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"Even if you think the buzz around "learning how to code" is overkill, you have to admit it's here to stay. Just like it's easier to learn a foreign language if you start in grade school, getting an early grasp on mark-up and programming languages such as HTML, CSS and Java ensures you'll have an idea of what makes our digital lives and devices tick, even if you don't plan on becoming a software developer."

"Hadi Partovi wants more kids to learn to code. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerber, Sheryl Sandberg, and many others agree. Partovi wants all high schools to offer computer science classes because it represents a growing cluster of job skills but one that few schools teach - particularly schools attended by low income and minority students."

"If you don't know about Subtext, you and your students are missing out! With an iPad app, a Web version, and integration with Edmodo, Subtext allows all students the ability to read and annotate a text together. Gone are the days of using sticky notes to mark pages and take notes. Take a dive into the 21st century with the most real-time close reading experience available. Teachers and students can annotate questions, quizzes, pictures, and discuss, all within the text using this fabulous tool."

"Mark Pennington's students often read on their laptops. Pennington, who's a reading specialist in Elk Grove near Sacramento, Calif., sees a need to teach kids how to read digitally and stay engaged, and thinks that digital reading will eventually catch up to what kids can do reading print. When asked if his seventh-graders are more engaged when reading from digital readers or in print, he said it depends - motivation and environment play a big role."

"MADISON, Wis. - Over the course of 12 weeks, twice a week, the prekindergarten students learned their ABCs. Attention, breath and body, caring practice - clearly not the standard letters of the alphabet. Rather, these 4- and 5-year-olds in the Madison Metropolitan School District were part of a study assessing a new curriculum meant to promote social, emotional and academic skills, conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (CIHM) at the Waisman Center. Researchers found that kids who had participated in the curriculum earned higher marks in academic performance measures and showed greater improvements in areas that predict future success than kids who had not. The results were recently published in the journal Developmental Psychology."

"As many people with dyslexia already know, the iPad has developed into an indispensable tool for various language-based activities. During the last five years, Apple has put a great deal of effort into steadily improving the accessibility features of its mobile operating system, iOS. Currently, users can take advantage of built-in dictation, word prediction, and multiple text-to-speech options. In addition, the newest version of the operating system, iOS 8, allows for the installation of third-party keyboards. These mark an increase in the amount of assistive technology (AT) that can be used universally with iPad apps involving reading and writing."

"It seems like everyone is trying to learn to code: Code.org has celebrities like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Chris Bosh telling you anyone can code; CoderDojo's are springing up all over the country; the UK has made it part of their official curriculum for all grade school kids. I think this is slightly misguided. Don't get me wrong - I do think the world would be better off if everyone had some familiarity with coding - but coding itself should not be the goal. Computers and programming are just tools. They are a means to an end. The real goal should be to teach people a new way to think. In other words, we should be trying to teach computer science and not just coding. In this blog post, I'll explain the difference between the two, and why focusing on the right one is critical for the movement to succeed."

"We haven't talked about learning analytics in awhile (at least not specifically), but that doesn't mean learning analytics have missed the mark (last year, learning analytics were tagged as a 'top trend' in education). We talk quite often about blended learning and personalized learning, often times neglecting to consider that learning analytics are what really drives these concepts: without it, we're just shooting in the dark (or dusk, really, since not everything is data!). The handy infographic below takes a look at exactly how personalized education is being driven by learning analytics, and more specifically, how learning analytics can take us from 'traditional' to 'personalized' education. Keep reading to learn more!"

"Up late marking? Up early preparing for the day ahead? Did you know that after an average of four hours of sleep a night for four or five days, you will develop the same level of cognitive impairment as if you had been awake for 24 hours. This is the same level of impairment as having a blood alcohol level high enough to be considered legally drunk. Not only does this greatly lengthen reaction time, impede judgment, and interfere with problem solving, I think you will all agree, that it is no state to be teaching or learning in. So how important is sleep? Well, in his fascinating TED talk circadian neuroscientist Russell Foster discusses exactly why we need to sleep and talks about some of the concerning effects sleep deprivation can have."

The new GeForce GTX 780 marks an evolution in gaming performance By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com https://www.facebook.com/techvedicinc https://twitter.com/techvedicinc

If your Windows operating system notifies you about weak Wi-Fi signal then it means your connection is not up to the mark. In order to boost the signal for your wireless network (WLAN), try this tutorial.

"There's nothing quite as satisfying as the soft, smooth roll of pen on paper. That ability to scribble, strike, crumple and tear. But what about the downsides of this ancient medium? Endless printing cycles. Lack of searchability. A desk stacked to the roof with essays and sheets to mark. It's these frustrations and a determination to streamline the classroom that have led many educators to trade in their pen for a stylus, and begin embracing the the brave new world of digital annotation."

