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"Mojang has released a fairly substantial update for the Pocket Edition of Minecraft, available for iOS and Android. This release focuses on adding more mobs, features and extended functionality, while also addressing the size of worlds and squashing any known bugs affecting the immersive experience. Version 0.9.0 contains quite the feature list, so be sure to check out the list below for a full run through."

" "Even young kids have gotten very adept at Minecraft, so it can be quite intimidating for teachers," said Jason Schmidt, an instructional technologist for Bennington Public Schools who will teach the four-week MinecraftEdu MOOC, in a prepared statement. "If I can help get teachers over that hump, imagine how delighted students will be to have a learning environment tailored to their interests for a change." The other, Minecraft for Educators, "is a course for teachers who are wishing to gamify their learning experiences and deliver a unique pedagogy that will engage, enthuse and keep learners coming back for more," according to information released by the company. Both MOOCs are available through the Canvas Network. Minecraft for Educators will start January 26, 2015 and run through March 9. The company has also released a Minecraft app to allow students to submit assignments to the Canvas learning management system from within the game. Using the app, students can tag what they've made in the game for their teachers to visit, upload books they've written in game directly to the speed grader or use the game's circuitry tool to complete assignments that will be automatically graded. A video demonstration of the app is available at YouTube. Other MOOCs for teachers in the suite include: Digital Literacies 1; Digital Literacies 2; Five Habits of Highly Effective Teachers; Teachers without Borders: Educating Girls; and Tinker, Make and Learn. Among the other MOOC offerings in the new suite is a course designed specifically for parents, Parenting in the Digital Age, which aims to help them address issues such as cyberbullying, digital citizenship, exposure to inappropriate content, media literacy and screentime. Taught by Andrew Swickheimer, director of technology at Noblesville Schools, the self-paced course opens September 22. "Parental involvement in K-12 education has one of the biggest impacts on a child's commitment to learning," said Jared Stein, vice pres

"The iPad 2 is Apple's longest supported iDevice. Even though it was released in 2011, it still runs the latest - albeit stripped down - version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 9. A lot has changed since the iPad 2 was first released. Apple has developed faster processors, Retina screens, an entirely new cable, dedicated graphics chips, and a whole lot more. The iPad 2 uses an A5 chip while the latest iDevices use an A9. It doesn't have a retina screen and requires an old 30-pin iPod-era cable. The iPad 2 really can't handle the latest and greatest apps or games. In fact, it can struggle just running iOS  9. What was once a zippy tablet is now pretty slow to use. This isn't a problem if you stick to a single app, but jumping between them or launching new ones can take what feels like an age. This doesn't mean an iPad 2 is useless, it just means that how you use it has to adapt."

"16Hertz, an educational electronics company based in New York City announces the release of their illustrated, graphic-novel style guide, "The Illustrated Arduino". The guide is over 75 pages long, and contains hundreds of hand-drawn illustrations that take the readers through getting up-and-running with electronics prototyping and Arduino programming.   Written by career educators and makers, Aditya Kumarakrishnan and Adiel Fernandez, "The Illustrated Arduino" is a comprehensive guide created to be easily accessible to readers of all experience levels looking for a way to jump into the world of microcontrollers. When the duo dove into the Arduino community, they had a difficult time finding a comprehensive, clear guidebook for beginners. Having taught programming, physical computing and design to students of all ages from middle schools to universities, they sought out to create a guide that is easy-to-follow, great to look at all while still being rigorous. "We set out to create the most beautiful, user-friendly, pedagogically sound and rigorous guide book for the Arduino in the world", says Aditya. They've released the guide under a Creative Commons license, encouraging the larger community to share and use its content freel"

