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"Technology has altered human physiology. It makes us think differently, feel differently, even dream differently. It affects our memory, attention spans and sleep cycles. This is attributed to a scientific phenomenon known as neuroplasticity, or the brain's ability to alter its behavior based on new experiences. In this case, that's the wealth of information offered by the Internet and interactive technologies. Some cognition experts have praised the effects of tech on the brain, lauding its ability to organize our lives and free our minds for deeper thinking. Others fear tech has crippled our attention spans and made us uncreative and impatient when it comes to anything analog. "

"e difference between quick skimming and scanning on the Web, which lodges in the brain's short-term memory and is quickly lost, and the long-term memories that a more thoughtful kind of slow reading provides. "I share Nicholas Carr's feeling that my brain has been rewired," he says."

"Last night, the culmination of six months of work took place for our AP Environmental Science students. As has been noted in the past here, here, and here, Mrs. Stainton has done a tremendous job of creating a real learning experience with her students and showed the final products to parents, students, and staff. After I introduced Haiku Deck in a Lunch N' Learn time, Mrs. Stainton felt that it was the best tech tool for vividly capturing the students' responses as it pertains to their project."

"Over the past nine years I have had the pleasure of hiring (and the displeasure of firing) new hires into their teaching careers. In watching teachers come into the profession some just "have it." Some seem to be innately programmed to be teachers. For others, it is a much more difficult road to travel. Additionally, there has been much awareness brought up about "teacher burn-out" and teachers not being able to survive this profession. It has taken nine years of watching, listening, and observing to come to understand that there are two distinct differences between teachers that excel and love the profession, and those that do not excel and are prone to burn-out."

"Ginger Gregory is the Gifted Resource Teacher at Lakeview Elementary School in Yukon, Oklahoma, and currently has 117 videos on her classroom YouTube channel. Ginger has used the six iPads in her classroom and her free, district-provided YouTube channel (since the Yukon school district participates in the Google Apps for Education program) to help her students develop oral communication skills, oral fluency, as well as digital literacy skills this semester. In the following six minute video, Mrs. Gregory and eight of her students explain what they have learned as a result of their assignments this year using iPad videos and YouTube."

"Loopster is a video editing tool that I first tried as a web app last fall. Recently, I learned that Loopster has a free iPad app. The free iPad app offers all of the same features that are available in the web version of the service. The Loopster iPad app provides a four track editor. There are tracks for video and images, transitions, sounds, and text. You can import images and videos from your iPad's camera roll or shoot a new video with the app and edit it. On the video editing track you can trim clips and combine clips. On the text track you can add speech bubbles and other text effects. Loopster has a slow motion effect that is available on the iPad app too."

"Social media has the potential to strike fear in the hearts of many educators. It's a frequent topic in articles and education Twitter chats. Everyone has lines in the sand about social media. Some educators aren't comfortable being public in spaces where students can see them. Others have strict rules about how they interact online professionally. Often, teachers have school and personal accounts, effectively separating personal and private lives."

"Tim Childers is a middle school teacher in Tennessee that took a course with me and Angela Maiers last year. Since then Tim has been steadily creating ed tech tutorial videos. The videos are available on Tim's YouTube channel Coffee Time Edu. Tim has an easy-going style about his videos that I think a lot of people will like. Take a look at his video about Feedly embedded below."

"o you are a music teacher and you want to have access to some productive apps to help you teach music using your iPad. Well you have landed in the right place, Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has just finished curating a list of some of the best music teaching and learning apps. We have checked several resources and included only what we think has some educational value, we know there are several other music apps scattered all over iTunes market but it is really hard to find those ones that can be recommended for teachers and students. Check out the list below and if you have other resources or you know of other educational music apps , please share them with us in the comment below."

"The iPad app "Explain Everything" is an extremely versatile and flexible tool and has so many applications in the classroom. It is a screencasting app which allows narrated recordings of the iPad screen to be exported and shared as videos. The potential for this is huge. This example describes how the app has been used in an Early Years Foundation Setting to allow children to retell and act out traditional stories."

"Students with learning disabilities often have trouble with study skills like getting and staying organized-a crucial executive function skill-and remembering what needs to happen and when. My daughter (who has dyslexia) and I have researched and/or tested the following apps, and she's found them especially helpful. We know that every person has slightly different needs, but it's worth taking the time to find out which apps work for your child. "

"Creating is important. In the West, traditional education has concentrated mainly on our heads, on filling them with knowledge. Little time and effort has been put into teaching students to be creative, to think widely (or often, deeply for that matter). In the past few decades, as our societies have advanced technologically, we have somehow arrived at the point where an education that places at least some emphasis on making actual real things with our hands and our minds is seen as second class, as "vocational." This is a mistake."

"The drive to increase technology use in classrooms has many asking whether the investment is more fizzle than bang, and whether it's too early to tell how wisely the money is being spent. Education author Peg Tyre has investigated the use of iPads, one of the most popular classroom additions, in TakePart. She concludes that iPads may assist in some new classroom techniques, but by themselves, they may not be better than traditional, cheaper methods."

"n iOS 6, Apple decided it was time to remove the podcasts function of the Music app and replace it with a standalone app, available for free in the App Store. Properly titled Podcasts, this app released in June of this year, but has been under much criticism for its half-baked design, lag and lack of functionality. Since then, there have been three updates to the app, the last of which arriving the day of iOS 6's release. All the same, is this app even worth the trouble Apple has gone to thus far?"

"Today at the OTA / EncycloMedia 2016 Conference in Oklahoma City, keynote speaker Shannon M. Miller (@shannonmmiller) shared a wealth of apps, websites, and project ideas in her breakout session, "Igniting Innovation and Creativity in Our Makerspaces With Digital Tools and Apps." One of the apps she shared is "MusiQuest - Music & Beat Maker." The same Denver-based app developer, Edify Technology (@EdifyTechnology) has also published the amazing musical creation app, "Sketch-a-Song Kids." The tagline of this second app is, "Compose in Color." Both of these are FREE and amazing! My wife, Shelly (@sfryer) has been playing with Sketch-a-Song tonight on her iPad, and it's remarkable! Here are a couple tutorial videos which introduce some of the basic elements of both apps."

"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."

"Summer reading has been a topic of discussion by educators for decades. "Summer slide," where students lose the gains they made during the previous school year, is a topic of conversation this time of year. This learning loss has a cumulative effect and impacts students as they continue to move through school. There does not seem to be one solution for this problem, but educators can agree that we have to keep trying (McLaughlin, Smink, 2010)."

"Who knew one simple Medium post could ignite such a profound movement? #iLookLikeAnEngineer is now being spread globally in over 50 countries. It has received over 170,000 tweets and has been covered in countless news outlets. In addition to an influx of incredibly heart-warming and positive support, many people have reached out to me for advice on how I learned how to code without a formal college education. I wanted the opportunity to give everyone an illustrative and thoughtful response, so that is now my intention with this Medium post. I am most familiar with web application development, so that is what this will be covering."

"It is common for people to group themselves into two categories; those who are good at art or design, and those who are good at math or science. The reason for this is that many people believe that the skills needed to be successful in creative services do not relate to the skills that are required to be successful in the analytical. Even though mathematics is in the list of the most difficult college classes, in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Many design concepts, such as symmetry, have direct ties to mathematical concepts and discoveries. So, if you are an artist or a designer, there is a good chance that you are already incorporating math into your work, you just may not be doing it consciously. Here are some very specific ways that mathematics has not only influenced design but has acted as a true game changer."