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"Over the last week Twitter has been rolling out a new polling feature to its users. The new polling option allows you to post a Tweet that contains a short poll question. Using a poll is different than just asking people to reply to a question that you Tweet. When you post a poll people don't have to reply to you with an "@" reply. Instead of sending a written reply people just choose from one of your response choices. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how the new polling feature works. "

"My iPad Pro arrived this past week to my excitement. I have used it for just a few days now at this point. There are absolutely no regrets about this large purchase (I joked that it did cost exactly half of what I paid for my first car!). I am thoroughly impressed by this device. The larger size of this iPad gives it a new device feeling, as opposed to just a refreshed model of the same dimensions. For a size reference, here is the iPad Pro side by side with the iPad 4: And here it is next to the iPad Mini:   I hope to do a series of posts outlining my use of the iPad Pro. This first post will just outline some initial thoughts on the device, and who I think it is best suited for. Readers of this blog will know that I'm a huge supporter of using iPads for content creation as opposed to just content consumption. The iPad Pro, along with the new features of iOS 9, bring with it many more possibilities of doing so."

"Padlet is a versatile, easy to use tool for every teacher's toolkit. Let's learn the basics. At the bottom of this post, I have a Padlet that is temporarily open for you to post and share your favorite edtech tools."

"It's been about three years since I posted my original list of iPad apps teachers can actually use. Since then I have compiled a few other app lists: Chess Apps to Improve Your Game and Your Mind Creativity Apps Critical Thinking Apps Earth Science and Geography Apps But I do think it's time I update my original post. Or at least added to it. Most of the apps and tools on the original list are still around, but there are a whole lot more that are useful."

"QUINCY, Wash. - A few years ago, a young female engineer named Isis Anchalee was featured on one of her company's recruiting posters only to be subjected to a barrage of digital feedback questioning whether she was really an engineer. People posting on Facebook and Twitter said Anchalee was too attractive to be an actual software engineer and must be a model. Anchalee responded like the techie she is. She wrote a blog post about her experience and added a photo of herself with the hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer. Twitter exploded with selfies of female engineers of all backgrounds and male engineers of color declaring they looked like engineers, too. If she had known about the hashtag campaign and taken a look, Alessandra Gudino Aguilar, age 8, might have seen a grown-up version of herself. Alessandra, a student at Pioneer Elementary School in rural Quincy, Washington, spent part of the fall term in an enrichment class focused on teaching elementary-age students the principles of engineering design through a curriculum designed by educators and scientists at Boston's Museum of Science."

"Over the past year, I have been gradually working to implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) into my classroom. Our new Wisconsin State Science Standards were designed with the NGSS in mind. They align very well, so please forgive me if my language focuses on the NGSS in this post. As I design lessons aligned the standards, I am considering to the skills students will be implementing that carry across multiple units. This relates to the Science and Engineering Practices contained in the standards. I am looking at the technology tools that can be used to leverage these practices. While there are 8 different practices and I hope to delve into each one and the technology tools that can help learners in each, this post will only focus on one practice. That practice is Developing and Using Models. As the name indicates, there a"

"In the last post, I explored this idea that every student deserves a makerspace. In this post, I look at some of the most common myths I see regarding makerspaces. "

"Every classroom is different-and that's good because every student and teacher is, too. But are there any common elements that most/all classrooms should share? and more specifically, in a modern classroom? Screens and data and artifical intelligence and robots and Skype and holograms? Do these belong in every classroom? What ideas, practices, strategies, patterns, and technology belong in every classroom? Can we identify the kinds of 'things' that every modern, high-performing classroom should have? In the post linked to above, we explored some of these ideas in the form of 'characteristics.' And there were more-32, in fact. This post is a bit simpler and briefer. Some of the items are better suited to specific grade levels, content areas, teaching styles-even certain times of year. Still, most can remarkably improve the learning of students and the overall climate of your classroom. So then, that's the premise: What sorts of things belong in every modern classroom?"

"If kids are making, there will be a mess. This post it not about keeping tables shiny or keeping masking tape rolls symmetrically organized.  I'll write another post someday about how I like to organize my Sharpies in ROYGBIV fashion by shade (not even kidding). This is about the day to day. The real life of making."

"One of the most popular posts of all time on this blog featured math tutorial YouTube channels for high school and college students. That post was originally created as a response to an email from a reader who was seeking suggestions for math videos that were not on Khan Academy. This evening I took some time to update my list of math tutorial channels on YouTube that are not Khan Academy. Here's the new list."

"Q. How do you take screen shots of articles and then post them on Twitter, with sections highlighted and the URL of the article included? A. Annotating screen shots of text passages - and then posting the image and a link to the article on Twitter - is an effective way to make a point with the selected text. It also lets you get around the service's 140-character limit. You can mark up the screen shot's text in a few different ways on a mobile device or computer."

