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"Here's one way to get kids excited about programming: a "robot garden" with dozens of fast-changing LED lights and more than 100 origami robots that can crawl, swim and blossom like flowers. A team from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and the Department of Mechanical Engineering has developed a tablet-operated system that illustrates their cutting-edge research on distributed algorithms via robotic sheep, origami flowers that can open and change colors and robotic ducks that fold into shape by being heated in an oven."

"And I sincerely hope that Touch Van Gogh, the newly updated, free, award-winning app from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is only the beginning of a larger touching art trend. Made for tablets, Touch Van Gogh allows viewers to explore the details, technique and history of six of Vincent van Gogh's masterpieces: The Cottage, View from Theo's Apartment, The Bedroom, Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Garden of the Asylum, and Daubigny's Garden."

"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."

"It's summer, which means you're most likely out of the classroom and enjoying the weather and all that comes with it. For many of us, this means either attempting to grow a few things in our own gardens or hitting up the farmer's markets for some awesome fresh produce. Others will start small school gardens with their students in the fall, which offer many learning opportunities extending way beyond just the idea of how to get something to grow. The handy infographic below takes a look at fifty cool facts about plants, many of which you may not have already known. Use them as cocktail party fodder, to get your students interested in plants, or just for fun! "

Multimedia site from Exploratorium - See how the plants we tend feed our bodies, our minds, and our senses.

"Here's a great idea… Take your students to a gallery and let them interact with the sculptures like never before. We took a group of Year 10s on a walk through a sculpture garden and asked them to use their iPads to photograph the work. Using their iPads they created abstract images by using apps in workflows to manipulate the photos on the spot. The results were amazing. Rather than producing one picture, most students created a very diverse folio of work."

"The movement to "go green" has been growing stronger over the past few decades. People are thinking more about the everyday changes they can make to help make planet Earth a little nicer and less touched by the harm of pollution. Might as well, since most of us are going to be stuck here for the rest of our lives. Whether you're building a wind turbine for your home or just planting a garden, there are a lot of DIY ways for you to go green."

"More people are living longer these days, but the good news comes shadowed by the possible increase in cases of age-related mental decline. By some estimates, the global incidence of dementia will more than triple in the next 35 years. That grim prospect is what makes a study published in March in The Journal of Alzheimer's Disease so encouraging: It turns out that regular walking, cycling, swimming, dancing and even gardening may substantially reduce the risk of Alzheimer's."

"If you're struck by wanderlust but are short a few vacation days this summer, reading can transport you anywhere: the west coast, the Himalayas, European gardens. "

"When I looked deeper into the site, I saw a few interesting things. First of all, the site is growing and growing, and pretty soon you will be able to learn about what you want. From "art" to "home and garden", there are a lot of options for a site that I am assuming that not many people know about. Some are free, and some you pay for, but the interesting thing is that if you wanted to learn to play the guitar, you may pay $60 an hour, but there is also travel time, travel cost, and other elements. Many will look at that and choose to stay at home and learn in their pajamas."

"To get started, please create an interactive image to Show Us Your School and get added to our interactive map. Then grab your mobile device and take a walk through your schoolyard or neighborhood to capture photos of gardens, search for insects on your playground, or simply brainstorm a list of local landmarks and do some research. We hope you will find something interesting. If not, please make a suggestion. We love feedback!"

"Pity the summertime. All year, we long for better weather, using this season as a repository for our plans. I'll paint the house in the summer. I'll plant a garden in the summer. I'll reorganize the garage in - you guessed it - the summer. But all those plans jamming up our calendar doesn't leave much time for anything fun. These seven apps can help you keep track of your various household chores and projects, so you can spend more time getting things done and less time keeping track of them."

"This morning, I spent a happy 20 minutes wandering around my back garden taking photos of grass, flowers and trees to decorate a virtual patchwork elephant. I am 37 years old, and not ashamed. The Elmer's Photo Patchwork app isn't really for me, though. It's a children's app released this month by developer Touch Press, based on the popular series of Elmer books. And it's one of a growing number of apps trying to encourage kids' real-world play, rather than cannibalise it. The best iPad apps for kids of 2014 Their features vary, but their common goal is to get children to look up from their screens, whether it's taking photographs, making papercraft animals or spotting constellations in the night skies. Here are 10 worth investigating with your children. It's iOS-heavy, which sadly reflects the priority being given (or, rather, not given) to other platforms by developers of these kinds of apps"

"I agree with Brene Brown about developing "shame resilience" and have found the usual tug of war between with teaching and mistake making diminishes when we introduce students to a mindset in which they appreciate the importance of recognizing our errors and strive for constant improvement. When I think about design thinking, I believe it could be a powerful way for students to experience their vulnerability and develop perspective taking, all the while creating real cool stuff-whether it is a piece of writing, a t-shirt, a rollercoaster, an app or, in my Early Year's classroom, a garden. They learn how to fail forward and create another prototype. This design sprint is not a destructive but constructive element because, although they spent a lot of time developing their idea, the focus shifts from the product itself to the user-who will reap the benefits of this redesign. It gets the kids to detach from what they are making to who they are making it for. This nuance has a relatively big impact on the process of improvement."

"Information literacy has been a hot topic of recent conversation. Many folks believe that web sites that traffic in false information and 'fake news' may have influenced the last United States presidential election. Traffic on the Snopes web site, which debunks false rumors, has never been greater. Ideological separation also is being driven by the ways that we sort ourselves in our schools, neighborhoods, friendship groups, political affiliations, and faith institutions. Already often isolated from the dissimilar-minded, we then also self-select into individualized news media and online channels that can result in walled-garden 'echo chambers' or 'filter bubbles.' To combat our growing concerns about fake news and filter bubbles, we're going to have to take the task of information literacy more seriously. And that means rethinking some organizational and technological practices."

"WINTER GARDEN, Fla. - On the wall of a classroom that is home to the West Orange High School TikTok club, large loopy words are scrawled across a whiteboard: "Wanna be TikTok famous? Join TikTok club." It's working. "There's a lot of TikTok-famous kids at our school," said Amanda DiCastro, who is 14 and a freshman. "Probably 20 people have gotten famous off random things." The school is on a quiet palm-tree-lined street in a town just outside Orlando. A hallway by the principal's office is busy with blue plaques honoring the school's A.P. Scholars. Its choir director, Jeffery Redding, won the 2019 Grammy Music Educator Award. Amanda was referring to a different kind of stardom: on TikTok, a social media app where users post short funny videos, usually set to music, that is enjoying a surge in popularity among teenagers around the world and has been downloaded 1.4 billion times, according to SensorTower. "

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