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"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."

"Since the late 1990s, the virtual yellow line has been quietly enhancing football broadcasts by giving viewers a live, intuitive guide to the state of play. The graphic is engineered to appear painted on the field, rather than simply plopped on top of the players, so it doesn't distract from the game at all. The line debuted during a September 27, 1998, game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Cincinnati Bengals. It was developed by a company called Sportvision Inc. and operated by six people in a 48-foot semi-truck parked outside the stadium. ESPN was the only network that immediately agreed to pay the steep price of $25,000 per game. Before long, other companies began offering the yellow line to the other networks, and now you won't see a football game without it. "

"While my school district has a very clear Media/Website consent form specific to public media and our school district website there is no consent form yet in place for the on-line activities I do with my class. These activities include but are not limited to our class blog, my students' individual blogs, our class tweeting, our class skyping, and the global projects we take part in on-line."

"Educational games, or "edutainment," can sometimes be presented as "chocolate-covered broccoli"-that is, learning sugarcoated with fun.  An example is a game that tasks players with reducing fractions to destroy aliens.  Here, the mechanics of play (actions taken in a game) are misaligned with the learning goal. In the past few years, innovative designers smartly began marrying game mechanics to learning goals.  One example is The Land of Venn, in which the mechanic of drawing points, lines, and shapes clearly correlates to the game's goal.  Players draw lines to learn about line"

"Root looks like a smoke detector but is actually a sophisticated robot. A magnetic surface, wheels, and an impressive arsenal of sensors allow it to navigate a classroom white board. But Root isn't actually programmed to do anything. Its tasks and functionality hinge on a child's imagination. To operate - Root needs instructions, a line of code. Zivthan Dubrovsky of Harvard's Wyss Institute recalls testing out Root with kids for the first time. He asked them this: "Can you make a text based java script line follower? They go 'no that's hard, can't do that', but we can put level one in front of them and they can do it in minutes." Level one introduces kids to principles of programming using an interface of simple instruction and pictures. As they become more adept, they jump to levels 2 and 3, at which point writing computer code becomes second nature, according to Dubrovsky."

"Students can now show every line of their math work on iPad and other tablets, writing all their steps by hand on screen. Mathspace digitizes each handwritten line and grades it automatically, giving students immediate, formative feedback at every step of the way - like having a teacher at their side. This is a huge step forward from multiple choice or single-input response math questions that most students and teachers are used to seeing on digital platforms."

""No TV until your homework is finished" used to be the easiest way to separate school work from screen time. Today, with IMs, YouTube, texting, and social media, that boundary is super blurry. And because middle and high schoolers often have media and technology as part of their lessons and take-home assignments, it's tough for parents to know where to draw the line. Fortunately, the folks whose job it is to prepare kids to take on the world (including the digital one) know all about managing screen time, multitasking, online privacy, and even using tech tools at home. And they know your tweens and teens pretty well, too. Teachers -- who are on the front lines of the tech-infused school day -- are experts at helping families manage this stuff so that kids can learn. Here are the questions teachers wish you'd ask about the issues that affect students the most. "

"Earlier this year, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York, visitors paraded through the fifth floor to see a retrospective dedicated to the abstract expressionist Frank Stella. Although many of the works on display were four or five decades old, in some ways the show felt tailor-made for the Instagram age: a riot of vibrant colors and textures, 20-foot-long reliefs, and sculptures as jagged and dynamic as 3-D graffiti. Visitors one busy Saturday afternoon stopped in front of artworks, lined up shots on their phones, snapped a few photos, and then moved on to the next piece. Some paused briefly to consider a particular painting; more stared down at their screens, furiously filtering. Few noticed an elderly gentleman sitting on a bench in one of the smaller rooms, watching the crowd engage with his work. The only visitor in the gallery not clutching a phone was Stella himself. Museum directors are grappling with how technology has changed the ways people engage with exhibits. But instead of fighting it, some institutions are using technology to convince the public that, far from becoming obsolete, museums are more vital than ever before. Here's what those efforts look like."