"According to a study conducted in the chemistry department of the Catholic University done by Diane M. Bunce, Elizabeth A. Flens, and Kelly Y. Neiles in Washington D.C., it was found that while the original belief of the 10-15 minute attention span may be true, it was not the whole truth. Here is the rest of the story. It is true that the first lapse of attention (or first break in attention) occurred at approximately the 10-18 minute mark, but after this initial break, the later attention lapses occurred more and more frequently. By the end of class, attention breaks were cycling every 3-4 minutes. In other words, in the last parts of class, students are only paying attention for 3-4 minutes at a time! So what does this mean for you? This means that introducing different elements into the routine may benefit both you and your students by helping them pay more attention so that you can be a more effective teacher. This is where the pomodoro method comes in."

"Do your students struggle with writing COMPLETE SENTENCES that make sense when read aloud?  How about using CAPITAL LETTERS to begin their sentences and PUNCTUATION MARKS to end their sentences?  Sometimes I feel like a broken record when it comes to these writing requirements in my classroom! My second graders are required to write a biography as one of their writing projects during the year and I knew that I wanted something to motivate them to do these skills without being that broken record when they show me their work.  I think I found the PERFECT MOTIVATOR...QR CODES! "

"For many schools across the country, today marks the first day of a new year. In addition to thinking about tools that help boost educators' teaching practice, this moment might be a good time to pull back and think about some big-picture ideals, too. Here are a few to consider."

"I was first inspired to explore stop-motion when I met influential art ed dude Mark Jones. He's the genius behind some of the best stop-motion animation videos designed, written, and created by kids. I was lucky enough to see him at my state art ed conference a few years back. If you haven't seen these videos - watch them before you go any further! The Robot and the Butterfly Stand Up Tall Stand Up Tall: Behind the Scenes (to help visualize the process) See more on Mr. Jones' YouTube channel. After seeing the potential, I asked myself: How do I do this with MY kids?"

"Makers-in the broadest sense, those who make things-and the maker movement have gone mainstream. Featured in articles from the Smithsonian to The Atlantic to The New York Times, today's makers are just as likely to be armed with traditional tools like hammers, anvils, and yarn, as they are with conductive paint, 3-D printers, and computers. They are participating in a movement marked by community norms of sharing, collaboration, and experimentation. They are gathering in libraries, garages, summer camps, and makerspaces. Cities and towns across the United States are paying attention, responding to the buzz with maker-related growth and development: Downtowns are outfitting digital workshop spaces, also knowns as "fablabs"; municipal libraries and church spaces are designating space for making; and now schools are getting on board. It is no wonder that school ears are perked. As businesses, libraries, and organizations lobby for ways to bring making into their domains, schools across the country are building innovation labs. Makerspaces are being carved out, 3-D printers are being brought into classrooms, and hacker/tinkering/maker/tech-ed teachers are being hired-and sometimes trained. There is clear enthusiasm around the tools and the sociocultural impact of maker-related values. Attend a school board meeting where a makerspace is on the agenda and the familiar selling point rings out: Maker education boosts STEM-science, technology, engineering, and math-learning, which will ultimately generate a cohort of innovative, inventive, entrepreneurial-minded young people. But we may be getting ahead of ourselves. The limited research around the cognitive benefits of maker-centered education is only recently emerging. Maker classes, maker curriculum, and maker teachers are being incorporated into educational settings in what appears to be a response to popular media and based, in part, on the hype."

"A driving strategy that serves students-whether pursuing self-knowledge or academic content-is questioning. Questioning is useful as an assessment strategy, catalyst for inquiry, or "getting unstuck" tool. It can drive entire unit of instruction as an essential question. In other words, questions transcend content, floating somewhere between the students and their context. Questions are more important than the answers they seem designed to elicit. The answer is residual-requires the student to package their content to please the question-maker, which moves the center of gravity from the student's belly to the educator's marking pen. In that light, I was interested when I found the visual above. It's okay to say "I don't know." Teach your students how to develop questions (because) it helps conquer their own confusion. Rebeca Zuniga was inspired to create the above visual by the wonderful Heather Wolpert-Gawron (from the equally wonderful edutopia, and also her own site, tweenteacher). The whole graphic is wonderful, but it's that I don't know that really resonated with me. Traditionally, this phrase is seen as a hole rather than a hill. I don't know means I'm missing information that I'm supposed to have."

"Chronas is an interesting new web tool we discovered through Larry Ferlazzo. This is a history application that link Wikipedia and Wikidata with a chronological and cartographical view. Chronas allows you to explore the world history through the use of a colourful map together with a time slider beneath it. You can use the time slider to select a given period in time and view the events that marked its history. You can also click on the different regions and locations on the map to access and read Wikipedia articles related to them."

"I leaned over the shoulder of a student in the library. She was quietly working with headphones in, and completely focused. What caught my attention is that she would continually lift her phone up over the textbook, and then jot something down on the paper to her left. It was a motion and process that she repeated at least seven times before I headed over to see what was going on. As I got closer I could see that it was a math textbook, and her paper was filled with equations, problems, and steps. I thought to myself, that sure doesn't look like my math homework, which was always a mess of numbers and lines and eraser marks from messing up! What happened next caught me by surprise. Not because I couldn't believe it, but because it changed the way I viewed math forever."