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"Report slams heavy focus on school testing Says methods handcuff teachers, don't boost learning"

"A recent Fox News article asking, "So are men iPads and women Nooks?" raised my hackles….especially when the piece went on to say, "Nooks are smaller, lighter, and fit in a purse more comfortably…Conversely, iPads are big and heavy and make [the] statement: I'm into tech." (Come on, are iPads really that heavy?) "

"One of the challenging tasks facing teachers in today's learning environments is increasing students engagement. I said challenging because our students' attention span is very short and unless you make your learning tasks appealing to them you will never succeed in keeping them on task. Some attribute this to the heavy presence of digital media in teens life and also to the negative practices that came as a result of this over indulgence in the digital such as multitasking. Below is an interesting graphic created by Mia Mac Meekin in which she features 27 activities teachers can use to increase students engagement and participation. Enjoy"

"To be honest, I had longed for the epic Lego wall that has graced so many makerspace blogs and websites.  But I didn't have the wall space for it, and I prefer furniture and resources that can serve dual purposes. Being a proponent of Theodore Roosevelt's motto of "Do what you can with what you have where you are" I became resourceful.  So with my Scholastic Book Fair points, I chose a metal cabinet from the rewards catalog to serve as both makerspace storage and a movable awesome Lego wall. With some heavy-duty magnets affixed to the back with a hot glue gun, our baseplates could be used both horizontally and vertically.  Bound by limitations, I was able to find a away to create something new that would fit the needs of our library and our students."

"If you are a heavy user of Google Drive, chances are you already have so much of your content stored there. While Google Drive does provide some excellent organizing features that allow you to  sort out and categorize your content into an easily navigable interface , but sometimes the search process can be really overwhelming and this is why knowing how to smartly search your Drive can save you so much time and enable you to quickly locate and access your saved data. The visual we have for you today (for those of you who haven't seen it yet) features 8 excellent search tips to help you conduct effective searches in your Google Drive. Whether you are looking for documents that contain specific quotes or phrases, documents shared with you or with a particular person,  document under specific titles or type …etc, the tricks below will absolutely help you easily find them. All of the tips are taken from "

"We have to admit, this is extremely close to how we once imagined the near future to look. However, the future has a tendency to pick strange and exciting paths that few would have predicted. We think this Corning Incorporated version of the future is just too touch heavy. Not too surprising given Corning's core business."

"Getting students engaged is not an easy task particularly in an age that is full of all kinds of distractions. Some argue that some of the habits that students have developed as a result of their heavy use of emerging technologies and social media have negatively impacted their capacities to concentrate and focus for longer stretches of time. Multitasking in particular is blamed for this and I personally side with the camp that views multitasking as a distractor to productivity and not a positive attribute."

"The new school term is well under way and the early efficiencies are slipping and bad habits are slipping in. Homework is already being completed late and stuffed into heavy schoolbags before the kids stagger off again. In my own case, I seem to spend way too much time each day trying to persuade my son to take a day's worth of kit to school, rather than a week's. The problem is that the sanctions that come with forgetting sports kit or books is worse, in a child's mind, than the possibility, long hence, of back pain. But there's things that parents and teachers could do, which help take those damaging decisions out of the childrens' hands:"

"The image-heavy social media platform Pinterest isn't just for making pretty digital tack boards filled with DIY projects and delicious food recipes. Pinterest is a great educational tool for teachers, homeschool parents, and other educators around the world. And the best thing is, it's free! With links to virtually millions of ideas, Pinterest offers a wealth of great information and learning ideas that can be applied to almost any educational environment. Everything is keyword searchable and Pinterest "pins" can be commented on and liked, similar to Facebook. Here we feature 9 great Pinterest classroom ideas that will engage and entertain both teachers and students alike."

"Create incredible paper roller coasters using our colorful strips of heavy paper. By folding, cutting, and taping strips together you will be able to make sturdy roller coasters that reach the ceiling!"

Via PC WORLD : CallingAmerica, an ad-heavy but otherwise free alternative to GizmoCall. Like the latter, CallingAmerica requires no software; all you need is your browser. In fact, you don't even need to sign up: Just enter the phone number for anywhere in the U.S. or Canada and click FreeCall Now. You can make an unlimited number of calls this way, but each one is limited to two minutes. By registering (also free), the call cap gets raised to 15 minutes.

