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"It's official: coding is all the rage today. We are living in a world where apps dominate every aspect of our lives and are disrupting the way we do things. And creating these apps require-you guessed it-coding know-how. With the rising prominence of 'superstar' programmers such as Bill Gates and Sheryl Sandberg, coding has captured the attention and imagination of many youth, who are beginning to recognise its value. According to this Microsoft study, a resounding majority of students in Asia Pacific want to see coding as a core subject in school, believing it is instrumental to helping them acquire essential 21st century skills necessary to thrive in the fast-changing world of tomorrow. While some may argue that being a programmer is not for everyone, we can all agree that coding has some life lessons that we can benefit from, especially children and young people. Here are three reasons why you should get started coding."

"Few trends in K-12 ed tech are as hot-or as under-researched-as "Maker" education. The term generally refers to using a wide variety of hands-on activities (such as building, computer programming, and sewing) to support academic learning and the development of a mindset that values playfulness and experimentation, growth and iteration, and collaboration and community.  Typically, "Making" involves attempting to solve a particular problem, creating a physical or digital artifact, and sharing that product with a larger audience. Often, such work is guided by the notion that process is more important than results. The Maker Movement has its roots outside of school, in institutions such as science museums and in the informal activities that everyday people have taken part in for generations. It began exploding about a decade ago, thanks in large part to the enthusiastic audience of Make magazine and the popularity of public events such as Maker Faires (the most well-known of which was hosted by President Barack Obama at the White House in 2014.) The rise of cheap digital tools, including microcontroller platforms such as Arduino and rapid-prototyping tools such as 3-D printers, has in recent years lent the movement a decidedly techie flavor. Efforts to bring Making and "Maker spaces" into K-12 schools are still "nascent," said Erica Halverson, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a leading researcher into Maker education. But that's changing fast."

"The rise of the tablet has heralded changes big and small across the tech ecosystem, from a booming market for cloud storage to the fall of Flash."

"Our recent survey results show that the use of iPads in classrooms is majorly on the rise. So, here are seven of our favorite apps that every educator should have - and students too!"

"With the rise of new trends such as a flipped classroom and whole brain teaching, there is an emphasis on getting students more actively involved in learning in the classroom. And whether or not you choose to fully embrace either of these methods, we can all agree that we want students participating as much as possible. When students are actively participating, they are learning. In math classes we typically involve students in the problem-solving side, but we don't often expect them to provide explanations."

"Watching my two-year-old nephew Dashiel interact with his mother's iPad made me realize that he was born into an era unlike any in history. As he grows up his expectations about how information should be presented and processed, and how interfaces should respond, will be profoundly different from how we experience technology today. Mobile is now the channel of choice for everyone, but even those of us who use technology with great alacrity are still digital immigrants. Dashiel represents a new age: the Mobile Born - a generation of kids that have been raised while literally gnawing on the equivalent of a supercomputer - otherwise known as mom's smartphone."

Watching my two-year-old nephew Dashiel interact with his mother's iPad made me realize that he was born into an era unlike any in history. As he grows up his expectations about how information should be presented and processed, and how interfaces should respond, will be profoundly different from how we experience technology today.

Watching my two-year-old nephew Dashiel interact with his mother's iPad made me realize that he was born into an era unlike any in history. As he grows up his expectations about how information should be presented and processed, and how interfaces should respond, will be profoundly different from how we experience technology today.

"So your district or school is planning or in the process of implementing some sort of 1:1 device initiative. Seeing as these are all the rage, seems like it's a given that your deployment will be a smashing success, right? Here's the truth…. …it will fail. It may not be monumental failure, but parts of your deployment will not work. Whether it be the MDM that manages them or the rising stack of parent concerns, you will be faced with a choice as a district: retreat or carry on. In the wake of the LAUSD story and the recent Ft. Bend ISD news here in Texas about 're-evaluating' their deployments, I thought it'd be a good time to reflect on why some deployments work and some don't work. I'll let you know that our deployment was far from flawless, as I've listed here, but we had tools in place to overcome issues before they became an "Implementation Killer"."