"A Microsoft Garage project called Snip (not to be confused with the Snipping Tool) has been released. While still in the "preview" stage, it is stable and works well. It is quick and simple, and is effective for a large percentage of learning and teaching situations. Download and install the app. The app then sits as a thin line at the top of the screen. Tap or hover a mouse on this line and it opens to reveal a set of three tools. You can use the built in "whiteboard" (middle icon) or take a photo (icon on the right)"

"Importantly, our early indications suggest that the least effective method of reading may be the one society has been clinging to for centuries: reading on paper."

"n florida, a coalition of parents known as "the recess moms" has been fighting to pass legislation guaranteeing the state's elementary-school students at least 20 minutes of daily free play. Similar legislation recently passed in New Jersey, only to be vetoed by the governor, who deemed it "stupid." When, you might ask, did recess become such a radical proposal? In a survey of school-district administrators, roughly a third said their districts had reduced outdoor play in the early 2000s. Likely culprits include concerns about bullying and the No Child Left Behind Act, whose time-consuming requirements resulted in cuts to play. [1] Disadvantaged kids have been the most likely to be shortchanged: According to a 2003 study, just 56 percent of children living at or below the poverty line had recess, compared with 83 percent of those above the poverty line; a similar disparity was noted between black children and their white peers. [2] FROM OUR DECEMBER 2016 ISSUE Try 2 FREE issues of The Atlantic SUBSCRIBE The benefits of recess might seem obvious-time to run around helps kids stay fit. But a large body of research suggests that it also boosts cognition. Many studies have found that regular exercise improves mental function and academic performance. [3] And an analysis of studies that focused specifically on recess found positive associations between physical activity and the ability to concentrate in class. [4]"

"About two decades ago The MIT Media lab introduced the concept of block-based programming. The idea was to develop an interface that allowed computer programs to be built by simply dragging and dropping puzzle blocks to represent complex programming constructs and commands. With this new method for teaching and learning computer science, the hugely popular Scratch platform was born. This approach lowered the bar for experimenting with programmatic thinking, making it possible for students to create interactive animations and small games without writing a single line of code. This simple concept removed the need to learn the syntax of a formal programming language, and made teaching and learning the basics of computer science accessible to younger learners and to teachers with no formal coding background. Outside of the classroom though, coding has always been, and still remains, a process of typing letters, numbers and symbols. This text-based programming, used in programming language such as C, Javascript and Python, requires coders to obey and conform to formal syntax. Despite the pain of dealing with typos in names of variables and inevitable syntax errors, no other coding method designed to be more "user friendly" has really caught on. Tools have been offered for managers to define business logic through a graphical user interface without writing lines of codes. Or for web developers to add interactive behaviors to their websites without learning Javascript. But in reality, neither of those substitute the power and flexibility of text-based programming. And with neither winning significant adoption, the demand for the classic skill of text-based coding continues to grow and grow."

"I have to admit when I first heard about how coloring books for adults and teens are all the rage, I was a bit skeptical. Then I saw the beautiful new coloring books with loopy, fabulous, mesmerizing line drawings and I was sold! I also just really like the smell of a new box of Crayons! Like PlayDoh, they smell happy. Don't judge me. I then did some research on the Zen of Coloring and found out that teens find coloring very relaxing, meditative, and stress relieving - perfect for middle school! I also think in this world of multi-tasking, coloring keeps our hands busy and let's our mind wander free- it's also related to another hot topic mindfulness. I know that when I'm in a group setting without technology, say a staff-meeting, a conference, or a lecture, I find myself doodling and making line drawings. Always have - do you?"

"Your two eyes each see an image and your brain takes these two images and creates one image in your mind.  The eye with the red lens filter only sees the blue lines and the eye with the blue lens filter only sees the red lines. When your brain puts the two different images together in your mind it creates a 3-D image.  "

"BROOKLYN, New York - I'm sitting on the floor at The Academy of Talented Scholars (PS 682) in Bensonhurst, watching kindergarteners create robots on an iPad. It's one of the cutest things I've ever seen, and I don't even like children. The exercise is part of the curriculum led by co-teachers Stacy Butsikares and Allison Bookbinder, focused on helping the 5- and 6-year-old students come up with ways to solve problems. The first step is to identify a problem happening in the school. The kindergarteners come up with ideas like kids horsing around in the lunch line, or not throwing trash away properly, or making too much noise at recess. Students are instructed to create a robot that could solve the problem, and draw the robot on a piece of paper. Once the robot is sketched out, the real fun begins. Using the app The Robot Factory, these pint-sized problem-solvers bring their robot ideas to life."

