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"Today, teachers of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) topics mostly stick to the theoretical aspects. Students must know the number of degrees in a triangle, but rarely do they get to put that knowledge to use through structured lessons. STEM Education in the 21st Century Read More The tools listed here are transforming the way teachers approach STEM education. Integrating these new tools into their lessons can help teachers teachers reinforce theoretical concepts by demonstrating their real-world applications. By showing students that the knowledge is relevant and useful, teachers can help them unlock new realms of creativity in all scientific realms and possibly change their future career trajectories."

We'll be brief: Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") and is said to have called it his best work. So we asked sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games to take a shot themselves.

"This year, my second grade team decided it was time to take Flat Stanley into the digital realm. They decided they want to have the kids create a Travel Journal for Flat Stanley (FS) as he visited a US State. Here's what we came up with:"

"Infographics are popular. They're a fun way to present and read data, and many people believe that information that is presented visually is often retained better (at least for some learners). Many teachers today are using infographics, both in their classrooms and for their own professional development. There are so many tools out there to make your own infographics. In the education realm, most people I chat with say that they use Piktochart because it is free and very simple to use. One of the (newer) trends we've been noticing lately has been that more and more infographics are interactive."

"Quietly and almost covertly, Apple's iPad has become a common tool in every realm of professional design. Fashion designers sketch on it, designers collect and curate ideas using it, digital artists paint with it in stunning realism, and architects even prepare 3D models before going to production all from the 9.7″ screen. The device is a near ubiquitous sight inside studios, design shops, and most noticeably at trade shows, an ideal compromise when the pocketability of the smartphone is too little and a laptop is just too large. For a demographic regularly relying upon composing, showing, and sharing projects, the iPad is Goldilocks perfect. Here are several of our favorite iPad apps for creatives with content creation and collaboration in mind."

"As my first batch of masters courses come to a close, I was asked to reflect back on my experiences with the Maker movement. At first, I found it to be a bit out of my realm of comfort. I'm not one to sit and tinker with machinery and play video games. As I delved deeper, I found that making is not only about video games and tinkering with things, it's about creating and inventing. Creation can look many different ways, too. It can be using everyday household items to make a new game to play. It can be using a familiar presentation tool to create a project on a topic you've been dying to learn more about. Creating is the basis for the Maker movement, and it needs to become commonplace in the classroom."

"Understanding HOW to learn is critical. But learning WHEN to learn is just as important. We talk a lot about the best ways to learn, the best tools for the job, and more. But what about identifying the best times to learn? I'm not talking about 'during school hours' or 'between 5pm and 7pm' or something. I'm talking about understanding a term that is slowly rising in popularity in the education and technology realm: the five moments of needs."

"Digital classroom tools like computers, tablets and smartphones offer exciting opportunities to deepen learning through creativity, collaboration and connection, but those very devices can also be distracting to students. Similarly, parents complain that when students are required to complete homework assignments online, it's a challenge for students to remain on task. The ubiquity of digital technology in all realms of life isn't going away, but if students don't learn how to concentrate and shut out distractions, research shows they'll have a much harder time succeeding in almost every area."

Note: This information applies to US Copyright Law. Fair Use is the concept that if you are doing something for the greater good of society, like teaching, then your needs supersede the ownership rights of the copyright holder under the Copyright Act. Teachers, and by association, students, can legally use music, websites, video, print, images, and the whole realm of copyrighted materials for the purposes of teaching.

The greatest challenge is moving beyond the glitz and pizzazz of the flashy technology to teach true literacy in this new milieu. Using the same skills used for centuries-analysis, synthesis, and evaluation-we must look at digital literacy as another realm within which to apply elements of critical thinking... Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media (text, sound, images), to reproduce data and images through digital manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments. According to Gilster,5 the most critical of these is the ability to make educated judgments about what we find online.

"Everyone likely has a few photos sitting on their iPhone they'd rather nobody else see, whether it's embarrassing selfies, poorly filtered or edited pics, a picture of a receipt or personal paperwork, or anything else in the realm of private photos. Those pictures can make showing someone another picture on your iPhone (or iPad) an awkward experience, as you're hoping they don't start flipping through your Camera Roll to discover that terrible photo of you after winning the pie eating contest. Fortunately the newest versions of iOS include a new way to mitigate that potential awkwardness by hiding select photos."

