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Next time you go to or host a conference ask yourself if it meets this standard

"Our job as educators is more than just standards we teach. We are in the business of helping students know they are more than just a number. More than just data points. They are the story, the song, the art that moves and matters. They are the embodied learning. Our challenge is to help stakeholders care more about the embodied learning, the things that don't have names. The journey that collectively leads to things that matter. Our challenge is to care most about students that are fully alive in their learning. It is up to us to make the things that matter, the most important."

"Critical thinking is the engine of learning. Within this complex process or so many other relevant themes that contribute to learning: creativity, analysis, evaluation, innovation, application, and scores of other verbs from various learning taxonomies. So the following infographic from Mentoring Minds is immediately relevant to all educators, and students as well. It's a bit of a mash of Habits of Mind, various 21st century learning frameworks, and the aforementioned learning taxonomies, promoting collaboration, problem-solving, and real-world connections (standard "critical thinking fare" with Habits of Mind-sounding phrases such as "Open-Mindedness.""

"Guessing what the future of education holds is equal parts logic and guesswork. The logical part is simpler-take current trends and trace their arc further, doing your best to account for minor aberrations. If the majority of public education in the United States is waist-deep in adopting new academic standards, it doesn't take Nostradamus to predict they are going to have a strong gravity about them in the education at large."

"One question I seem to get a lot about the iPad is what apps do I recommend that are free. I am hearing from a lot of teachers that they have no way to add paid apps and thus are stuck trying to find free apps. My experience is that many free apps stink. They have many adds, require in app purchases to be useful, or are just junk. I tend to stay away from most free apps. So what are you to do if the district controls adding paid apps? My suggestion is to build relationships with the decision makers. Don't just ask for a bunch of apps, instead provide documentation and purpose for a few apps you would like to have. I know this process takes time and effort but if you can show the purpose and learning you have a much better chance. If you need lesson ideas I suggest checking out my Pinterest page, and three of my favorite Pinterest pages: iPadsammy, TechChef4u, and Sue Gorman. Look for apps and lesson ideas there and modify them to fit your standards and kids. If I was starting from scratch this is the $10 iPad app setup I would push for in my kindergarten classroom. (I will be posting a $20 setup later)"

"Conducting an extensive data mining for writing a scholarly academic paper does definitely require using online digital resources. Admittedly, a lot of the resources you want to cite in your paper can be found online and most of them through social media like Twitter. I have been experiencing this myself while working on the literature review of my thesis. I included many tweets in my paper using the APA style. To be sure my citations meet the academic standards I bought Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th Edition . However after reading this guide, I wrote a short post on how to include citations in scholarly papers and today I am sharing with you another great resource on the same topic . This is basically an awesome chart featuring the different ways to cite social media using both MLA and APA style. I knew about this from our wonderful techy specialist Aditi Rao. "

"To establish how we can maximize the impact of the iPad as a learning tool, we first have to establish what kind of impact we'd hope to have. In this case, we'll settle on understanding (as troublesome a term as that might be): Students being able to think critically about chosen standards or curriculum, and apply understanding in diverse, academic and non-academic environments. With that as the goal, here are some ideas."

"The Common Core Lesson Planner is a must have app for teachers who want to utilize their Droid and/or iPad tablet into their daily routine.The Common Core Lesson Planner was created by a teacher for teachers to help make planning and assessing with the Common Core Standards more effective and efficient."

"Virtual dictionaries have made old-school dictionaries obsolete. Why flip through tissue-thin pages and skim tiny text to find a definition when you can get it in an instant on your computer? The iPad has great reference apps for everything. From your standard dictionary to more niche science apps, you'll find everything here."

"To some people, Finland isn't a whole lot more than a chilly, northern country boasting a population of around 5 million people. Whether you've been to Finland or not, you probably haven't had the chance to take an up-close and personal look at one of Finland's greatest accomplishments to date - its high-achieving education system. Students in Finland have, over the past several years, risen to the top of the academic food-chain, and they've become some of the top scholarly performers in the world. Compared to many other developed nations, including the US and Canada, Finland's high school graduation rates have continued to grow steadily and impressively. Furthermore, a huge percentage of students continue on to earn college degrees, and students at all levels perform exceedingly well on standardized tests."

"iTooch Elementary is an app covering the official Maths, Science and Language Arts curriculum for grades 3-5. Each title contains 40-50 chapters and includes 1000-2000 activities. The apps created by iTooch are currently being used by more than 300,000 students and have been created by teachers to make sure they comply with the U.S. National Common Core Standards. You can click here to see the teachers behind the development of iTooch."

"The opportunities for learning through the use of digital gaming are diverse and massive. The speed and ease in which basic game development can be achieved using apps such as Sketch Nation can provide a platform for outstanding cross-curricular projects and really make an impact on progress, standards and pupil independence. This blog post describes one project (upper KS2) which could easily be adapted to suit Key Stage 1 or expanded to meet the needs of Key Stage 3 pupils, and to support almost any topic/subject. 1:1 use of iPods enabled maximum pupil engagement but fewer devices could have been used if pupils collaborated in groups"

"Ohio educators are facing a barrage of new initiatives, such as the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System, Ohio's New Learning Standards and the next generation of assessments that require multiple changes in practice all at the same time. As educators begin wading into the waters, they increasingly are turning to social media for insight and support from their colleagues statewide. Even if you have little experience in social media, here are a few tools you can use that are quickly developing into invaluable education-reform communications tools."

"Fourth and fifth grade students at Independence Elementary School in Yukon Public Schools are sharing their learning as well as excitement for library books this year in a unique, highly digital way that is not only fun, but also meets Oklahoma's new Common Core State Standards for literacy. Students are recording short, oral book reviews and posting them online using the free iPad app and webservice AudioBoo. Then students are using QR codes in the library to access and listen to each other's book reports."

"The integration of technology in learning is not new. In the 1980s, many schools had fancy calculators, Macintosh computers, and were even teaching students basic coding. This kind of integration often happened at the lesson or activity level, meaning that it was often surface-level, tacked-on, and perhaps a bit superficial. The power of technology is difficult to fully leverage without curriculum-level integration. This means choosing tools, platforms, and policies based on standards, assessment, and instruction. A side benefit to this approach is the possibility of teacher collaboration and "same-pageness.""

"With the Common Core adoption in the United States, teaching vocabulary is no longer strictly the domain of the English-Language Arts classroom. While Robert Marzano has been promoting the instruction of academic vocabulary for years-and many school literacy plans have included reading and writing across the content areas for years-it is now a matter of standard and law. Which makes it kind of a big deal."

"Last week we looked at some extremely useful science boards on Learnist. This week, we'll do the same for math. As the United States ramps up its drive towards increasing proficiency in math and numeracy across curricula, these Learnist boards on mathematical topics and Math Common Core State Standards should prove invaluable."