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"It could be very soon that every child amputee can don a bionic arm in their favorite Disney character's colors for a fraction of the current price. This result will be thanks to Open Bionics and 3D printing. This week, a clinical trial of 3D printed bionic hands for children starts in Bristol. The trial is the world's first and could result in children receiving bionic hands at a fraction of the regular cost of £60,000. Funding from the Small Business Research Initiatives scheme made the trial a reality. 3D printing plays a large part in the price decrease from £60,000 to a projected £5,000. This is thanks to the technology's ability to offer amputees a custom fit at the same time as speeding production. If the trial is successful, bionic hands for kids could soon be available on the NHS (the national healthcare system for the UK). The hands would also feature kids' favorite Disney characters."

"Imagine you did not have a functioning hand. What would you do? How would you overcome the obstacles presented by a world for people with two working hands? Those of us with two normal hands may never know what this is like, but you and your students now have an opportunity to help other kids and adults overcome these obstacles and learn cool things at the same time."

"The iPad can be tons of fun for kids, but the trick is to balance hands-off activities like watching a movie with hands-on projects like making your own. Osmo is hands on-it's a set of iPad games played with real-world pieces, and unique stand with a red plastic piece that redirects the iPad's front-facing camera to the game pieces as your child interacts with them on a table or floor."

"As laptops become smaller and more ubiquitous, and with the advent of tablets, the idea of taking notes by hand just seems old-fashioned to many students today. Typing your notes is faster - which comes in handy when there's a lot of information to take down. But it turns out there are still advantages to doing things the old-fashioned way. For one thing, research shows that laptops and tablets have a tendency to be distracting - it's so easy to click over to Facebook in that dull lecture. And a study has shown that the fact that you have to be slower when you take notes by hand is what makes it more useful in the long run. In the study published in Psychological Science, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles sought to test how note-taking by hand or by computer affects learning."

I can't tell you how excited I am… February's going to be BIG!! There are 28 days (plus an extra for leap year this year) pack-filled with hands-on STEM activities for kids.  I've partnered with some of my favorite bloggers and here's a little math to show you just how BIG this is…  60 activities + 29 bloggers = an AHmazing month of hands-on science, tech, engineering & math for your kiddos at home and in the classroom. We've broken it down into four different hot topics: STEM Goes Green, STEM Challenges, Coding for Kids and STEM On a Budget.  So bookmark this page & come back each day to see the next project!"

"One of the most important skills of the 21st century - web literacy - is often overlooked in the classroom. The ability to read, write and participate online is an indispensable skill for learners, but it's curiously absent from many educators' curricula. At Mozilla, we believe web literacy should be a cornerstone of education. When students can create their own content on the Web, tinker with HTML, and understand the basics of online privacy, they're empowered to do great things. We also believe web literacy is best taught through hands-on, interactive learning. We've just wrapped up Maker Party, Mozilla's annual celebration of teaching and learning the Web through hands-on activities. But Maker Parties can be held anywhere, anytime. And our resources for teaching web literacy are free and open source, always. To kickstart web literacy learning in your classroom - or outside of it - here are six tools and activities from Maker Party for teaching critical 21st-century skills:"

"You see it melting. Your shaky hands bringing it closer to the sweet spot. Slowly you touch it. You feel the rush through your body. Ecstasy. Pure bliss. Just like heroin through an addict's vein, electrons flow through the wires in the soldering gun in your hand. And BAM, the last wire in your DIY home automation project that you have been working on for the past three months is soldered in place. Making something on your own, using your hands, soldering wires in places is an experience like no other that leaves you craving for more. And it was never as easy as it is today. All thanks to the rise in the maker tech available in the market. It's not just the hardcore geeks and engineers who are tinkering with electronics and creating amazing things. The lines that divide the geekdom from the less tech-savvy population are blurring. The number of hobbyists, students and people in general who are tinkering and making stuff is on the rise."

"Having a digital classroom means a few different things: 1. You have less stacks of paper 2. It is (generally) easier to keep track of student work 3. "The dog ate my homework" isn't a viable excuse anymore 4. Note taking needs to take a new form 5. You need another method of sharing work that doesn't involve handing papers from one person to another Clearly, number 5 on this list is the one that will cause you the most thought these days, unless your dog is into eating computers - and then you have a bigger problem on your hands. Lots of things need to be shared. Students need to hand in their work, teachers need to offer feedback on said work, students need to share their collaborative work, and teachers need to share classroom information and tools of all variety. Luckily, there are tons of different tools out there that can enable you to share nearly any type of file (from .doc/.docx and .ppt to .mov, .mp3/4 , .zip and more!). There's a lot of info out there on different cloud storage services - which are a great way to share files - but many of these are business focused and not as classroom friendly. We've put together a short list of some of our favorite methods of file sharing so that you, your colleagues, and your students can spend more time on the good stuff and less time trying to figure out how to get the information to one another."