"It might just be the precursor to the next industrial revolution and slowly but surely, 3D printing is expanding its presence into the realm of manufacturing. Now it seems that one of the first major industries to benefit from 3D printing is the same one that spawned the assembly line revolution - the automotive industry. Israeli company Stratasys, already a major player in the field and its subsidiary, RedEye On Demand, will be part of a project aimed at putting the first 3D printed car on the roads within two years, in partnership with KOR EcoLogic. "A future where 3D printers build cars may not be far off after all. There is a vision for a more fuel-efficient car that would change the world . URBEE 2, the name of the car, shows the manufacturing world that anything really is possible. There are few design challenges [3D printing] capabilities can't solve.""

"This little digital creature called Hashtag has been revolutionizing the way people network, communicate and share on social media websites. It first started on Twitter around the year 2009 then Google Plus adopted it in 2012 before Facebook officially integrated it in June 2013. However, what is mysteriously unknown about this #poundsign is that its origin dates back to the 12th century when the #symbol first appeared in the musical realm. Since then, hashtags have been used in different contexts and for different purposes till they finally landed in the social media landscape some few years ago. The visual below provides a very good visual illustration of the chronological development of the sign #hashtag."

"In my previous article on this subject, I wrote about the Maker Movement and its importance to the educational realm. The Maker Movement is also nicknamed the Do-It-Yourself (D.I.Y.) Movement, because it empowers individuals to design, manufacture, and create their own objects, ultimately improving creativity in many fields. In a way, the tools used in this movement are taking us back to a time when every person was a craftsperson - except now, we have much cooler gadgets than a wood chisel. And while many of us do not realize it yet, this hands-on approach is something that is missing from our very digital, holographic world. The 3D printer is one of the biggest revolutionary tools in the Maker world and has inspired a push toward the do-it-yourself sensibility. Still, though the cost of 3D printers is coming down, they are still prohibitively expensive for many schools and what's more, when turning a classroom into a makerspace, it would be silly to limit ourselves to one technology. In this article, we discuss five tools that are not 3D printers that schools can use to help students embrace this movement inside the classroom."

"Why teach coding? Simply put, coding can change and impact people's lives. The effect technology - as a result of computer code - has on this world is incredible. What used to be thought of as impossible is now made possible. What's more amazing is that our technological accomplishments always open up new realms of possibilities. Cellphones, for instance, didn't stop at phone calls - they led to streaming music and eBooks and brain teasing games and the ability to map the night sky. This suggests that learning technology and its underlying language - coding - is extremely powerful."

"Transformative pedagogies, encourage students to be an equal and active participant in their learning. They are not limited to being passive listeners or mere receivers of information, with instructions on how to process the same. Students are expected to consciously understand their learning, the thought processes intertwined with it, while questioning, exploring, and discovering new realms of learning. This thought process that delves into the concept of thinking, is called Metacognition. Termed by the American Psychologist John H. Flavell, in 1979, it's a combination of two words that best describe its meaning; meta - beyond and cognition - thinking. Going by this conceptualization, simply put, metacognition implies beyond thinking, or thinking about the thinking process."

"how a fourth grader how to balance a checkbook and it won't be long before her eyes start to glaze over or his mind starts to wander off to more interesting things. Infuse a financial literacy lesson with terms like bitcoin or cryptocurrency, however, and the lesson gets a bit more interesting. Better yet, give the student a very hands-on, tech-centric way to experiment with those financial concepts, and suddenly you're in an entirely new learning realm. As it stands now, a high percentage of K-12 students never getting the tools and training they need to make informed financial decisions. Only a third of states require high school students to take a course in personal finance, while less than half require them to take a course in economics before graduating. So in a push to make learning more relevant-and fun-a pair of startups, BitLearn and Pigzbe, are fusing gamification with finance, propped up by digital currency tokens. Call it the 21st century piggy bank."

"Nobody said that raising an adolescent was easy, and schooling one is even more of a challenge! Parents are taking on a lot of school responsibility, and let's face it -- things are different than they used to be. How are parents supposed to know how to handle the homework load without some guidance? Take studying, for example. If you are a parent of a struggling or resistant learner, you've probably heard more than one person suggest, "She just needs to study more." Most kids think this means filling in a study guide or rereading a chapter. But many don't learn by writing or reading. Their strengths lie in the visual, kinesthetic, musical, or social realm. How, then, are we to help our children develop their studying skills? The task does not have to be daunting. In fact, it can actually be simple and effective!"

"dditive manufacturing has been hyped for years. But in 2017 much of its promise materialized: 3-D printing took a series of big steps out of the realm of niche prototyping and into the world of mass manufacturing. Here's a look at some of the most impressive things 3-D printers made this year, as well as what their creations portend for the future."