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"From the two-year old startup Sensopia, the MagicPlan iOS app is rolling out version 2.0 of its floor plan capturing application today, which allows you to hold up your phone then scan the dimensions of the room to create an instant floor plan. Once created, the plan can be exported to DXF, PDF, JPEG and even HTML for viewing on the web."

"Down a locker-lined hallway at Lawrence Central High School in Indianapolis, Zac Felli, a junior, walks to his first class of the day. He wears tortoiseshell glasses and is built like he could hit a ball hard. He has enviable skin for a teenager, smooth as a suede jacket. Over one shoulder he carries a slim forest-green and tan messenger bag that would have been social suicide in 1997. But 1997 was the year Zac was born, so he wouldn't know anything about that. A squat, taupe monolith flanked by parking lots, Lawrence Central smells like old brick and floor polish and grass. Its gleaming floors squeak if you move your foot a certain way. The school has existed on precisely this spot of land since 1963: maroon block letters over the door, tang of chlorine from the indoor pool. None of that has changed. Here's what has: After Zac turns the doorknob of Room 113 and takes his seat in Japanese III, he reaches into his shoulder bag, pushes aside his black iPhone 5S and Nintendo 3DS XL, and pulls out his Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet with purple detachable keyboard, which he props up on his desk using its kickstand. By touching a white and purple icon on his screen, he opens Microsoft OneNote, a program in which each of his classes is separated into digital journals and then into digital color-coded tabs for greater specificity. And then, without a piece of paper in sight and before an adult has said a word, he begins to learn."

"Dear Parent: I know. You're worried. Every day, your child comes home with a story about THAT kid. The one who is always hitting shoving pinching scratching maybe even biting other children. The one who always has to hold my hand in the hallway. The one who has a special spot at the carpet, and sometimes sits on a chair rather than the floor. The one who had to leave the block centre because blocks are not for throwing. The one who climbed over the playground fence right exactly as I was telling her to stop. The one who poured his neighbour's milk onto the floor in a fit of anger. On purpose. While I was watching.  And then, when I asked him to clean it up, emptied the ENTIRE paper towel dispenser. On purpose. While I was watching. The one who dropped the REAL ACTUAL F-word in gym class. You're worried that THAT child is detracting from your child's learning experience. You're worried that he takes up too much of my time and energy, and that your child won't get his fair share. You're worried that she is really going to hurt someone some day. You're worried that "someone" might be your child. You're worried that your child is going to start using aggression to get what she wants. You're worried your child is going to fall behind academically because I might not notice that he is struggling to hold a pencil. I know. Your child, this year, in this classroom, at this age, is not THAT child. Your child is not perfect, but she generally follows rules. He is able to share toys peaceably. She does not throw furniture. He raises his hand to speak. She works when it is time to work, and  plays when it is time to play. He can be trusted to go straight to the bathroom and straight back again with no shenanigans. She thinks that the S-word is "stupid" and the C-word is "crap." I know."

"Banana pianos are awesome, but what about playing music with your feet?"

"One area that I don't have time to explore very often during the school year is creating music on my iPad. It seems with all the day to day activities of teaching that I totally loose touch with musical explorations and composing. I've been taking more time lately to do this and I am floored at what I can do with an iPad and a few apps. I am not going to give you a history lesson here but I will say that at one time in my career I dreamed of creating a wonderful MIDI lab outfitted with computers, keyboards, speakers and mixers for my students to use. That dream never happened because of the crazy cost involved. My dream has been reshaped. Here is what I've found…."

"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."

"Get into the holiday spirit the Destination Imagination way-with a little creativity! For this year's Great Graham Cracker Challenge, we want you to design and create a graham cracker structure inspired by your favorite book. Your structure must incorporate at least two special features. Special features must be physical things that are attached to or associated with your graham cracker structure (e.g., extra floors, a magical cape, etc.)."

"Mention robots to many English teachers and they'll immediately point down the hall to the science classroom or to the makerspace, if they have one. At many schools, if there's a robot at all, it's located in a science or math classroom or is being built by an after-school robotics club. It's not usually a fixture in English classrooms. But as teachers continue to work at finding new entry points to old material for their students, robots are proving to be a great interdisciplinary tool that builds collaboration and literacy skills. "For someone like me who teaches literature by lots of dead white guys, teaching programming adds relevance to my class," said Jessica Herring, a high school English teacher at Benton High School in Arkansas. Herring first experimented using Sphero, essentially a programmable ball, when her American literature class was studying the writing of early settlers. Herring pushed the desks back and drew a maze on the floor with tape representing the journey from Europe to the New World. Her students used class iPads and an introductory manually guided app to steer their Spheros through the maze. Herring, like many English teachers, was skeptical about how the Sphero robot could be a useful teaching tool in her classroom. She thought that type of technology would distract students from the core skills of reading, writing and analyzing literature. But she decided to try it after hearing about the success of another English teacher across the country."

