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"To some people, Finland isn't a whole lot more than a chilly, northern country boasting a population of around 5 million people. Whether you've been to Finland or not, you probably haven't had the chance to take an up-close and personal look at one of Finland's greatest accomplishments to date - its high-achieving education system. Students in Finland have, over the past several years, risen to the top of the academic food-chain, and they've become some of the top scholarly performers in the world. Compared to many other developed nations, including the US and Canada, Finland's high school graduation rates have continued to grow steadily and impressively. Furthermore, a huge percentage of students continue on to earn college degrees, and students at all levels perform exceedingly well on standardized tests."

"Today, I finally got an iPad. An iPad mini, to be exact. And now the search for good French apps begins. The choice is vast and while there are many free apps to choose from, it appears that often the better apps cost money. The problem is, one cannot explore an app until it is bought! I therefore created this blog to facilitate the search for appropriate FSL apps. I will be reviewing apps on a regular basis, and rating them so that you can better judge whether to buy them or not. I will only review apps that require a purchase. The free ones you can test out yourself (see some of them below, #1)!"

"Back in February, an EdWeek Market brief reported that Amazon Education was starting to beta-test a new platform with educators, helping teachers navigate the jungles of open educational resources (or OERs, for short). Well, that platform-Amazon Inspire-has officially launched today in tandem with the ISTE conference in Denver, Colorado. A free, mostly-OER platform (see below for why it's "mostly OER"), Amazon Inspire works like a search engine for educational videos, lesson plans and games. Users can search by criteria like topics (say, "fractions" or "the Constitution"), standards, grade level, and time to complete, as shown below; additionally, they can rate materials with 1 to 5 stars."

"The Computer Science Education Week, Dec. 5-11, is an annual initiative that mobilizes educators, parents, nonprofits and the industry to inspire all young people to learn computer science and open the door to a promising future. With our rising digital economy and the nonstop pace of technological change, we have an imperative to prepare young people to pursue careers that are in demand. Computer science refers to the academic discipline of studying what can be done using a computer and how to do so. At the foundation of this is computational thinking, a mental process that allows one to formulate problems so as to design possible solutions that a computer or human can easily understand. Coding is one way that computational thinking can be expressed. It is simply writing a list of step-by-step instructions for computers to perform what we want to do. More importantly, it provides everyone a platform to unleash our creativity to create software websites, games, and apps. More than half of today's jobs require some technology skills, and this will increase to 77 percent in the next decade, according to IDC. With youth unemployment in Southeast Asia alone almost three times that of total unemployment rate, coding and computer science serve as the gateway for youth to secure a more fulfilling career or even venture into entrepreneurship. In the Philippines for instance, an entry-level tech position pays 38 percent more than the minimum wage.   I strongly encourage everyone to try coding-and here's why:"

"Not all Minecraft videos are created equal. Approximately 90% of the top-rated Minecraft videos found on YouTube and other popular video streaming sites contain inappropriate content not suitable for children. Clean Minecraft Videos is the solution. Clean Minecraft Videos offers more than 200 videos from the YouTubers kids know and love that are free of all inappropriate content."

What will tomorrow bring? What will life be like in 2028 as our youngest students of today exit school? What occupations will they enter and what challenges will they face? These are not new questions but with the rate of change in society and the pace at which technology evolves they are questions without clear answers. How then do schools prepare students for this uncertain tomorrow? What shall we teach our children today such that are well prepared for the challenges and opportunities of their tomorrow?

"Here is a collection of some good iPad apps for teaching kids and students sign language and American Sign Language (ASL). The collection which we have curated from iTunes App Store and App Advice, embeds some of the most popular sign language apps out there.  We have based our selection mostly on user reviews and ratings. Whether you are a parent, a teacher dealing with deaf or hard of hearing students, or simply interested in learning an extra important communicative code, the collection below is definitely a great place to start with."

"There are plenty of stories out there about schools that have already launched large-scale iPad programs or that are considering them for next year. Many U.S. school districts have yet to determine an iPad strategy, however, and are still moving forward cautiously."