"For the past several decades, I have had my feet in both elementary education and teacher training and development. Regardless of age, grade level, and setting, I include hands-on and experiential learning as a integral part of my instruction. It is learning by doing with a reflective element which, in turn, creates conditions for deeply engaged learning."

"It's sounds like a paradox. How can you teach computer programming without a screen? Computer programming is a term synonymous with coding, after all. Text, letters, syntax, arranged in meaningful sequences that give machines instructions. We code with our keyboards and we see code on our screens. But there is a clear distinction between coding and computer programming, and an even greater distinction between coding and computational thinking, the logical foundations of computer programming. It is basics of computational thinking that children in Pre-K should learn first, in fact, and they can be taught these skills through hands on play, with no screen time at all."

"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."

"8th Grade Class 3D Prints an Amazing Prosthetic 'Spider-Man' Hand for 5-Year-Old Dante"

"Most of us use iPad only as a peripheral device to our computers and this is probably understood because of the nature and interface of computers that allow for much more freedom and space in handling our browsing and online navigation. For instance, I personally can not do certain things on iPad and I prefer to perform them on my laptop as is the case with writing this post and all my blog posts.That being said, there are now several apps out there that can improve the workflow of your day using iPad. These apps are designed specifically to work hand in hand with your computer and they will allow you to connect, share, and control your computer using your iPad. Thank you Greg for the list."

"Passing out iPads to students on the first day of school was like celebrating Christmas (or in this case Hanukkah) with thirty antsy kids sitting around the tree, attempting to hide their impatience. Once the iPads had been handed out, students were instantly excited, engaged and enchanted with the new learning device in their hands. At first, everyone was confused about where to find work, where to save and store their products - and which app to use for what purpose. As with every pilot, these issues worked themselves out and soon classes were running pretty smoothly. Once they all learned what a "hard reset" was we were on our way. After an exciting year chalked full of learning lessons and changes in our learning landscape here are my takeaways: "

"If I touch a hot stove and burn my hand, I immediately learn that touching a hot stove results in a burned hand. My brain makes the connection almost simultaneously. There's little need for reflection because the "hot stove=burn" connection is one that my mind makes almost immediately. Similarly, suppose I'm driving in bad weather and going WAY TOO FAST for the conditions. If my car spins out and I find myself stuck in a ditch, I've learned a lesson about driving in bad weather. Again, the connection is almost instantaneous. Academic learning however is seldom that obvious."

"The most powerful thing she said was something that education policy makers will ignore at all costs. That is that Creativity is the next essential literacy. Now keep in mind I am just beginning to try and wrap my mind around what that may look like. My first belief in this discussion is that creativity is something that begins at a young age. I also believe that creativity and imagination go hand and hand. When I teach my courses for the college I refer to imagination as a sense of wonder because often people are distracted by the word imagination. This is because it brings up a short time in their life when they were encouraged to imagine. As an education system we ignore imagination and we have quickly weeded out that perceived "unnecessary" tool over the past 20 years. "

"Juan Carlos Galindo, a Wheaton High School ninth-grader with attention-deficit disorder, always had difficulty managing academic demands when he was younger. His mother, Virginia Munoz, a single mother of four, regularly found her son asleep with homework in his lap. She knew he was struggling, and she worried he would become a checked-out, rebellious teenager. In seventh grade, however, Juan Carlos was invited to participate in a maker learning partnership between Parkland Middle School in Rockville and the KID Museum in Bethesda. The maker philosophy emphasizes hands-on, self-guided projects to build kids' technical skills and confidence through tinkering, inventing and designing."

"Great teachers strive to make learning engaging, interactive, and fun for students. Certain subjects like the visual arts and hands-on sciences may lend themselves well to this. Language learning, on the other hand, has rarely been grouped with "the cool subjects." As technology advances, more and more tools have become available that when used correctly can make language learning anything but boring. As a teacher, you've already established a curriculum and methods for teaching your language, so instead of re-writing all of your work, pull from the myriad supplemental opportunities that can be found online to make lessons more engaging and therefore memorable. Here are five great websites that supplement your lessons, making language learning more interactive and fun."

"MUSCATINE, Iowa- Legos, oobleck, and school have more in common than meets the eye at College for Kids, a two-week summer program held at Central Middle School and Jefferson Elementary. First through sixth grade students from eight different school districts participated in the program, which is organized by co-coordinators Laurie Schroeder and Troy Kulland. The program, Kulland and Schroeder said, is designed to give students hands-on learning experiences they may not have time or resources to have during the regular school year. "We fill in the gaps that a normal school year can't do, it gives them a chance to be creative, use their imaginations, think outside the box," Kulland said. Teachers love being creative in the classes as well."