"BROOKLYN, New York - I'm sitting on the floor at The Academy of Talented Scholars (PS 682) in Bensonhurst, watching kindergarteners create robots on an iPad. It's one of the cutest things I've ever seen, and I don't even like children. The exercise is part of the curriculum led by co-teachers Stacy Butsikares and Allison Bookbinder, focused on helping the 5- and 6-year-old students come up with ways to solve problems. The first step is to identify a problem happening in the school. The kindergarteners come up with ideas like kids horsing around in the lunch line, or not throwing trash away properly, or making too much noise at recess. Students are instructed to create a robot that could solve the problem, and draw the robot on a piece of paper. Once the robot is sketched out, the real fun begins. Using the app The Robot Factory, these pint-sized problem-solvers bring their robot ideas to life."

"When in Boston, I taught next to a Geometry teacher who would later go on to become Teacher of the Year. Lining the walls of his high school Geometry classroom, from floor to ceiling, were vocabulary words with drawings and examples. At the time I thought it was a bit extreme. I mean, aren't these kids in high school? Over the years since, I have come to realize just how important word walls are and that he was absolutely right in putting it all out there like that. If you think about it, there's a measly 5 year age difference between a 4th grader and a 9th grader. Yes, kids do grow up quick, but what is it about those 5 short years that suddenly allows students to remember and recall everything and no longer need visual reminders?"

"I would've written this earlier, but I was busy picking pieces of my mind up off the floor. I get to write about cool stuff all day, but this… this is incredible. colAR is the coloring book of the future. By mashing up traditional coloring books with some good ol' augmented reality voodoo, colAR brings your kid's drawings to life in full, animated 3d."

"Robots are everywhere, they open our garage doors, vacuum our floors and if you are lucky they even park your car.  Until recently there weren't many robots in the classroom and now I couldn't imagine approaching STEM without them.  Using the Sphero robots in my after school programming club has opened my eyes to both what can be taught using simple robots and how to do it.  I want to share with you some tools and tips for teaching with robots."

"On the second floor of Morgan State University's engineering building, Jacob Walker, 12, is putting the finishing touches on a ruler he's just created. Not yet an actual ruler. One he's designing on the computer. He just needs to add his initials - then it's time to produce it on a 3-D printer. Jacob starts seventh grade in the fall and has big dreams. Building this ruler is all part of the plan. "When I was a child," he says, "I loved to play with Legos, and it inspired me to be an engineer when I get older." Jacob is one of some 50 boys in this free, four-week camp at Morgan State. It's called the Minority Male Makers Program - paid for by Verizon."

"As you can see, our Maker Mondays is loosely based on the concepts inspired by the Cincinnati Public Library's MakerSpace. We had already purchased the Little Bits and Legos. The Ellison and Accucut dies were also something we had on hand (and taking them from the top floor to the basement for our Maker Mondays only took 3 trips). Inpsired by CPL, we did purchase a couple of American Button Machines, which I blogged about here. Our goal is to eventually add in a few additional items so that we can rotates some of the various features. So here's some of what we learned in researching and setting up our first Maker Monday:"

"We all know and love Google Maps. But did you know that the Street View Pegman has few more tricks up his sleeve? Google Street Views takes some of the most amazing Street View imagery, as well as user submitted photography, and turns it into a unique platform where students can explore every corner of the Earth in full panoramic glory. From the top of the world's tallest buildings to the depths of the ocean floors, it really is an immersive and awe-inspiring experience."

"One by one, in a room just off the gym floor at Edna Brewer Middle School in Oakland, Calif., seventh graders go on the interview hot seat. Kyle McClerkins grills them on aspects of adolescent life: "What is the biggest challenge for middle school girls?" he asks. "What has changed about you from sixth grade to now?" Some 80 students have applied to be "peer leaders" in this school's new, alternative discipline program. Called "restorative justice" this school and the Oakland Unified School District are at the forefront of a new approach to school misconduct and discipline. Instead of suspending or expelling students who get into fights or act out, restorative justice seeks to resolve conflicts and build school community through talking and group dialogue. Its proponents say it could be an answer to the cycle of disruption and suspension, especially in minority communities where expulsion rates are higher than in predominantly white schools."