"Moreover, "New Avengers Vol. 1: Breakout" is available free of charge for a limited time. As of press time, the e-book had a 4.5-star rating"

"The following is an excerpt from the book The App Generation: How Today's Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis. Let's dive directly into the world of educational apps. Our survey suggests that the majority - one might even say, the vast majority - of educational apps encourage pursuit of the goals and means of traditional education by digital means. They constitute convenient, neat, sometimes even seductive pathways to accomplish what were already goals in an earlier era: mastering concepts, learning arithmetical operations, identifying geographical locations or historical figures or key biological or chemical or physical processes. We could dub them "digital textbooks" or "lectures" or "pre-programmed educational conversations." Decades ago, major behaviorist B. F. Skinner called for teaching machines that would automate the traditional classroom, allow students to proceed at their own rate, provide positive feedback on correct answers, and either repeat a missed item or present that item via another pathway. Those sympathetic to Skinner's brand of psychology and to its associated educational regimen would easily recognize many apps today and would likely nod in approval at their slick, seductive interfaces."

"Learning technologies change student-resource interactions not only by the amount of resources that are now available to students, but also by the quality of the resources. Instead of students being limited to the textbook they receive from their school, that may or may not be outdated, they now have access to resources from literally around the world. Websites like Project Gutenberg and the National Archives give students access to millions of resources, in various forms of media, on just about any topic they could imagine. With that being said, quantity does not necessarily mean quality. For every respectable source of information online, there's an endless amount of second rate information. Teaching students how to find valid and reliable sources of information is paramount to education in the digital age. However, I don't believe it stops there."

"Anyone reading this post right now -- whether on your computer, tablet or smartphone -- knows that the interfaces for reading have indeed changed. Whereas just a decade ago, touchscreens were still a novelty, today they permeate our lives. And, according the Pew Internet Project, teens have a device ownership rate of 68 percent for smartphones and, overall, 91 percent for cell phones. "

"After posting about the "10 ways to get your students engaged" here is another good visual I learned about from Mindshift and which outlines different levels of engagement. As I have already argued elsewhere here in this blog, getting today's students deeply engaged (the first level of engagement below) in the learning experience taking place in class is not an easy task. Unless students see a direct relevance between what they are going to learn and how that information will help them them in their actual life , it becomes hard to hook and maintain their attention. Proponents of socio-cultural linguistics emphasize the importance of "context" in learning. Learning materials that are contextualized and tailored to speak to the immediate context of the learners are more likely to get students engaged and hence increase their rate of retention and comprehensibility."

"The revolution that began with the web in the mid 1990s has exploded with the advent of small, ubiquitously connected devices in every space and size. The kind of technological changes that took a lifetime in previous centuries has occurred in the span of a decade, and this rate of change is accelerating, not slowing down. With the turn of this new century, this digital revolution took another increasing pitch transforming thus the way we live and do business."

"For years, it has been no secret that many students who start post-secondary education programs drop out early. To address this issue, many schools and institutions decide to redesign their courses with the hope that students might gain a greater feeling of success, continue with their chosen program and graduate. When considering courses for redesign, many questions are asked but the most important is this: "What data should be considered to ensure our course redesign efforts are successful?" Data metrics like grades, attendance or participation rates are obvious considerations. These can be reliable metrics in driving decision-making. However, I recommend also considering student feedback, faculty load, student experience, and assessment performance as additional data points which can better inform decisions that directly impact the course redesign process."

"For many years New Milford High School was just like virtually every other public school in this country defined solely by traditional indicators of success such as standardized test scores, graduation rates, and acceptances to four year colleges. These indicators have become so embedded in the minds of those judging our schools and work that we, like everyone else, worked hard to focus only on initiatives that would hopefully produce favorable outcomes in those areas. If we were doing well we continued down the same path allowing the status quo to reign supreme. The mentality of if it ins't broke than why fix it resonated so profoundly with us that we would not have even considered changing our ways. If results were not what our stakeholders wanted this would then trigger meetings leading to the development of action plans to get us back on course. "

"When app-smashing on iPad, students and teachers use multiple apps to create individual pieces of content that are then merged or smashed together into one culminating product. Applying this concept dramatically increases creative potential, and the rate at which apps are developing allows for new, unique, and dynamic creations to consistently challenge what seemed possible only a few months or weeks ago. The final product involved in app-smashing often lends itself to video, so to kick off the school year, here are a few app-smashing video projects."