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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."

"When we started our 1:1 planning in Burlington more than five years ago, the first thing we did was involve our students on the planning team. The input of our students helped put so many things in perspective for the planning team and saved us time and money. We saved time because instead of speculating about what students may or may not do with new mobile devices they would be receiving, we had students tell us firsthand what to expect. They saved us money because when we were talking about which case we should by for each of the more than 1,000 iPads that we would be purchasing, one of the students told us not to by cases. He told us that the students would take them off and buy their own cases and that we would be wasting our money."

"Passing out iPads to students on the first day of school was like celebrating Christmas (or in this case Hanukkah) with thirty antsy kids sitting around the tree, attempting to hide their impatience. Once the iPads had been handed out, students were instantly excited, engaged and enchanted with the new learning device in their hands. At first, everyone was confused about where to find work, where to save and store their products - and which app to use for what purpose. As with every pilot, these issues worked themselves out and soon classes were running pretty smoothly. Once they all learned what a "hard reset" was we were on our way. After an exciting year chalked full of learning lessons and changes in our learning landscape here are my takeaways: "

"McGonigal's remarks included a bevy of interesting facts about gaming, as well as a group play exercise - what she called "massively multiplayer thumb wrestling" - and peeks at two of her recent alternate reality games: EVOKE (2010), a "crash course in changing the world"; and Find the Future (2011), which challenged 500 student authors to write a book in one night while inside the New York Public Library. Here are five key things McGonigal wanted ISTE 2013 attendees to know about gaming and education:"

"Y'all know we love TED talks. Short, watchable snippets of useful information, thought provoking questions, personal stories, inspiration, and learning. While I always take something away from every TED talk that I watch, some stick with me more than others. That said, most don't come with a specific list of takeaways meant to help you with your everyday life. This talk, from David Pogue, offers 10 time saving tech tips. Most are for technologies that we use every day. They're simple, easy-to-do, they'll save you time, and make you feel like a suave tech person who can (seemingly) make their technology do whatever they need it to do with little effort. The video is embedded below, but we've typed out the handy list for you to reference later."

"At this point, some of you are probably sick of hearing about Minecraft. It has gone from game to phenomenon, selling bajillions of copies and crowding the mindscape of 6th graders everywhere for what seems like centuries. But before you go, there may be some lessons you can takeaway for your classroom-lessons that can help promote the creativity in students you've been looking for."

"Our first entry from our Diverse Teacher Voices program comes from Sharon Davison, a Kindergarten teacher from Vermont who responded to the "Dear First Year Me" prompt. For Sharon, there is some increased significance-or rather, there's significance for each one of us as readers. Sharon has taught for 32 years-and here she is, from 1983 to today, still tweeting, still blogging, still connecting, still serving. Beautiful! Her class twitter account can be found here. Give her a visit. Dear First Year Me, So you have decided to share your energy, strength, perseverance and courage to become a teacher! Congratulations!  You can do it because you care about making a difference.  Just remember to….."

"The maker movement was front and center at the 2015 ISTE conference-and that's a good thing for me. After following maker initiatives with great interest for some time now, I have the opportunity to design a maker space this year for 6th-12th grade students at my school, Worcester (MA) Academy. A search of this year's program at ISTE, held June 28 to July 1 in Philadelphia, using the term "constructivist learning/maker movement" resulted in 67 related sessions. The ISTE Librarians Network hosted a maker station at their Digital Age Playground and convened a panel on library maker spaces, featuring elementary and middle school librarians, a school administrator, and the coordinator of a public library maker initiative. Vendors and exhibitors demonstrated tools, lessons, and ideas for maker spaces. Meanwhile, a four-hour Maker Playground Wednesday morning drew a huge crowd of attendees. One of my goals at the conference was to gather ideas and tips to help me create my library's maker space. Here are some highlights of what I discovered at ISTE."

