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"For me, iPad workflow has to do with fluency. It is: the fluid movement between apps the unconscious decision what app to use in order to accomplish any given task The workflow is almost like Grammar in a language. Grammar helps you put components of a language in the proper order, grammar rules help you use the right tense, remix word to create new meaning, the correct vocabulary words attached in combination with pronouns and conjugation help you communicate exactly what you had intended. Workflow= Fluency of iPad Grammar"

"Learning to read can be difficult. And teaching a group of students to read and write can be a daunting task - especially taking into consideration that each student may learn differently, and at a very different pace. Some students may have trouble matching sounds with letters and words, some with writing mechanics, others may have trouble concentrating in a traditional classroom setting. Having a few extra tools in the arsenal to have students using either in class or out of class can help to bring everyone up to speed or help any student to get a bit ahead."

"When teaching with digital natives in a digital world, one question facing many educators revolves around integrating technology to help facilitate learning: How do you work technology into the pedagogy, instead of just using something cool? That task can be especially daunting in language arts literacy classrooms where reading and writing skill development is the crux of daily lessons. However, as 1:1 technology initiatives roll out, integrating technology into the classroom is our reality. With hundreds of sites, apps, Chrome extensions, and platforms available, choosing the right ones can seem overwhelming. As an eighth-grade language arts teacher, I've experienced this myself. Following are four tools that can help provide immediate formative assessment data as well as top-of-the-rotation feedback to help students develop personal learning goals."

"Too often teachers are passive recipients of professional development rather than being active agents of their own development and change. Several recent reports have indicated that teacher professional development, as it is being implemented in most schools, is ineffective and a waste of time and money. Several studies over the past few years that have found professional development to be largely ineffective or unhelpful for teachers. Only 30 percent of teachers improve substantially with the help of district-led professional development, even though districts spend an average of $18,000 on development for each teacher per year, according to a new report. Most professional development today is ineffective. It neither changes teacher practice nor improves student learning. The hard truth is that the help most schools give their teachers isn't helping all that much. When it comes to teaching, real improvement is a lot harder to achieve-and we know much less about how to make it happen-than most of us would like to admit. (New report reveals that teacher professional development is costly and ineffective)"

"A few days ago, we shared with you this handy infographic featuring 12 important tips to help you refine your Google searches and get precise search results. Today, we are introducing you to these equally important resources shared by Google Inside Search. These are free self-paced courses to help you develop and improve your Google search skills. You will get to learn 'tips and tricks to become a fast and effective fact-finder with Power Searching with Google, deepen your understanding of solving complex research problems using advanced Google search techniques with Advanced Power Searching with Google, and join  a growing global community of Power Searchers.'"

"Turnitin's Free Webcast Series Helps Educators Improve Student Writing"

" Apple has long touted its device's assistive technology as a powerful tool for the educational development of physically and mentally disabled children. The iPad's touch screen makes it easier to manipulate than more traditional educational tools. For children with autism, "the iPad is not a toy, but a tool that works best when there is a 'team effort' between parents and therapists encouraging its proper use," said Marc Reisner, co-founder of Reach for the APPs. "Our goal is to provide schools with iPads so they can reach every child on the autistic spectrum." Reach for the APPs built their site with an initial donation from Managed Digital. Now, they're seeking out donations of money and/or iPads from both individuals and corporations to propel the program forward. According to reports from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1-in-88 children have some form of autism, up 78 percent from just a decade ago. The demand for augmentative communications devices is growing. But the schools can't meet the demand, so the children are losing valuable time during critical developmental years. Lois Brady, a speech language pathologist and assistive technology specialist, said apps can help develop fine-motor skills, which will in turn make functions like writing and manipulating small objects easier for the students. "I have spent years working with the most challenging students that are considered profoundly disabled," she said. "And I have seen some small miracles when I introduce the iPad into our therapy, as the children have made huge gains in attention, focus, communication, language and literacy skills." Some experts also say that the iPad can lessen symptoms of autistic disorders, helping children deal with life's sensory overload. Brady will be contributing content to the Reach for the APPs website to inform therapists about the latest-and-greatest apps for children all over the autistim spectrum. Apps must be tailor

"The school district neighboring mine recently announced a new health and fitness curriculum that emphasizes "lifetime" fitness. One aspect of the curriculum focuses on helping students make healthy food choices. That news prompted me to put together this list of resources that can help students discover new healthy foods and make healthy food choices."

