool for vividly capturing the students' responses as it pertains to their project."

"Earlier this year, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York, visitors paraded through the fifth floor to see a retrospective dedicated to the abstract expressionist Frank Stella. Although many of the works on display were four or five decades old, in some ways the show felt tailor-made for the Instagram age: a riot of vibrant colors and textures, 20-foot-long reliefs, and sculptures as jagged and dynamic as 3-D graffiti. Visitors one busy Saturday afternoon stopped in front of artworks, lined up shots on their phones, snapped a few photos, and then moved on to the next piece. Some paused briefly to consider a particular painting; more stared down at their screens, furiously filtering. Few noticed an elderly gentleman sitting on a bench in one of the smaller rooms, watching the crowd engage with his work. The only visitor in the gallery not clutching a phone was Stella himself. Museum directors are grappling with how technology has changed the ways people engage with exhibits. But instead of fighting it, some institutions are using technology to convince the public that, far from becoming obsolete, museums are more vital than ever before. Here's what those efforts look like."

"In prepping for my on-campus course this semester I felt the need to freshen up my face-to-face discussion strategies. Digging around, I discovered some fabulous pedagogical portals well worth visiting for educators, both newbie and veteran.  Take a look if you and your partner teachers seek a little inspiration for engaging learners in meaningful conversations and a few new activities."

"December is one of the most exhausting months of the year for teachers. The days are shorter. The weather grows colder and (at least here in Oregon) wetter. Students are anxious - whether it's a buzzing excitement for vacation or a sense of dread that some kids feel in homes that are unsafe during the holidays. And teachers are tired. They're tired of redirecting behaviors and tired of the mid-year pressure of the test and simply tired of the sheer energy it takes to be a teacher. It's no wonder that so many teachers begin playing holiday movies around this time of year. They want to create a sense of fun and escape and enjoyment, and a motion picture promises exactly that. Maybe that's okay. Maybe that's a part of creating a culture of joy. But for me, movies always fell flat. For my first few years, I showed a movie the day before the winter break. However, within minutes, kids were disengaged. They were passive. It wasn't special. My students could go home and watch a movie whenever they felt like it. It had me wondering . . . was there something that they could do in my class that they couldn't do anywhere else? Was this actually the chance to do something epic and make something memorable?"

"Catherine Good has experienced stereotype threat herself, although she didn't know it at the time. She started her academic career in pure math, expecting to get a Ph.D. But somewhere along the way she started to feel like it just wasn't for her, even though she was doing well in all her classes. Thinking that she'd just chosen the wrong application for her love of math, Good switched to math education, where she first encountered the idea of stereotype threat from a guest psychology speaker. "As he talked about students feeling that they don't really belong, I had an epiphany," Good said. She realized the discomfort she'd felt studying mathematics had nothing to do with her ability or qualifications and everything to do with a vague sense that she didn't belong in a field dominated by men. Stereotype threat is a term coined by psychologists Joshua Aronson and Claude Steele. They found that pervasive cultural stereotypes that marginalize groups, like "girls aren't good at math," create a threatening environment and affects academic achievement. Good was so fascinated by how powerful psychological forces can be on learning, including her own, that she switched fields again to study social psychology, and she ended up working closely with Carol Dweck for several years when Dweck's growth mindset work was in its early stages and not yet well-known among educators. Good now works at a psychology professor at Baruch College. Originally, Dweck and Good hypothesized that believing intelligence is flexible - what we now call a growth mindset - could protect students from stereotype threat, an inherently fixed idea."

"Use the e-Textiles-in-a-Box tutorial and get ready to teach young people about electronics and computing. Based on the Computational Textiles Curriculum and Sew Electric from MIT, e-Textiles-in-a-Box provides instructions for sewing soft circuits and programming an Arduino microprocessor on the way to creating a bookmark book light and an interactive felt monster that lights up and sings. NCWIT is pleased to offer e-Textiles-in-a-Box in cooperation with the MIT High-Low Tech Group, and with funding from the National Science Foundation."

"When the AP United States history students at Aragon High School in San Mateo, California, scanned the professionally designed pages of minimumwage.com, most concluded that it was a solid, unbiased source of facts and analysis. They noted the menu of research reports, graphics and videos, and the "About" page describing the site as a project of a "nonprofit research organization" called the Employment Policies Institute. But then their teacher, Will Colglazier, demonstrated how a couple more exploratory clicks-critically, beyond the site itself-revealed the Employment Policies Institute is considered by the Center for Media and Democracy to be a front group created by lobbyists for the restaurant and hotel industries. "I have some bright students, and a lot of them felt chagrined that they weren't able to deduce this," said Colglazier, who videotaped the episode in January. "They got duped.""