"Not long ago, a teacher had nothing more to rely on than knowledge, textbooks and a few markers. Technology has slowly changed that in the past few years, with the Internet, multimedia programs and computers increasing their presence in the classroom. But with the rise of tablet tech, the student-teacher experience is facing a subtle revolution: joining the trend makes students feel as if they're part of an environment that's desirable because people speak their native languages. As the iPad becomes a teaching tool, classrooms are transformed into contemporary settings."

"With the thousands of educational apps vying for the attention of busy teachers, it can be hard to sift for the gold. Michelle Luhtala, a savvy librarian from New Canaan High School in Connecticut has crowd-sourced the best, most extensive list of apps voted on by educators around the country. "I wanted to make sure we had some flexibility because there's no one app that's better than all the others," Luhtala said. Some apps are best for younger students, others are more complicated, better suited for high school students. Many apps do one thing really well, but aren't great at everything. Still others are bought, redesigned or just disappear - so it's always good to know about an array of tools to suit the need at hand."

"The main arguments behind the push for students to learn to code, usually center around preparing students for future jobs. There is a skill shortage in the computer science industry which determines skilled job seekers can walk into lucrative contracts. This trend is predicted to rise. The other aspect to the usual argument is that even students who do not work in the technology industry will also benefit throughout their life and careers by learning computer science, as all industries now involve some component of programming. While these arguments are perfectly valid, there are many more reasons why kids should learn to code. They include:"

"As we head towards a world where coding is considered a necessary skill, teaching pupils the basics of programming has never been more crucial. Unlike the common belief that coding is a specialised skill only applicable to selected areas, programming is actually used in almost all industries. Coding is not for young adults and 'geeks' anymore; even elementary students can easily dive into this complex world with the use of modern day technology. The qualm that people have against teaching coding so early usually involves lack of space in the current curriculum and the lack of confidence (in the child or teacher's) ability to code themselves. Thanks to the rise in popularity of mobile technology and apps, even the most inexperienced user can easily learn the core concepts of coding. Below are great apps which you can utilise to learn and teach basic programming."

"The rise of the Maker has been one of the most exciting educational trends of the past few years. A Maker is an individual who communicates, collaborates, tinkers, fixes, breaks, rebuilds, and constructs projects for the world around him or her. A Maker, re-cast into a classroom, has a name that we all love: a learner. A Maker, just like a true learner, values the process of making as much as the product. In the classroom, the act of Making is an avenue for a teacher to unlock the learning potential of her or his students in a way that represents many of the best practices of educational pedagogy. A Makerspace classroom has the potential to create life-long learners through exciting, real-world projects."

"My argument, here and in my book, OPEN: How We'll Work, Live and Learn in the Future, is that the discourse surrounding formal learning is becoming ever further detached from the lessons we see when learning happens outside formal boundaries. The grades that individual students receive for their school projects matter little compared to the comments found on their blogs, or their Vimeo accounts. Rising numbers of parents, frustrated by the worksheet culture of their child's classroom, are self-organizing and co-creating local home-learning networks. Learning which is "open" - outward-facing, highly collaborative, co-created and purpose-driven - offers the promise of addressing the two biggest, yet largely overlooked, challenges facing educators."

"In order to see a rise in the proportion of students who class themselves as engaged in school, we must build a better understanding of how they are learning outside school and take account of that in our learning and teaching practice. There are (at least) six powerful motivations fueling learning socially. I call them the Six "Do-Its" and explain them as follows."

"The impulse to create is one of the most basic human drives. As far back as the Stone Age, we were using materials in our environment to fashion tools for solving the problems we encountered. And in the millions of years since then, we have never stopped creating. In fact, the rise of civilization is largely defined by the progress of technology of one kind or another. Today, the availability of affordable constructive technology and the ability to share online has fueled the latest evolutionary spurt in this facet of human development. New tools that enable hands-on learning - 3D printers, robotics, microprocessors, wearable computers, e-textiles, "smart" materials and new programming languages - are giving individuals the power to invent. We're not just talking about adults. Children of all ages can use these tools to move from passive receivers of knowledge to real-world makers. This has the potential to completely revolutionize education as we know it. And the movement has already begu"