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"Back in March of this year at the Future Ready Schools Summit at Leyden High School, I attended one of the featured speaker sessions led by James Sanders. It was a great session with lots of takeaways about meaningful digital learning. My biggest takeaway though, was one of the last things he mentioned in the session. I looked back at my notes and this is the last thing I typed… "Breakout room idea". James shared with us this breakout room idea and gave us a little background about how this all came about. He went on to explain to us that there are these escape rooms around the world where you pay to get "locked in" a room with friends and try to escape by solving puzzles and unlocking codes. He was in Edmonton, Canada, with some high school students playing one of these escape games and he was amazed at how hard these students were working during this game. James wanted to turn this incredible learning experience of problem solving and fun and into something that can be used in the classroom. I left there super excited about this."

""While we're at it, maybe we should just design classrooms without windows. And, hey, I'll bet kids would really perform better if they spent their days in isolation." My friend was reacting (facetiously, of course) to a new study that found kindergartners scored better on a test of recall if their classroom's walls were completely bare. A room filled with posters, maps, and the kids' own art constituted a "distraction." The study, published last month in Psychological Science [1] and picked up by Science World Report, the Boston Globe, and other media outlets, looked at a whopping total of 24 children. A research assistant read to them about a topic such as plate tectonics or insects, then administered a paper-and-pencil test to see how many facts they remembered. On average, kids in the decorated rooms were "off task" 39 percent of the time and had a "learning score" of 42 percent. The respective numbers for those in the bare rooms were 28 percent and 55 percent. Now if you regularly read education studies, you won't be surprised to learn that the authors of this one never questioned, or even bothered to defend, the value of the science lessons they used - whether they were developmentally appropriate or presented effectively, whether they involved anything more than reading a list of facts or were likely to hold any interest for 5-year-olds. Nor did the researchers vouch for the quality of the assessment. Whatever raises kids' scores (on any test, and of any material) was simply assumed to be a good thing, and anything that lowers scores is bad."

"uture Uses for the iPad in the Operating Room: a Game Changer ?"

"Well, here's one of my best 'teaser' ideas… We've all seen iMovie, but have you used it to make the first five minutes of your art lesson engaging? In the classroom iMovie trailers can be used as an exciting hook for techniques and processes. While the story lines do not automatically match the content you would present to students, with a little creativity and artistic licence they can lend themselves to many useful areas in the art room. Have a look at this one…"

"Apple TV (US$99) is a box you attach to the projector / TV that picks up the screen of any iPad and displays it without the need for wires! The teacher can walk around their room and display anything that's on their iPad screen on the Projector/TV. This means the teacher can display from anywhere and even use the iPads camera to show student work 'live' without gathering students around one point in the room"

"A few weeks ago, I introduced some of our 2nd grade elementary students to some iPad apps that let you work in 3D! Sometimes it is difficult to do 3D art projects in the art room because you need so much room to store projects from week to week. Working on the iPad lets students have some interesting virtual art experiences without the need for storage, mess, and in some cases dangerous tools."

"In New Haven, Connecticut, where I live with my husband and two sons, we are lucky to have nearby the Eli Whitney Museum. This place is the opposite of a please don't touch repository of fine art. It's an "experimental learning workshop" where kids engage in an essential but increasingly rare activity: they make stuff. Right now, looking around my living room, I can see lots of the stuff made there by my older son: a model ship that can move around in water with the aid of a battery-powered motor he put together; a "camera obscura" that can project a real-world scene onto a wall in a darkened room; a wooden pinball game he designed himself. (You can view an archive of Eli Whitney Museum projects here.)"

"As with many schools in the United States, the shop program at Analy High School in Sebastopol, California, had become largely irrelevant. The main shop room had become little more than a glorified storage room. The school's priorities were firmly focused on college readiness and success at standardized tests, and vocational programs had taken a backseat. Sebastopol is also the home of Make magazine, one of the leading voices of the maker movement, a community of inventors and do-it-yourselfers that has blossomed on YouTube and shows up in the tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands at Maker Faires all over the world. Make proposed that a group of students from Analy come to their offices to explore the possibilities involved in creating things with 3-D printers, computer-aided design, and more. The program was so popular that soon Make could no longer accommodate it in their offices, so they agreed to donate equipment to Analy if the school would ramp up their vocational program."

"Based on the Musical Room by TedXYouth@Austin, Hackidemia, and HS students. This lesson will guide you with step by step instructions for making your classroom or library into an interactive space designed by your students!"

"Flashback to the first day of school in August 2014. It seems like such a long time ago but was less than a year ago. The door to the new Makerspace was open at lunch time (I always like to keep a classroom door open when I am in there). Students came in to check what's there. Was I ready? Not exactly, far from it. Was the room ready? I didn't think so. Were the students ready? Yes, of course. They were ready yesterday. How could I say no when the door to the room was open and the children were asking? That has been the mantra the entire year in the Makerspace. I responded with a smile and welcomed them. They did it all… They …``

"I decided to focus on learning spaces this year in the classroom and around my school. It led me to create a makerspace in my school's library, but it also led me to take a hard look at the classroom. Last summer, I visited my classroom and decided to change it around. The entire process started with one simple question: "Is this room designed for me or for my students?" It was on this question that I based every decision I made when it came to designing the room."

"For their first ever event, TEDxYouth@Austin, a TEDx event organized entirely by high school students and mentors, asked Hackidemia to collaborate with a group of students to design an interactive play space for their 800 attendees. Over the course of a week, the students planned, prototyped, and built a room you can play like an instrument."

BabbleStream has created a web-based group voice chat solution that can be embedded onto any website. Lively users can also embed rooms onto the site and access both Lively and launch a voice room session from the site.

Largest chat room

"What is needed to start a Makerspace in a classroom or school? Passion - You need to have passion and a belief in the educational value of maker-style projects. Space - This can be a whole room or only part of a room. Supplies - Start small with simple craft materials. Often sending a message out to colleagues and the community asking for donations of materials works well. Storage - Create a place to store materials when they are not in use and student projects as they are being worked on."

"You don't have to spend thousands of dollars to start a Makerspace area. You don't have to have a designated room or rip out bookcases. You can even have a Makerspace on a cart! When we have testing in our Library, I put all our Makerspace stuff on an AV cart and roll it into our server room.  This post evolved from a previous post called Makerspace Starter Kit Updated where I had some of these idea, but I felt that it deserved it's own expanded post. You can take baby steps into the Maker Movement.  I've been saying that for 7 years or so....long before I blogged about it, I tried it out. Yeah, sometimes I try things on the sly to see if they are blogworthy for you! Now....having said that...."

"Have you ever thought, "If I could just turn this into a GAME, my kid would learn it no problem." Kids are like that, aren't they? Ask them to clean their rooms and they'll fall on the floor at the injustice of it all. Turn it into a game and they'll be transformed into little cleaning machines. (Sorry, this game board will not help your kids clean their rooms.) I've been wanting to make a generic, re-usable, board game for awhile now. I have definite plans for what I want to do with it. (Stay tuned for some upcoming math games.) However, if you have your own ideas, this free, printable, hand drawn, game board will work just as well."

"One example where I've seen some clarity and connection to my teaching is the concept of declarative vs. procedural knowledge. Taking the time to acknowledge the declarative and procedural knowledge in a lesson or unit can guide students toward achieving a larger learning goal."