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"1. In terms of pedagogy, the primary purpose of an assessment is to provide data to revise planned instruction. It should provide an obvious answer to the question, "What next?" What now?""

WordMagnets is a simple tool that allows you to paste text into a field and then click a couple of times to change the text into word tiles a little like fridge magnets that you can drag and rearrange.

"Ed note: This is the first part of a two-post mini-series (can you call two posts a mini-series?) The second part of this post will be published tomorrow morning, and will focus on the design cycle of genius hour and passion-based learning. For the past eight years students in Year Six at Redlands have participated in a Personal Passion Project during Term Four. It is a way to finish their time in Junior School with a project that connects their passion with all they have learned about managing inquiry/design based projects to that point. Over the years it has proven to be a highlight of the year and has produced amazing results. With a change to the Australian & NSW syllabus we have had to revise our approach to the Personal Passion Project and so now is the perfect time to reflect on the past and identify the lessons learned."

"As an eighth-grade teacher, I constantly hear from high school teachers how "we" don't teach certain topics in middle school. The students, they claim, don't know how to write a thesis statement or don't know how to use proper grammar, and this is clearly because we don't teach it. News flash: We're not just twiddling our thumbs down here in 'tween-land. It's taught. Retaught. Revised. Reworked. All those gaps you might see as deficiencies in the middle school teaching are misguided. What you are seeing, however, is the curse of the summer slide. "

"Ed note: Part 1 of this 2-part series can be seen here; note that some of the language has been slightly revised from the original post by Nigel. He uses the term passion projects, which is very close to Genius Hour and Passion-Based Learning. The differences across the three terms are often a matter of individual use and interpretation, a point we wanted to help clarify by using the three terms interchangeably even though they may not be exactly the same-passion projects needn't use a Genius Hour format, nor does passion-based learning necessarily need to take the form of projects. In that way, the above model can be used for any of the three, but it felt most precise as a model for teachers to use to design Genius Hour projects. So, here we are. You can (and should!) read more from Nigel at thelearnersway.net. In an ongoing effort towards polishing the edges, over the years we have continued to refine the processes we apply to the Personal Passion Project. We have gained insights into the sorts of projects that work well and which will cause difficulties. We have added a degree of structure while maintaining the required degree of freedom necessary for a personalised project. The results of this learning are presented (in the model above and the text) below."

"Having completed the wondrous Romeo and Juliet text for Grade 9, the time had come to investigate the deeper intricacies of Shakespeare's wonderful work! Instead of simply going through the various motifs, themes and symbols inherent within the play, the English Department at Parklands College put a far more intriguing spin on it by App Smashing Blippar, Socrative, and Padlet. These three extremely useful applications enabled teachers to research, collaborate, and build a revision tool in order to intrigue the minds of the learners and get them excited about a typically bland topic."

"We are strong proponents of children learning to code, but we have concerns about the motivations and methods underlying many of these new learn-to-code initiatives. Many of them, motivated by a shortage of programmers and software developers in industry, focus especially on preparing students for computer science degrees and careers, and they typically introduce coding as a series of logic puzzles for students to solve. We co-founded the Scratch Foundation in 2013 to support and promote a very different approach to coding. For us, coding is not a set of technical skills but a new type of literacy and personal expression, valuable for everyone, much like learning to write. We see coding as a new way for people to organize, express, and share their ideas. This approach to coding is embodied in our Scratch programming software developed at the MIT Media Lab and available for free online. With Scratch, children ages eight and up snap together graphical programming blocks to create interactive stories and games with animated characters. They can share their projects in the Scratch online community, where others can try them out, give feedback and suggestions, and even revise and extend the projects with their own ideas."

"If I could sing a parody, which trust me, you DO NOT want to hear, I'd rewrite Megan Trainor's famous song "All About that Bass,"  with the lyrics, "It's not about the space… all learning."    It's almost comical for me to say it's not about the space, because truthfully, I've loved putting together every single learning space I've ever created.  From watching the evolution of my classrooms when I taught fourth grade, until this year's space, my goals have always been the same.  Use the materials you have around you, buy as little standardized stuff as possible, create the space, and remix, redo, and revise to make the space work for learners."

"Computers can be used to help us solve problems. However, before a problem can be tackled, the problem itself and the ways in which it could be solved need to be understood. Computational thinking allows us to do this."

"Coding is the ability to write step by step instructions (programs) for a computer to understand to complete a task. The Hour of Code website has tons of ready to go online activities that get students to write code that results in a number of cool outcomes, such as making a monster dance, creating avatars, remixing music or making a game. When students complete these easy tutorials they learn these important skills- logic, problem solving, fitting puzzle pieces together, selection, instructional writing, editing, revision, and creation. Below are some great websites to find engaging coding projects that take an hour or less. Most require no registration! Just provide students with a quick introduction to the task on the projector and the link for them to get started. I would highly recommend doing the activity first. In the next post I will introduce you to unplugged activities, which get students to focus on specific coding skills you will notice in these activities, which include working with puzzles, providing good instructions, problem solving and algorithms."

"These new and revised lessons, based on our original K-12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum, take on timely topics for school communities, support teachers with improved classroom tools, and prepare students to take ownership of their digital lives."