" Let's face it, if you were a student, what would you rather have? 10 heavy textbooks or a thin much lighter iPad? According to this infographic by OnlineEducation, 1 in 4 students would prefer digital books so much that they would give up sex for a month in order to get them. Now there's some dedicated fans for you."

""By using patented co molded metal and plastic form that can easily bend to any shape gives the InfiniteLoop the strength and rigidity to hold up a heavy iPad. The suction caps and adjustable side clips also allow it to fit virtually any iPad, tablet or smartphone on the market.""

"It doesn't take a lot of digging to find free media online, but more often than not, although these assets may be free to view and often download, copyright and licensing rules can put some pretty heavy restrictions on using them. This is where sites like the Public Domain Project can be of huge value, providing easy and searchable access to media files that are completely free of all known copyright restrictions. And that's about as free as free gets on the modern web."

"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"

"Open any newspaper or turn on any TV and the chances are you will see a negative report on the state of teaching. From heavy workloads to rising stress levels, times are tough. But there's lots to feel positive about too: I love my job. And despite the fact my life should be a recipe for disaster - I have two young children and a husband who is training to be a teacher - it's actually not. I've worked hard to find some sort of work-life balance. It's not been easy and I don't always get things right. "

"I didn't think 2015 would be the year I created a teen maker space, but it was-and it turned out to be an exciting, challenging, and rewarding experience. After six months of planning, our maker space at the Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County, Ohio, where I am the YA services coordinator, opened last month. How did it come together? Organically. It began during our teen summer reading program seven months ago, when I hosted a few extremely popular Maker Mondays. Our children's librarian, Debbie Baker, and I created a collection of circulating maker-related titles. We also assembled 20 small circulating maker kits with Snap Circuits (kits for creating objects with electronic circuitry), stop-motion animation materials, and LEGO. These were such a hit that a dedicated maker space seemed ideal for us. Ideal-until we considered our budget and space restraints. We started planning anyway. Our process began with a lot of research, online and in person, visiting libraries and maker faires. There was heavy-duty continuing ed: online workshops and webinars, many hosted by School Library Journal. We knew that a maker space would benefit our community, but we couldn't see how to make it happen. With time and goal adjustments, we reached the finish line and launched in January."

"When Jennifer Lanier began working as a media specialist at Summit Parkway Middle School in South Carolina's Richland School District Two, the school library looked like one most of us remember from our own school days. "There were large heavy tables and chairs with shelves lining all walls," she says.  "It was a very fixed space."  After a period of intensive research, she was ready to make some major changes. "My library is now split into two main sections," Lanier explains, "with the circulation desk as the dividing point.  I focused on renovating the back half first.  This would become the Creative Commons area.  I removed the shelves from the corner, purchased six tall mobile tables, a few stools, six white boards, and twenty beanbag cubes." The idea, Lanier explains, was not to set up the tables, stools and cubes ahead of time but, rather, to leave the furniture out of the way and let users (both students and staff members) grab it and reconfigure the space to meet their needs.  "The arrangement of the space does not dictate the way collaboration is carried out; instead the collaboration can freely flow in the direction it takes.  Users can gather around on the cubes to discuss an idea.  They can break out to a project table and visualize it on a white board.  The simple act of moving allows the brain to be more creative." "

Effects on the brain of screen time on children

"As you may remember from your own (in)glorious youth, most university students are required to take a statistics course even if they hate math and aren't in a particularly numbers-heavy major. Ellen Peters, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, heard this was driving a lot undergrads on her campus crazy. "A lot of the students are really threatened by it. They're kind of afraid of it, they dread taking it," she says. "If they do dread it, they can end up in a cycle of failure." Curious to see if she could make a positive change among math-phobic Buckeyes, Peters created an intervention that tested whether or not value affirmation could improve student's comfort and ability with numbers, otherwise known as numerical literacy or numeracy. The results, which were published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, indicate that confidence and core values have a lot to do with learning the numbers."