"Lists are one of the most valuable tools Twitter has to offer. Ideal for cutting the clutter in the newsfeed and finding great content to share, for organizing your prospects and customers so you can easily engage, and for getting new ideas for creating your own content. Bottom line, you definitely want to take advantage of Twitter lists. But what if you don't know how to make a list on Twitter? Where do you get started? Check out this step-by-step guide on how to make a list on Twitter (and how to save time by subscribing to other people's lists)."

"True story. The bell rang and nobody moved. They were completely focused, totally engrossed. They probably didn't even hear the bell because they were so focused on what they were learning. Amazing, right? How often are students counting down the minutes of each class? They have their eyes on the clock. They start packing up early, preparing themselves for the transition to the next class. Sometimes they are even lined up at the door, waiting for the bell to ring to move on to the next thing. But not on this particular occasion. The students were so into what they were learning, the teacher had to remind them it was time to leave. You can work more on this tomorrow. You'll be late for your next class. It's time to go."

As is required of all women in their 30s, I am in a book club. At the first meeting of this group, one poor unsuspecting woman mentioned that she had listened to that month's selection instead of reading it. That, the rest of the group decided together, is definitely cheating. Never mind that no one could exactly articulate how or why it was cheating; it just felt like it was, and others would agree. She never substituted the audiobook for the print version again (or, if she did, she never again admitted it). This question - whether or not listening to an audiobook is "cheating" - is one University of Virginia psychologist Daniel Willingham gets fairly often, especially ever since he published a book, in 2015, on the science of reading. (That one was about teaching children to read; he's got another book out next spring about adults and reading.) He is very tired of this question, and so, recently, he wrote a blog post addressing it. (His opening line: "I've been asked this question a lot and I hate it.") If, he argues, you take the question from the perspective of cognitive psychology - that is, the mental processes involved - there is no real difference between listening to a book and reading it. So, according to that understanding of the question: No, audiobooks are not cheating.

"Work based skills are changing as more and more jobs are displaced by digital technologies.  Software, apps and online technology such as Uber, Airbnb, Legal Zoom and TurboTax to name a few has already had an impact on many professions.  Online shopping has eliminated tens of thousands of retail store positions. And with self-driving vehicles on the way, how many taxi, trucking, express delivery-and even aviation jobs-will go the way of the telephone switchboard operator? If history is a reliable guide, the technologies that are eliminating one set of jobs will create others: jobs that require twenty-first century-mainly digital-skills.  The explosion in industrial robotics, for example, is eliminating thousands of assembly line jobs but it is creating a demand for people who can design, manufacture, program and maintain those machines.  The questions are -  what will the net impact on jobs be and how well are our schools preparing young people for those new, higher skilled jobs as we head toward the fourth industrial revolution?"

I am a huge proponent of using hands-on, interactive learning activities to explore ill-defined problems as a way of teaching for all age groups. Given the spontaneity and uncertainty of these types of active learning environments, I believe educators should observe, reflect on, and analyze how learners interact with the materials, the content, the educator, and the other learners. This practice is in line with the teacher as ethnographer. In my role as a teacher as ethnographer, I made some initial observations during my first two weeks of teaching maker education for elementary age students. With half the kids under 7, I learned a bunch about young makers. Young makers are more capable than what people typically believe. Young makers need to be given more time, resources, strategies to learn how to solve more ambiguous and ill-defined problems (i.e., ones that don't have THE correct answer). Too many don't know how to approach such problems. If a project doesn't "work" during the first trial, they way too often say "I can't do this." They have a low tolerance for frustration; for not getting the answer quickly. Young makers often celebrate loudly and with extreme joy when making something work. Young makers like to work together but lack skills or desire to peer tutor one another. Young makers usually like to stand while working. Young makers are more capable than what people (adults) typically believe. During our maker education summer camp, the young makers made LED projects, circuit crafts, and simple robotics. Looking at the instructions for similar activities, the recommended ages were usually 8 and above. Yet, my group of 14 kids contained half under that age. The kids of all ages struggled a bit - as is common with making type activities but all were successful to some degree with all of the activities.