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"For our last day of class with a "normal" schedule (today), I met with my students in our school's 21st-century learning space. There's a sampling of flexible furniture, a corner with stadium seating, iMacs, a big-screen TV, an Apple TV, tables that also serve as white boards… chairs on wheels, couches with charging stations… it's a great space! Screen Shot 2014-05-27 at 6.32.43 PM Students' first task today was to finalize their multi-touch math books and submit them to me. Since some student groups were able to virtually turn in their books last Friday, I was able to embed their .ePub files on my teacher website, and use each unique URL to share all of the books in a ThingLink. Student groups downloaded and read no less than five books authored by their peers."

"This web site is designed to foster visual creativity by making stories out of photos. It is based completely on the Five Card Nancy game devised by comics guru Scott McCloud and the nifty web version at 741.5 Comics. However, rather than using randomly chosen panels of the old Nancy comic, my version draws upon collections of photos specified by a tag in flickr. You are dealt five random photos for each draw, and your task is to select one each time to add to your building set of images, that taken together as a final set of 5 - tell a story in pictures. When you are done, you can add a title and explanation, and save the story. You can easily put a link in your resume or send to your Mom (she may print it out and tape it to the fridge, or she may criticize your creativity, your mileage and mom may vary). Plus we offer the ability to tweet your story or use an embed code to add it to your own web site."

"A few days ago I shared here PBS Kids Video app that provides a wide variety of educational videos for kids. