Group items tagged

"It's easy to clear out all cookies and website data for the iPad's Safari browser. You go to the Settings app, tap on Safari, tap on 'Clear Cookies and Data' and confirm the action when prompted. What I hadn't realized until today, when I saw this handy tip shared by Kelly Hodgkins at TUAW, is that you can also choose to just get rid of cookies and data for specific websites - and this is also very easy to do."

"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."

"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…."

"Are you looking for some good learning games to improve your kid's mathematical capabilities? I have some new titles to recommend for you. The apps below mix fun, gaming and learning in such a way that kids get to learn some basic math notions without having to go through the painful and explicit process associated with learning Math."

"Last night I had one of those incredibly horrifying moments that I hope you never experience. Just as I'm getting ready to go to bed at 11 PM in my hotel room I suddenly realize my iPad was missing. Losing an iPad is upsetting - knowing the damage someone could do if they accessed online accounts using my iPad was terrifying. Fortunately I knew I had some protection because I password protect my devices and had set up Find My iPad/Phone. Which can't be said for many of the educators I noticed using mobile devices at ISTE. But had I done enough?"

"The iPad is not going to replace teachers or 'fix' education. There is a cost implication that must be taken into account and only an educator will know if it is right for their students. Indeed the cost-benefit analysis for an establishment must take into account a host of factors when considering iPad use in the classroom. However, if there are iPads in the classroom, there are a number of applications that can enhance learning and assist the educator in developing student skills. In fact, the iPad allows educators to build on existing styles and increase flexibility in their classroom whilst personalising learning."

"Multi-award-winning Minecraft is a game of survival. You don't 'level up'; you build, explore, and survive whatever comes at you by placing blocks and going on adventures, either alone or with classmates. As you do, you explore, gather resources, craft, and fight for your survival. At the core of every action is problem-solving: Minecraft encourages kids to tinke"

"Luckily, I realized (sooner rather than later) that I was part of their reading problem, not the change in their reading lives I hoped to be. This aha! moment led me to dig deep, talk to my boys about their reading experiences and help them unpack what was really going on underneath the surface. My ultimate goal was to figure out what was blocking boys from reading for pleasure and most importantly, how to open them up and let it into their lives. After lots of conversations with 9- to 14-year-old boys, here's what I discovered."

"Popular mobile devices may come and go, but the iPad has remained a hit in the K-12 classroom. But even though they're in schools, our work with teachers has led us to understand that while many of them would like to use iPads meaningfully in their classrooms, they can't because of time, access, and training. So for the past year and a half, we've both been working with teachers and university students integrating iPad technology into the classroom in a controlled way. While doing this, we came across several outcomes that made us question and dig deeper into what the research actually says about using them in the classroom. Do students and younger teachers use them more effectively? Do they work better for some student populations? It's probably not giving much away to say that the most important learning outcome we found was that experience is the greatest teacher."

"Our STEM Lab/Makerspace is a HUGE hit with our students. Since I oversee the lab and take the classes in I get bombarded by kids all day asking if it is their day to go to the STEM Lab. They are building, discovering, exploring, designing, problem solving, and having a blast doing it. However, as the kids continued to explore the STEM Lab we began to notice that they had moved past the exploration phase and wanted a bit more direction and challenge. We realized that we needed to up our game a bit to take our lab to the next level so we decided to gamify our STEM Lab with challenges and badges! It took some prep but once the challenge cards and badges were created we were ready to roll. We are happy to share our tips, tricks and resources so that you can gamify your STEM or STEAM Lab too."

"Hello, I am Sam Patterson and this is Beyond The Hour of Code, a podcast dedicated to helping teachers use programming and creative self-expression in the learning experiences they design for their students. This episode is about . . . Chapter seven of my book exploring the instructional models most useful for robot-based learning in the primary grades. This is the last in a mini-series of "how to teach with robots" posts. Robot as Constant Robots used in a lesson should be used to their full potential. What does a robot do? Exactly what you tell it to do. Pedagogically, to capitalize on this, think about the robot serving the role of "constant" in an experiment. Ask a robot to roll forward at fifty percent power for two seconds and that is exactly what it will do. How far will it go? That depends on so many things outside of the robot and its programming. This space, just outside of the robot and its programming, is where teachers build the learning experience."

"If you're thinking about starting a Makerspace in your school, one thing you might want to consider is how to make sure kids are digging deep in their learning.  Questions to ask include: How can we tie the maker mindset into existing curriculum? How might we ensure that our students are going deep with their creativity, problem solving, and reflection? What learning experiences and opportunities do our students need? These questions are way more important than, "What stuff do I buy?""

"As Kristin Berbawy packed projects into her car, she lingered over one in particular. Two 3D-printed Makerbots with wire hooks-a pair of earrings. They matched the white braces on her teeth and the white strands in her hair. Her students had made them-as they had all the projects in her car-in their high school makerspace. She was proud of them. She was going to display their work to other teachers. Smack in the middle of AP exams, a growing group of teachers is pouring time, creativity and energy into activities for which there are no standardized tests: makerspaces. The movement is avowedly grassroots and candidly quirky, and its main gathering is the Maker Educator Convening in Oakland, CA, where Kristin Berbawy was headed with a trunkload of laser cut wood and 3D printed objects. "

"Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Go Back and Forth. Get Reactions. Rinse and Repeat. There are many ways of looking at the design thinking process. The main premise remains the same though: Take Action and Create Something to Solve a Problem of Some Sort. Below, I describe the most commonly used and taught Design Thinking Process. However, it is not about what the names of the 5 spaces are. Rather, "doing" design thinking is about understanding what each space involves and that the process rarely occupies a single space. In fact, any project will have the designers focusing in one area, but working within the constraints of several spaces. For example, new ideas will occur everywhere along the way to the "permanent" solution, even in the testing stage. And, the process is cyclical - it never ends... There are always improvements to be made."

"We're not going to take you through a comprehensive tour of iOS 10 here - that's the review's job. Instead, I want to highlight some of my favorite lesser-known features arriving with iOS 10. Some are big, some are small, but they've all been invaluable over my past few months testing the operating system."

"One of the conversations was going back to the idea of Twitter and does it actually promote literacy.  Thinking about, jumping onto Twitter years ago has led to many amazing opportunities for me, but I also think that it has led to tremendous growth in my own learning over time.  Since I first started connecting with others through the medium, I have written over 88,000 tweets, written over 1,100 blog posts, and one book.  I am a firm believer that if you want to become better at writing, the best way to do it is to write more. Without connecting on Twitter, I truly believe that I would not have written in the other mediums.  I have started blogs before, but never made it past a few posts.  As for a book?  I doubt that was something I would have ever done without Twitter.  I am not the only one; so many educators that have connected through the medium have written and published their own books.  I have seen people criticize that so many educators are writing books now, and I think, "Wow! So many educators are writing books now!"  Educators sharing their wisdom with different audiences all over the world is a pretty powerful thing."

"As I mentioned in my last blog post 5 Ways to Reflect, & Not Regret, Teaching OR... Summer Thoughts for Fall Success, one of the BEST things about being a teacher is that every year is a do-over! This post will provide some easy tips and examples of how up your ed tech game and get ready for a super new school year. Don't feel pressured to do all 6 - just pick one for this year! If that works out for you, try another and go on from there. "

"When planning a makerspace, most think about designing for creativity. It's important to think about the types of projects that will be completed in the space, how many people will use the space at any given time, and the equipment on your must-have versus nice-to-have lists. However, there are also a few considerations that often go overlooked."