"As teachers, we all have assumptions -- and likely some opinions -- about teenagers and social media. But are those assumptions correct? Well, now we have research to help us find out. This week, Common Sense is releasing its latest research report, Social Media, Social Life: Teens Reveal Their Experiences, a deep dive into the social media habits of American teenagers. This research is the second wave in an ongoing study tracking teens' attitudes about social media; we released our original report in 2012. Back then, Snapchat was just a fledgling start-up, and Facebook was a top choice for teens. But how -- and how much -- teens use social media has evolved almost as quickly as the technology itself. This year's report doesn't just tell us about teens today; compared with our original data, it shows us just how much things have changed. It might seem like teens are using social media more than ever (it's true -- they are!). Teachers work with teens every day, so it makes sense that we have our own opinions and anecdotes about their social media use. But it's important to remember that our personal perceptions about social media might not always reflect what our students experience online. And that's why this research is so important. The results of this latest study help us question our assumptions and start addressing real issues that help our students. "

"Dr. Alison Head and her Project Information Literacy (PIL) research team recently released the findings of a new national study on college students and how they consume and interact with a vast and deeply polarized news ecosystem. The News Study findings are the result of an online survey of 5,844 respondents and telephone interviews with 37 participants from 11 diverse colleges and universities. The research also included computational analysis of Twitter data associated with respondents, as well as a Twitter panel of 135,891 college-age people. In the study's press release, Dr. Head shared: News is fast, social, and visual and typically delivered to students in posts, alerts, tweets, and conversations that stream at them throughout the day. And young news consumers are left to assemble and interpret what news means, while many take this evaluative step, others do not. So what? The News Study's Executive Summary offers Five Research Takeaways as well as Six Recommendations."

"Are your students budding coders? Do they want to create and design apps? Apple has released a sophisticated app for students serious about programming. Swift Playgrounds, a free iPad app (iOS 10) that teaches Apple's programming language Swift, was among the major announcements at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2016. Released in mid-September, Swift Playgrounds is a robust app offering hours of programming lessons."

"A couple of weeks ago TED-Ed released a video about spotting misleading headlines. I quickly added that lesson to my list of resources for helping students become discerning news consumers. This week TED-Ed released another video that I'm adding to that list of resources."

"Are you wondering which devices will support iOS 11? While iOS 11 includes a variety of new features and refinements to the Apple operating system, only certain model iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices will support the iOS 11 release. Fortunately the compatible devices list for iOS 11 is fairly sprawling, and while a few devices did not make the list you will find that most modern iPhone and iPad hardware will support the latest release when it debuts in the fall."

"After its launch last month, ChatGPT, the latest chatbot released by OpenAI, made the rounds online. Alex, a sophomore at a university in Pittsburgh, started toying with the chatbot about a week after it was released, after finding out about it on Twitter. Within a couple of days, he got really excited by the quality of the writing it produced. The chatbot was good, he says-really good. ("Alex" is the name that this person provided to EdSurge. He only agreed to speak anonymously, for fear of repercussions for admitting to academic dishonesty.) He'd found the chatbot around finals week, with everyone in a mad rush to finish papers. Most people seemed interested in asking the chatbot for jokes or stories, Alex says, but he was "instantly intrigued with the idea of using it to write a paper.""

"Book Creator is currently my favorite iPad app for creating multimedia books on your iPad. The app costs $4.99 (less with volume purchasing), but it is well worth it. The latest updates to Book Creator allows you to export your books to ePub 3.0 format. The exported file can be opened an read in the Chrome web browser using the free Readium browser extension. This is a great option as it allows a parent who doesn't have an iPad at home to view his or her child's work at home"

"Washington, D.C. -The American Library Association's (ALA) Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) today released "Progress in the Making: Librarians' Practical 3D Printing Questions Answered" (pdf). Co-authored by 3DPrint360 CEO Zach Lichaa and ALA Senior Policy Analyst Charlie Wapner, the document poses and answers sixteen practical questions related to establishing 3D printing as a library service. All of the questions were fielded from library professionals interested in 3D printing technology."

"Storyboard That provides templates in which you can create your stories in a comic strip style. To help you create your story Storyboard That provides dozens of scenes, characters, and text bubbles to fill your storyboard's frames. Each element that you drag into your storyboard's frames can be re-sized, rotated, and re-positioned to your heart's content. Your completed storyboard can be saved as a comic strip, saved as a set of images (one image for each frame), or saved as a set of PPTX slides. "

MPC Corp. has announced the release of its TXTbook PC, a mobile computer designed specifically for students in grades K through 6.