"User Generated Education Education as it should be - passion-based. Design Thinking Process and UDL Planning Tool for STEM, STEAM, Maker Education leave a comment » Post by Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D. @jackiegerstein and Barbara Bray @bbray27. Crossed posted at http://barbarabray.net/2017/06/08/design-thinking-process-and-udl-planning-tool/. If there is a makerspace in your school, it may be down the hall, in the library, or in another building. If there is someone other than the teacher managing the makerspace or there is a schedule for the school, your kids may only be able to use it once a week or month. Some makerspace activities may be focusing on how to use the resources available and may not be connecting the activities to the curriculum or around a real world problem. If this is how the makerspace is set up in your school, then your kids may not have access to the resources, materials, and tools when they need them, especially for STEM or STEAM. In deciding what resources you need based on the learners you have, you may first need to determine how your learners learn best, what projects you plan to do, how you can set up a makerspace in your classroom, and much more. This is why we decided to create a planning tool for makerspaces in the classroom for you using the Design Thinking Process and Universal Design for Learning®."

"Recently I wrote a blog post about Intentional Creativity. Here is the graphic created for that post. Below the graphic are specific ideas I am using with my gifted elementary students this school year."

"Welcome to this first post in a series that promotes student inquiry in PBL and STEM. This series is dedicated to helping educators create a student-centered Driving or Investigative Question… which is so important in STEM and PBL. You will discover multiple resources and ideas in this series, along with some great ideas for finding student success in student owned inquiry. In this first post, I would like to build the idea of what makes a Driving or Investigative Question important in student centered learning, and how it can uncover important standards. "

"News has evolved, and how you read it needs to evolve too. It's not about going to one site any more. It's also not about reading through social networks. Reading the news today isn't as simple as it used to be. There is an information overload that you need to counter. Plenty of sites have their own biases that you have to manoeuvre. And lots of smaller news outlets have the most interesting articles. The 5 Best News Curation Apps to Fight Information Overload The 5 Best News Curation Apps to Fight Information Overload You've got so much vying for your attention -- news articles, Reddit posts, tweets, Facebook posts -- but what if you could get it all curated in one place? READ MORE So change how you read news: take small bites, track a single subject, or read the most trending articles. These sites and apps will give you an interesting way to consume news."

"Starting the year off with ideas on the best ways to use technology to support learning, Larry Ferlazzo collected an invaluable list of criteria last year from educators, to which he added more resources in his recent blog post for EdWeek.Other posts in the series include Using Ed Tech to Create Deep and Meaningful Experiences and Effective Ways of Using Tech in the Classroom. Here is MindShift's contribution to the collection of ideas."

"For today's post we are sharing with you foster a growth mindset culture in your class. The visual is based on this post from Marcus Guido. We invite you to check it out and share with us your feedback. "

"If you've opened this post hoping to read something brand-new, you might be disappointed. There will be no fancy bells or whistles here. That's because a lot of the strategies we're going to talk about are things you've already done; some teachers have probably been doing them for decades. You just might not have known exactly why they worked or how to harness them in the most optimal way. That's what cognitive scientists have been doing, trying to pinpoint exactly which activities work best for storing concepts in long-term memory. Over the past few years, we've been following their progress: In our 2015 study of the book Make it Stick, we first talked about the concepts of retrieval practice, spaced practice, and interleaving. These concepts were also addressed in the 2016 post Six Powerful Learning Strategies You Must Share with Students, and in 2017, where I made a strong push again for using more retrieval practice in our teaching."

"Cardboard challenges have been a core part of my makerspace programming for the past eight years.  I continue to be amazed year after year at the amazing ideas students come up with when given a design challenge and simple, everyday materials.  In Part 1 of this post series, I looked at some of my favorite tools to help facilitate cardboard challenges.  In this post, I focus on other tips and tricks I've learned over the years.  Here, I'll talk about: Storage ideas for wrangling all that cardboard and managing those in-progress projects Adding in recyclable materials Using Design Challenge and constraints to help spur creativity"

"Regardless of whether you think every infant needs an iPad, I think we can all agree that technology has changed education for the better. Today's learners now enjoy easier, more efficient access to information; opportunities for extended and mobile learning; the ability to give and receive immediate feedback; and greater motivation to learn and engage. We now have programs and platforms that can transform learners into globally active citizens, opening up countless avenues for communication and impact. Thousands of educational apps have been designed to enhance interest and participation. Course management systems and learning analytics have streamlined the education process and allowed for quality online delivery. But if we had to pick the top ten, most influential ways technology has transformed education, what would the list look like? The following things have been identified by educational researchers and teachers alike as the most powerful uses of technology for learning. Take a look. 1. Critical Thinking In Meaningful Learning With Technology, David H. Jonassen and his co-authors argue that students do not learn from teachers or from technologies. Rather, students learn from thinking-thinking about what they are doing or what they did, thinking about what they believe, thinking about what others have done and believe, thinking about the thinking processes they use-just thinking and reasoning. Thinking mediates learning. Learning results from thinking. So what kinds of thinking are fostered when learning with technologies? Analogical If you distill cognitive psychology into a single principle, it would be to use analogies to convey and understand new ideas. That is, understanding a new idea is best accomplished by comparing and contrasting it to an idea that is already understood. In an analogy, the properties or attributes of one idea (the analogue) are mapped or transferred to another (the source or target). Single analogies are also known as sy