"What really works in education, schools and classrooms around the world? Every week Sarah Montague interviews the people whose ideas are challenging the future of education, like Sugata Mitra, Sir Ken Robinson and the headmaster of Eton College Tony Little. In August John Hattie, Professor of Education at the University of Melbourne, was her guest at BBC Radio 4. You can listen to the whole interview with John Hattie following this link (28 mins). Here are some quick takeaways:" Full Interview http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04dmxwl

"The maker movement was front and center at the 2015 ISTE conference-and that's a good thing for me. After following maker initiatives with great interest for some time now, I have the opportunity to design a maker space this year for 6th-12th grade students at my school, Worcester (MA) Academy. A search of this year's program at ISTE, held June 28 to July 1 in Philadelphia, using the term "constructivist learning/maker movement" resulted in 67 related sessions. The ISTE Librarians Network hosted a maker station at their Digital Age Playground and convened a panel on library maker spaces, featuring elementary and middle school librarians, a school administrator, and the coordinator of a public library maker initiative. Vendors and exhibitors demonstrated tools, lessons, and ideas for maker spaces. Meanwhile, a four-hour Maker Playground Wednesday morning drew a huge crowd of attendees. One of my goals at the conference was to gather ideas and tips to help me create my library's maker space. Here are some highlights of what I discovered at ISTE."

"I've collected 10 of the latest surprising, revealing studies on social media here in this post, with takeaways and insight into social media timing, Instagram sharing, Facebook users, and more. If you've seen a recent study worth mentioning, I'd love to hear from you!"

"It is a new school year and I'm so excited to see many teachers and schools starting Genius Hour or 20% Projects for the first time! As I mentioned to Joy Kirr on Twitter a few weeks ago, I sense a tidal wave of student choice being unleashed in K-12 schools around the world this year. As someone who is passionate about letting our students choose their own learning paths, this has me pumped to be a part of the movement! I recently had a conversation with two teachers in my school district about start Genius Hour and wanted to share a few of the key takeaways from that talk. When you give students choice, amazing things happen. But it is also difficult as a teacher to support this type of learning. Here are five things to remember before you jump into Genius Hour:"

"Whether teacher, trainer, or instructional designer these are 5 TED talks you need to watch. They all provide insight into the way we learn and what's wrong with how we currently 'deliver' learning. They all think big when envisaging how we might design and create engaging and meaningful learning experiences. My key takeaways: Creativity should have the same status as literacy. Solving problems sparks curiosity and creativity. Conversely giving the learner too much information can kill that buzz. We need creative problem solvers for our future. Learning happens best when it is social, collaborative, has meaning and is on the learners terms."

"Google receives between 2.5 and 3.5 million job applications a year. It only hires about 4,000 people. Senior vice president of People Operations, Laszlo Bock presides over the ultra-selective process. In interviews with The New York Times, the Economist, and students on Google+, the hiring boss sheds light on how the search giant evaluates candidates. We sifted through those interviews for the most surprising takeaways. Find them below."

"Dr. Alison Head and her Project Information Literacy (PIL) research team recently released the findings of a new national study on college students and how they consume and interact with a vast and deeply polarized news ecosystem. The News Study findings are the result of an online survey of 5,844 respondents and telephone interviews with 37 participants from 11 diverse colleges and universities. The research also included computational analysis of Twitter data associated with respondents, as well as a Twitter panel of 135,891 college-age people. In the study's press release, Dr. Head shared: News is fast, social, and visual and typically delivered to students in posts, alerts, tweets, and conversations that stream at them throughout the day. And young news consumers are left to assemble and interpret what news means, while many take this evaluative step, others do not. So what? The News Study's Executive Summary offers Five Research Takeaways as well as Six Recommendations."

"Though there were a host of professional learning takeaways for me, one stood out as a real actionable item. Funny, this same theme came up at every conference I attended: Celebrating Failing."

The Future of Education is a topic often discussed, and at the recent gathering of educators in Florence, it was the title and theme for the conference. Now in its ninth year, The Future of Education is an international conference that attracts educators from around the world and across all domains touched by education. The conference is an inspiring two days of discussion and sharing, with the city of Florence, the centre of the Renaissance, providing a constant reminder of what might be possible when creativity and critical thinking combine. Here are my key takeaways from this event.