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""What's it called again, Craftmine?" I wondered aloud with a confused look on my face to a classroom full of nine year olds, playing dumb the whole time. "It's MINECRAFT!" they all yelled back in unison, smiling and laughing at how out-of-touch their teacher was with their world."

"A number of reasons commonly given for lecturing and claims commonly made for the efficiency of lecturers are examined for their basis in empirical evidence and common sense. Most of these claims are found to be somewhat weak. It appears that lecturing takes place rather more often than can be reasonably justified. The real reasons for the popularity of lecturing amongst lecturers are then examined. Of the twenty reasons for lecturing examined here, the first nine have little substance and the last eleven are avoidable."

"Magnetic building toys are among the most popular STEM construction options for a number of simple reasons. They are robust and affordable. There are no batteries required (magnets are always on). And they straddle a number of important engineering concepts such as design, structure, geometry and are an excellent stepping stone to more complex conversations around physics and electronics. While magnets alone (or the ones stuck to the fridge door) can provide hours of fun, the below nine magnetic building toys have all been created especially for children who have that engineering streak. Take a look and see how magnets can motivate learning in your children!"

"The problem with schools isn't that they work poorly. It's that they work too well at doing the wrong thing. Nine years after Ken Robinson delivered the most-watched TED talk of all time, the education expert is back with a book that answers the talk's titular question, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?""

"Why With Nye is a series of nine videos featuring Bill Nye. This series is based around NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter. In the series Bill Nye explains things like whether or not Jupiter has a core, if water can be found on Jupiter, and how Juno stays on course"

"Times have never been better for computer science workers. Jobs in computing are growing at twice the national rate of other types of jobs. By 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be 1 million more computer science-related jobs than graduating students qualified to fill them. If any company has a vested interest in cultivating a strong talent pool of computer scientists, it's Google. So the search giant set out to learn why students in the US aren't being prepared to bridge the talent deficit. In a big survey conducted with Gallup and released today, Google found a range of dysfunctional reasons more K-12 students aren't learning computer science skills. Perhaps the most surprising: schools don't think the demand from parents and students is there. Google and Gallup spent a year and a half surveying thousands of students, parents, teachers, principals, and superintendents across the US. And it's not that parents don't want computer science for their kids. A full nine in ten parents surveyed viewed computer science education as a good use of school resources. It's the gap between actual and perceived demand that appears to be the problem."

"The use of word clouds in the classroom is a powerful way to really get through to visual learners. The details about the following nine word cloud generators will give you a fair idea how, as an educator, you can get the best out of them. A quick note: Wordle is quite easily the most popular word cloud generator out there. It's free and easy to use. It does require Java though so Chrome users might have some trouble. In any case, this article focuses on non-Wordle options you should know about."

A walk through mathematics! A film for a wide audience! Nine chapters, two hours of maths, that take you gradually up to the fourth dimension. Mathematical vertigo guaranteed! Background information on every chapter: see "Details".

"It's a tough job, taking a handful of rowdy kids and making them sit still and try to learn. If you think teachers have it easy, you organize 25 six year olds to do anything. Now try it for eight hours a day, five days a week, nine months out of the year. At the very least, there ought to be apps to make some of this -- at least the grading and attendance -- easier. "

"What's the opposite of scaffolding a lesson? It would be saying to students something like, "Read this nine-page science article, write a detailed essay on the topic it explores, and turn it in by Wednesday." Yikes -- no safety net, no parachute, no scaffolding -- just left blowing in the wind."

"With an ever growing list of daily interactions occurring digitally, the result of small online decisions can have a huge and lasting impact. As educators, it is critical that we convey this impact to students and consider all elements of Digital Citizenship when working with them in the digital world. In the words of the man who coined the nine elements of Digital Citizenship:"

"he video does not seem remarkable on first viewing. A title informs us that we are watching Ashley Hinton, a teacher at Vailsburg Elementary, a school in Newark, New Jersey. Hinton, a blonde woman in a colourful silk scarf, stands before a class of eight- and nine-year-old boys and girls, almost all of whom are African-American. "What might a character be feeling in a story?" she asks. She repeats the question, before engaging her pupils in a high-tempo conversation about what it is like to read a book and why authors write them, as she moves smartly around her classroom. On an October morning last year, I watched Doug Lemov play this video to a room full of teachers in the hall of an inner-London school. Many had brought their copy of Lemov's book, Teach Like a Champion, which in the last five years has passed through the hands of thousands of teachers and infiltrated hundreds of staffrooms. To my eyes, the video of Hinton's lesson was a glimpse into the classroom of an energetic and likable teacher, and pleasing enough. After leading a brief discussion, Lemov played it again, and then a third time."

"This afternoon Sue Waters and I revived a presentation on blogging that we gave together six years ago at ISTE (formerly NECC). One aspect of our presentation was to share some of the mistakes that we frequently see people make when starting classroom blogs. I made all of these mistakes myself when I started blogging with students nine years ago."