"Remember how you felt when you first looked at the night sky through a telescope? All those stars, those distant planets - celestial bodies that form poetry in the blackness of deep space. A little help from technology can let you rediscover that child-like joy. Now, there are already programs like Stellarium to learn about the night sky from your computer. But we're going to be looking at sites and apps that accompany real-life star-gazers who need to know what to look at up above, and when to head out of town to capture breath-taking vistas."

"Apps and web apps are only as purposeful as the products and projects that they are used to create. After spending copious amounts of time publishing "Hot Apps 4 HOTS" to iBooks, I felt I should allocate some time to focus on web apps and how they too can be used to support higher order thinking skills."

"I recently wrote a post about "Creating and Collecting Digital Work". When my son brought home this really charming and heart-warming hand drawn "about me" book, I instantly wanted him to tell me about each picture. His descriptions were so amusing and charming, I felt inspired and compelled to create a digital artifact of his work… with my iPad."

"Whether you are a teacher, parent, relative, boss, or fellow community member, each of us has a chance to make a positive and impactful difference in a child's life. But in order to do this, we must carefully consider this question: What do you think matters most to our children? For 20 years I have been posing this question to my students. At the beginning of every school year, I would ask my students to give me advice on how to be their best teacher. I asked them to think about the times they felt most successful and to consider what the adults in their lives did to make this success possible."

"My first year of teaching was a blur. At the time, it didn't feel like a blur. It felt a joyous, adrenaline-fueled rush or lessons, meetings, and new relationships. But in hindsight, it was definitely a blur. And now, years later, I can see a few simple tweaks would've gone a long way."

Marianna Husain (@mhusain), fellow iVenger and author of the Bobcat blog, had the idea to create easy to follow handouts for teachers on a weekly basis to support them with the multitude of apps available on the elementary devices (see full list of 150+ apps here). As there are 5 elementaries and 9-10 ed techs creating these resources on a rotating basis, I suggested a template to streamline the process and make them appear more uniform. In reviewing the apps listed, I felt that they fell into 3 natural categories: tools, activities, and pro

""I thought the project was going well . . . but by the end, I felt that the work my students produced was not as good as I imagined it would be. I was a little embarrassed and almost wanted to dial back the audience's expectations on the night of the presentations!" This is a common concern of teachers who are new to project-based learning. Things can appear to be going smoothly -- students have been engaged by the project, they've been learning content and skills, they've been busy and meeting deadlines -- but their thinking is not as in-depth and their final products not as polished as they should be. If this is your experience, it's time to ask yourself some questions: "

"While there has been a bit of question as to the effectiveness of SAMR, a shift to move beyond SAMR, and a few proposed changes to the structure of the model floating around online, I have to say that hearing Dr. Ruben Puentedura (you may know him as the father of SAMR) speak at iPad Summit a few weeks ago still felt like a rare app-ortunity and a truly inspiring treat. As I am still collecting my thoughts and ideas from the event, I wanted to share some really great resources from the Dr. SAMR. ;)"

"Throughout middle school and high school conducting lab experiments was my favorite part of every science class that I took. There was something about the hands-on aspect of science labs that always got me excited about learning. I'm sure many of you felt the same way and that your students feel that way now. Here are some places to find ideas and resources for conducting hands-on science lessons."

"I have a couple of more 3D printing projects that I haven't written about this year, but by the time this posts it will be the last day of school, and I feel like this would be the right time to reflect on what a year of 3D printing in the classroom was like. I started the year with a lot of ideas and excitement, but I wasn't really sure how the year would pan out. Looking back now I couldn't be happier. The level of learning that occurred this year was more than I expected. As excited as I was at the prospect of using a 3D printer in the classroom, I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to figure out how to tie it to the curriculum. I wondered if my students would be able to understand how it works and be able to use it effectively. I was concerned that I wouldn't have time for projects with all the other demands that happen in a classroom. My concerns were overshadowed by the novelty and the excitement of the printer. I think that is what many of my students felt too. They were curious, excited, and bewildered."