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"s a high school math teacher, it was important for me to create a learning space that welcomed on-demand wonder and exploration. I knew that I planned to have a few essential hands-on math tools, and in the last few years, I also knew that I needed to have other items that were essential for providing kids more creative freedom. With a few containers, manipulatives, and supplies, along with some technology, I created a space that my students would go on to name "the wonder shelves." What you are about to read was not an overnight process, but one that grew over an eight-year span."

"As a high school math teacher, it was important for me to create a learning space that welcomed on-demand wonder and exploration. I knew that I planned to have a few essential hands-on math tools, and in the last few years, I also knew that I needed to have other items that were essential for providing kids more creative freedom. With a few containers, manipulatives, and supplies, along with some technology, I created a space that my students would go on to name "the wonder shelves." What you are about to read was not an overnight process, but one that grew over an eight-year span."

"After two years of having iPads in our first grade classroom, I've found a few strategies that work to set up a successful and collaborative learning environment. We use our set of iPads to connect, create, share, and much more. However, without a few expectations and procedures our room would be chaos! So here are a few strategies for successful collaboration that can be applied to just about any technology in your classroom."

"Inquiry Based Instruction has been an area of study for me for the last couple of years. In my opinion, teaching through inquiry is not only engaging for our students, but develops an essential skill that our kids need to be successful in the 21st century. In this post, I want to share a few of the resources I have been using for the last few years, as well as a few resources that I just learned about. "

"Earlier in the year I created a Scavenger Hunt for our Open House. It was a HUGE hit in our classroom. My kids keep asking me when they will get to scan again, so I have been working on a few new ways to integrate the QR codes into our classroom as well as looking through a few things my team created last year."

"The New Year is "nigh"…and my inbox has been filling up with notifications to check out the latest "Top 10 List of 2012″ and…a few, just a few, posts on best practice in "goal-setting" for 2013."

"The iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch make excellent digital readers, and the iBooks apps is where most people will spend their time reading books on the iOS platform. iBooks is deceptively simple though, and though it works great on it's own, taking the time to learn a few things and adjust a few simple settings can make a world of difference in the readability of ebooks or anything else in your digital library. With that in mind, here are 5 simple tricks to get a better reading experience in iOS with the iBooks app."

"Changing the world sounds like a tall order. But in reality, educators play their role to help change the world every single day. The summer is a great time to start planting seeds of change in our personal or professional practice. Here are a few quick ideas to keep in mind over the next few weeks before we gear up to go back to school."

"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."

"A few weeks ago I heard the amazing Katie Cunningham discuss the power of storytelling - check out her new book here. She shared some of the ways you can support student storytellers and it got me thinking… how can we use technology tools to capture stories? I've put together a list of my favorite creation apps and websites to help you leverage technology tools to help students tell their stories. What I love about this list of tools is how you can tailor them to the needs of your students. Maybe your kids will tell their stories through voice recordings or a slideshow of pictures. Some students might write a thousand words in one sitting while others will retell a special moment in just a few sentences. The creation apps and websites featured below will let students capture stories with your guidance and support."

"A few days ago, I met Manuel Herrera at MORENet. He has an amazing maker space where students engage in creative thinking on a daily basis. It's a bastion of creativity and wonder and his passion for it is contagious. However, as we talked about prototyping and design thinking, he mentioned something surprising. "We have a 3D printer, but only a few students know how to use it for creative purposes. Most students download templates and print things out. There's not much actual creative thought that goes into it." "So, what's the answer?" I asked. "I think they need to start by making things by hand," he said."

"The spike in the number of technology-enabled classrooms in the past few years clearly indicates what a crucial role technology already plays when it comes to education. The dawn of mobile phones has changed the way people access information. Almost everything we need is available at our fingertips and available on demand. The fact that the current breed of students is comfortable using cool new gadgets only goes to show that the influence of technology is here to stay. The market is full of apps that make any classroom an interesting place for both students and teachers. From easy-to-use user interfaces, to customizable features to suit individual needs, these apps have been built to deliver great user experience. My experience using these below listed apps has been great. While some of them were recommended to me by my colleagues, a few others were suggested by my students. I've greatly benefitted from their uber cool features and I hope you will, too. Here is my favorites list:"

"One day, we will be able to press a button and a nearly perfect 3D printed object will appear a few hours later. No fuss, no muss. Sounds great, right!? Although 3D technology has come a long way, there is no magic button yet and every maker will run into a challenge once in a while.  But you're a maker, so you tinker and always figure out a fix. To help you find fixes a little faster, here's a few of the common errors you might run into and possible adjustments to solve these problems. "

"The countdown is on! This year World Read Aloud Day is February 16. Over the past few years I've had the opportunity to work with the amazing team at LitWorld, who are the folks behind #WRAD. Their signature event is right around corner so I wanted to share a few resources to help make your celebration of World Read Aloud a success!"

" lot of words have been added to the dictionary over the past few decades thanks to social media, but few have become so widely used and accepted as "hashtag." For a long time, the hashtag symbol (#) was known simply as the "pound" symbol. Now, I could swear that the only time I hear it referred to as a pound symbol is when I enter my PIN number to pay my cell phone bill. Manage and plan your social media content with the help of this free calendar template. While hashtags were originally made famous by Twitter, they're now used on many major social networks, including Facebook and Instagram. Let's explore what a hashtag is, why they're so great, and how they work on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram."

"I get asked a lot what are my favorite apps. And I usually can rattle off a few. Evernote, Twitter, Wunderlist to name a few. But what about apps that actually teach? What about apps that kids (or you) can use to learn?"

"Not very many people really know what it's like to do something that affects not only hundreds, but thousands. Some would say those with big dreams, simply put, are just dreamers. Others might say teenagers who dream big are trying to do something beyond their power. Many people would like to say they not only had that dream, but they accomplished it. Yet few actually can. We, Mary MartinezSmith and Damian Marlow, are proud to say we are two of those few people. The catch? We did it just by putting sticky notes with positive messages on every locker in our school. "

"Not long ago, a teacher had nothing more to rely on than knowledge, textbooks and a few markers. Technology has slowly changed that in the past few years, with the Internet, multimedia programs and computers increasing their presence in the classroom. But with the rise of tablet tech, the student-teacher experience is facing a subtle revolution: joining the trend makes students feel as if they're part of an environment that's desirable because people speak their native languages. As the iPad becomes a teaching tool, classrooms are transformed into contemporary settings."

"10 Go To Blogs To Make You Think"

"As an educator, I am constantly looking for new ideas to shape my educational philosophy and pedagogy. While I don't always have the time to read a book on current trends in education, I can always find a few moments each day to peruse the blogs that I follow and read a few posts to get my mental wheels spinning. Here are 10 of my favorite sources for inspiration:"

"I support the technological efforts of a few hundred teachers and thousands of students within my school district. I know there are others that perform roughly the same function as I do around Michigan, and the United States. I figured there might be a few more of us out there trying to provide support for iPads and other iOS devices. I've been creating "how to" videos for iPads every week since the start of this school year, and I though it might be a good idea to create a how to video of how I'm actually making the iPad videos. "