"Nowadays, a lot of students study with a computer or tablet device. Access to the Web gives them a tremendous amount of knowledge, though much of it isn't actually useful, relevant, or even correct. Fortunately, art teacher Kelly Little curates a collection of classroom-tested "study buddies" to help your students filter the flood of information out there. What apps do your students use to help them study?"

"Most students need all the help they can get when it comes to planning big projects. Here's a list of apps that can help them stay organized when they're working on group presentations, research papers or other big tasks that might take a little extra energy to keep everything together."

"3 Reasons Why Faculty Meetings Are a Waste of Time By Peter DeWitt on April 10, 2015 6:50 AM Faculty Meeting.png Many school leaders walk into a faculty meeting with a single idea of how they want to move forward and walk out with the same idea. That's telling... John Hattie talks a great deal about the Politics of Distraction, which means we focus on adult issues, and not enough time...if ever...on learning. That is happening around the U.S. for sure. Recently the Assembly of NY State only furthered those distractions, which you can read about here, which means that school leaders and teachers have to work harder to maintain a focus on learning. Quite frankly, well before mandates and accountability, school leaders focused on the politics of distraction and not on learning. Compliance is not new in schools. Faculty meetings were seen as a venue to get through and something that teachers were contractually obligated to attend. During these days of endless measures of compliance, principals can do a great deal to make sure they don't model the same harmful messages to staff that politicians are sending to teachers. Jim Knight calls that "Freedom within form." In Talk Like Ted, Carmine Gallo quotes Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo) when he writes, "Creativity is often misunderstood. People often think of it in terms of artistic work - unbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect. If you look deeper, however, you'll find that some of the most inspiring art forms - haikus, sonatas, religious paintings- are fraught with constraints. (p. 190)" Clearly, constraints have a wide definition. There is a clear difference between the constraints of compliance and the stupidity of the legislation just passed by the assembly in NY. As we move forward, principals still are charged...or at least should be...with the job of making sure they offer part...inspiration, part...teacher voice...and a great deal of focus on learning. There is never a more important tim

"Intel's Innovation ToolBox is a hub of ideas, information, resources and success stories to help drive the next generation of inventors, creators and entrepreneurs in your classroom. Thanks to the efforts of innovative educators around Australia, as well as Intel Australia's education team, this online ToolBox provides a range of resources that will help you to introduce coding, designing technologies and making in the classroom. This site and community is dynamic. Join the Twitter conversation using #intelgalileo, collaborate with other innovative educators and, when you're ready, share your own resources to help inspire others. The Intel Education team and innovation community look forward to connecting with you."

"Move over, Space Camp: Coding is quickly growing as a popular activity for kids, and not just for those who dream of being programmers when they grow up. The logical thinking required to code can help kids succeed in school and other day-to-day activities-it's no wonder why big companies are getting behind the effort to help students learn the needed critical thinking skills.  If you want to help them get started, there are a number of visual, kid-friendly apps that teach users how to build games and code other simple activities on their own."

"Minecraft is a cultural phenomenon. The block-based exploration and crafting game was snapped up by Microsoft for $2.5 billion last year and has helped inspire competitors from giant toy companies like Lego. Even the government is interested in building on Minecraft's success: The Department of Education is helping fund a project known as "Eco" that looks a lot like Minecraft, except with a few added twists: There's a looming ecological disaster and players must band together to make a community -- agreeing on laws and living in harmony with the environment. If they fail, the world dies forever. Strange Loop Games, the company behind the game, describes it a "global survival game" and says failure results in "server-wide perma death.""

