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"This week's pick is Flipboard. This is a long overdue pick for this series, as Flipboard has been, and remains the absolute standard for news apps on the iPad. It's a past choice as Apple's iPad of the Year and one of TIME Magazine's Top 50 Innovations."

"As schools get ready to deploy iPads this year, each one is scrambling to figure out how to develop an efficient and effective system that works. With no standardized system or uniform roadmap to follow, at the moment, it's up to individual schools to reach out through their networks to find information about best practices and smooth, streamlined service."

"Learning basic math facts is a standard part of an elementary school education, but many children (and even some parents) dread the repetition of flash cards and times tables. Operation Math for iPad by Spinlight Studio hopes to make learning math facts less onerous by turning the task into a game."

With the interest of helping teachers improve their instructional practices and enhancing student learning, FADS (Formative Assessment Delivery System) is a computerized system that will allow classroom teachers to design, develop, and deliver formative assessments and to monitor and report student progress within an interpretive context. This online accessible system will allow teachers to accurately diagnose students' comprehension and learning needs by providing real-time assessment, logging, analysis, feedback, and reporting. The current five-year FADS project, funded by the National Science Foundation, is focused on designing activities deriving from middle school mathematics and science curricula aligned with state and national standards.

"Now, there's a special, modified, pocket flash drive that works as usual with PCs and Macs, but can transfer and stream files to popular mobile devices without standard USB ports, such as Apple's iPad and iPhone, Amazon's Kindle Fire and many other Android devices."

"TL Advisor Blog"

"I don't want to make blanket statements regarding purchases. I fully recognize that every educator, school and institution has to decide what makes sense for them; ultimately, it is you that must live with the purchasing decision. At the same time, I would like to point out some things to consider. Applecare, from what I understand, extends the standard warranty of your iPad from 12 months to 24 months. Additionally, if you crack the screen of your iPad, you can have that iPad replaced for an additional $49 fee over and above the cost of your applecare protection plan of $99."

"He also argues that in our standards-focused world, we need to take time for joy within the curriculum, and because it is a great thing to do even if it is not part of required learning. He shares five pieces of advice: 1) Be mindful 2) Create something 3) Commit regular random acts of kindness 4) Turn pseudo learning into real learning 5) Be silly and laugh everyday"

"Learn to more effectively use iPads to improve instruction and productivity! This course is a blended learning program where participants learn through video tutorials, webinars, readings, and projects. Those enrolled will attend one face-to-face session and submit artifacts of their learning to a digital portfolio blog. The skills taught in this series have been designed to support the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). "

"When it comes to solving word problems in the math classroom, children should be able to explain their thinking. This includes identifying the strategies they used and the thought process behind their decisions. Students should use grade-appropriate math vocabulary and models that demonstrate the steps they took to solve a problem. In this post, we're going to take a look at how screencasting can be used in a fourth grade classroom to meet a Common Core State Standard while addressing a 21st century skill: communicate clearly. "

"In part one of this series, I shared how I use freely available video in my reading and literacy methods course to help my preservice teachers understand close reading instruction at a level that could not be attained through reading and discussion alone. In part two, I shared my curated collection of videos for general Common Core info, as well as videos to teach the close reading, text complexity and informational texts standards. "

"It's getting harder and harder to update this article-and that's a good thing for everyone but me, because it means that today's Windows Web browser choices are fast, secure, compliant with new Web standards. The products most people are likely to have heard of-Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox also sport trim, clear interfaces. But each browser has its own appeal and unique features. Microsoft Internet Explorer excels at graphics hardware acceleration, as you'll see in the benchmark results in the reviews linked below. It's also the only 64-bit program of the lot, and the only one that includes powerful Tracking Protection against site code that tracks your browsing activity. "

"Math of Tomorrow (MOTO), a new Response to Intervention (RtI) digital series for kindergarten through second grade, has been released by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Available for any Web browser and most tablet and mobile devices, MOTO comprises seven student books and a teacher website-Teacher Connect, available through NCTM's website,http://www.nctm.org/moto. The entire series is designed to meet and support the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM)."

"I just returned from a conference where the organizers screened World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements, a documentary about John Hunter, the teacher from Charlottesville, Virginia whose elegant design of a classroom activity elicits the deep thinking and creative problem solving educators strive for. Hunter responded to questions with a crafted vision of teaching and touching anecdotes from his long years in the classroom. Over and over, he repeated a central theme: human interaction is at the heart of effective education. There's no app or standardized test for good teaching. (Or replacement for the kinds of things great teachers do differently.)"

"I wish geometry was taught in this way when I was in school. Curriki's new Project-based Learning (PBL) high school Geometry course is now available. For so many students, it's difficult to make a real-life connection between math and their everyday lives. By adopting a Project-Based Learning (PBL) approach, students learn that geometry is not only theoretical, but practical and necessary. Students will move beyond a basic understanding of concepts to an enjoyment of discovery. This free Geometry course not only leverages the popular PBL "active" approach but is also aligned to Common Core State Standards. Thom Markham, Ph.D., President of PBL International, is the designer of the course. He notes that Project-Based Learning points us toward the future of education. "It's a proven method for integrating the 21st century skills of communication and teamwork into the delivery of core subjects.""

"Bloom's Taxonomy can be a powerful tool to transform teaching and learning. By design, it focuses attention away from content and instruction, and instead emphasizes the "cognitive events" in the mind of a child. And this is no small change. For decades, education reform has been focused on curriculum, assessment, instruction, and more recently standards, and data, with these efforts only bleeding over into how students think briefly, and by chance. This means that the focus of finite teacher and school resources are not on promoting thinking and understanding, but rather what kinds of things students are going to be thinking about and how they'll prove they understand them. This stands in contrast to the characteristics of the early 21st century, which include persistent connectivity, dynamic media forms, information-rich (digital and non-digital) environments, and an emphasis on visibility for pretty much everything. What does this mean for how you use Bloom's Taxonomy in your classroom? What kinds of adjustments should you make-if any-in light of these shifts in the 21st century?"

"Having been involved with student robotics programs for many years, I feel that robotics just may be the most perfect instructional approach currently available. It offers classroom activities that teach high-value STEM content as well as opportunities to powerfully address ELA Common Core Standards. In fact, there are connections to robotics across the full spectrum of the curriculum. Robotics is also a highly effective way to foster essential work skills like collaboration, problem solving and project management. It does all this while keeping kids so motivated and engaged that getting them to stop working and move on to the rest of the school day can be a challenge -- a good problem to have! "