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"Forget Uber Ice Cream. If you really want to get high-tech this summer, try printing your dessert. Three students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a machine that is sure to delight your inner child and tempt your sweet tooth - a 3D printer for ice cream. The trio - Kyle Hounsell, Kristine Bunker, and David Donghyun Kim - hacked a Solidoodle 3D printer and hooked it up to a Cuisinart ice cream maker and to create a contraption that offers on-demand soft serve, according to a report from 3ders.org."

"All of my classes, regardless of student age or demographics - elementary gifted students or graduate students, begin with ice-breakers and team-building activities.  I recently developed a passion for using students' mobile devices to do so as this devices have become natural and personalized extensions of students' "selves." What follows are several of the mobile-driven ice-breakers I recently used in an undergraduate course on Interpersonal Relations.  I also include some student reactions to these activities."

"How Do You Play? is a free site that offers directions on how to play ice-breaker games, team building games, board games, card games, and many other in-person multiple player games. You can browse the games featured on the homepage or search through eight game categories for the game that you need the directions to."

"In the past, coding was a pretty niche affair, those of us with our Acorns, Spectrums and Commodore 64s experimenting with lines and lines of code. I remember as an 8 year old, spending ages typing out lines of code on my beige Acorn Electron to draw….a line on the screen. To add insult to injury there was no way to save it unless I wanted to erase my tape of "Ice Ice Baby" and replace it with my code. Needless to say because we were put into the deep end in those days, like millions of others I was put off a bit by coding and just played computer games instead. Fast forward to the iPad era and coding is coming back in a big way. Some very talented developers with a love for coding have produced some spectacular apps, turning the iPad into a coding studio in your hand. There are some great iPad apps which take the pain out of coding for the layman and can teach your children (and you) some excellent skills."

"All of my classes, regardless of student age or demographics - elementary gifted students or graduate students, begin with ice-breakers and team-building activities. I recently developed a passion for using students' mobile devices to do so as this devices have become natural and personalized extensions of students' "selves.""

""ICE CREAM!" A group of six year olds are grinning as a small girl holds a laminated picture in her hands. Calmly, she puts it down and picks up the robot bee sitting in front of her. It has five buttons on top: forwards, left, right, back and go. The girl prods a few of them in turn, puts the bee down and presses go. It trundles across a colourful mat, turns left and stops on a picture of an ice cream cone. Everyone cheers. This short exercise has just taught her basic vocabulary, logic, sequencing and navigation. The robotic bee is one of four high-tech toys being trialled with pre-school children across Singapore. It is part of a new scheme - called Playmaker - using technology to give the next generation skills the they require. GI caught up with with the educators, technologists and government officials behind the scheme to find out more."

"nce again, I am amazed every time I talk to groups and find out so many educators have not used word clouds to their fullest extent with their students. Word clouds also provide an easy way for teachers who are just getting started using web technology in the classroom. I have tried to include a multitude of subject areas. These ideas include practices shared with me, various readings, and a lot of my own brainstorming. I know this will be an article you wish to share with others. In order to better understand some of the advanced uses I suggest you may wish to read my past post entitled, 12 Valuable Wordle Tips You Must Read.  One example of an advanced feature includes putting multiple words  together in a word cloud. If using Wordle, just put a tilde (~) between them. (Example (ice~cream~cone). While I call it advanced, it is also necessary to know in order to get the most out of word clouds in the classroom..Also, keep in mind that Tagxedo and Tagul are great alternatives to Wordle. Keep in mind that word clouds are a Web 2.0 tool. Make sure your students practice proper digital citizenship and privacy. You should also check your district AUP (Acceptable Use Policy). By the way… do you have an idea I have not listed? Then just take a moment and leave a comment or email me at mjgormans@gmail.com . I thank you in advance. Now, let's explore those word clouds!"

"On the morning of Wednesday, February 22, 2017, my cell phone rang at 5:30 a.m. The caller ID told me that the call was from our school district. Even before I swiped to answer, the pop-up notification on my phone told me the nature of the call. School had been canceled for the day. That's not such an odd occurrence in February in southwest Missouri. Snow and ice have canceled school as late in the year as early May. However, we'd been enjoying a stretch of record high temperatures, and while I wasn't really awake enough for my rational mind to rule that out, I knew something was off. There has been a lot of construction to and around a few of the school buildings in our district. In December 2016, I happened to be privy to a conversation regarding low water pressure at one of the schools due to a water main issue at a construction site near that particular school. So, non-functioning utilities was certainly a possibility for canceling school that zipped through my not-yet-awake mind. I was not prepared for what the recorded voice of our district superintendent told me. School had been canceled because of the threat of violence."