"While not every student might want to write their own software, understanding the big ideas of coding is a skill that all students would benefit from, even the very young ones. Understanding the key ideas of computational thinking - identifying patterns, thinking algorithmically, manipulating data, solving real problems, etc - is an important step in helping our students build mastery over their world. This presentation aims to take you on a guided tour through some of the resources available to your students to help them learn the principles of creating code. It starts by looking at a range of desktop and mobile apps suitable for teaching very young students to program, right through to tools and websites that can help your older students learn to hack code, and much more."

"Tablets have become very popular in schools over the past few years mostly due to their multi-functionality, such as the ability to have a camera and the internet on the same device, among many other things. Apps have also played a big part in their popularity and there have been a lot of apps that help lessons be more engaging. As well as using iPads to make the classroom more interactive, they have also been used to help SEN students. One area that I have been focussing on in particular is how tablet technology can help students who are visually-impaired."

"One of the things I was keen to do this year in setting up an in-house research centre at Wellington College was to have a small number of students partner with us on our project with Harvard faculty on Growth Mindsets and Grit. A key point for me was what does this research actually look like in the classroom and and at the level of the student? Another goal was to have them help us in designing a survey by having them pilot test some of the more problematic questions so we could get as reliable data as possible. We asked the students to read some of the literature and research in these areas and then had a series of group discussion with them where we discovered a huge range of things that was really helpful in helping us understand Growth Mindsets from multiple perspectives. "

"Last summer at the Apple developer conference, WWDC, we learned that there were more than 1.2 million apps in the Apple App Store alone. That's a lot of choices. In a sea that large, understanding how to find apps for the classroom can be challenging. In speaking with numerous educators, we learned that most app downloads result from a colleague's recommendation (i.e., word of mouth) or from choosing the first app in the search results. These are both sound strategies given the limited time educators have to explore each new app. But a larger point has become clear: learning to swiftly evaluate apps has become an essential skill in the fast-growing, ever-changing mobile classroom. The Great App Checklist, go.sas.com/MobileLearning. We offer this checklist to help educators zero in on the app they need and to judge how well it performs key functions. This rubric can help developers understand how educators choose apps, what information would help someone in this audience, which details to mention in the app store summary, and what is the essential functionality. The checklist's themes - Purpose, Alignment, Pedagogically-based, Personalization, Sharing, Ease of Use, Privacy, App Citizenship, and Access - are those discussed throughout Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Developers, Educators, and Learners."

"The Managing Complex Change model puts language to that which makes some schools successful while others struggle. The model looks at five components necessary to create a desired environment. These include vision, skills, incentives, resources, action plan. If any one piece is missing the model indicates results schools will experience including change, confusion, anxiety, gradual change, frustration, and a false start. When thinking of successful schools such as Science Leadership Academy, The MET, The Island School, The iSchool, you will find they have all those components in place. On the other hand, when I hear teachers lamenting about their school failures, the model brings clarity to the fact that one or more of these components are missing. Below is the chart that lays this out. Following the chart, I'll take a look at what each missing component might look like in a school environment. As you read, consider which, if any are components, are missing at your school. save image Lack of Vision = Confusion When I hear exasperated teachers spinning their wheels, working so hard to get ready for all the various mandates and requirements, but never feeling a sense of accomplishment, it is clear there is not a tangible school vision that has been communicated. In some cases this is because what is being imposed does or can not reconcile with what the school wanted for their vision. Skill Deficit = Anxiety My heart goes out to those with a skill deficit. They are required to implement a curriculum they are not trained in using or being evaluated via measures with which they are not familiar. Or…they are put into a position they were not trained for or prepared to embrace. Social media provides a great medium for helping these teachers get up to speed, but when the outreach occurs, the anxiety is abundantly clear. Lack of Incentives = Gradual Change It is not unusual for innovative educators to feel like and be perceived as misfits. Islands onto their own

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