"It's no secret that curling is somewhat of a lovable laughingstock in the world of winter sports. Compared to the adrenaline-pumping action of ice hockey, snowboarding and freestyle skiing, a bunch of people in sneakers sweeping around a rock might seem a bit ... simple. As it turns out, the sport is about as far from simple as you can possibly get."

"Every year I try to have various community building activities for the kids to do on those first few days of school. And while I detest ice breakers, in 5th grade, we do like the occasional get to know me activity. Though the years I have used various scavenger hunts, time capsules, and bingo games to get to know them a bit better, to get them to know each other, and also for me to keep until the end of the year. Then when summer beckons and we cannot believe that the year is over, I pull out the forgotten letters, the time capsules, the about me's, and we reminisce and we laugh and we shake our heads at the answers we gave so long ago. "

"Want to be a game piece in Candyland? Want to ride a roller coaster down the Rocky Mountains? Now you can do it all! … Well, you can make it look like you did it all. Juxtaposer is the best app for creating fun photomontages. Cut out a piece of one photo and stick it onto another. We can't stop playing with it! We're going to show you the ins and outs of this app and turn you into a pro user. Because everyone needs to know how to make a photo of themselves swimming in a tub of ice cream."

"After a fun, tiring first week of school, I had the privilege to attend a conference on Makerspaces hosted by ICE Indiana. This conference was well worth the drive to see a makerspace being developed by Creativity Labs at Indiana University and to connect with other educators who wanted to bring this experience into their classrooms or learning spaces. I was inspired and want to make this a reality for our students, in our building!"

Science of the Olympic Winter Games Photo of ice skater, words Science of the Winter Olympic Games, and logos of NBC Learn, NSF and Vancover Olympics NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News, has teamed up with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to produce Science of the Olympic Winter Games, a 16-part video series that explores the science behind individual Olympic events, including Downhill and Aerial Skiing, Speed Skating and Figure Skating, Curling and Hockey, and Ski Jumping, Bobsledding and Snowboarding. This groundbreaking project between the NSF and NBC Learn uses the global spotlight of the Olympics to make science more accessible and more interesting to students by showing how science helps athletes fulfill the Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius--Swifter, Higher, Stronger. Read more about the "Science of the Olympic Winter Games."

"ArkGIS is a customizable map developed by the World Wildlife Fund for the purpose of visualizing historical data about sea ice, marine life, and oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. To create custom visualizations of data layers on the ArkGIS map simply select a data category then select data layers to display. For example, I chose the "marine mammals" category then selected the "beluga whales" and "walrus" to view their distributions."

"f you're already an avid follower of our Polar Bear, Beluga Sky (Northern Lights) or Underwater Beluga Whale Cams, then you've heard the name Churchill over and over again. But where exactly is it and what makes it such a hot spot for these amazing and threatened creatures? On the western side of Hudson Bay and just southwest of the Northwest Passage is a little coastal town in Canada. The Northwest Passage, of course, was long sought after as a short-cut trade route for countries near the Arctic Circle. It could potentially allow places like Russia to have a direct route to Canada, Greenland or New York City without going south. Famously impassable, the Northwest Passage has now become more accessible as climate change melts the Arctic ice. This could be good news for shippers but is bad news for bears. More on that later."

"The province and Winnipeg Regional Health Authority have opened up a new specialized concussion clinic for children at the MTS Iceplex. Youth who have suffered a concussion are referred to the clinic by the Children's Hospital to receive ongoing care. The program is expected to see up to 30 new pediatric patients under the age of 19 per week. "With school back in full swing, sports teams are hitting the field, court and ice. When our children are getting back into their activities, it can increase the risk of a concussion," said Health Minister Erin Selby. "For parents of a child who has suffered a concussion in the past, the biggest concern is if their child is ready to go back to school or sports. Concussion experts work with the family to treat the concussion, develop a care plan and monitor recovery to determine when the child can safely return to school or activities."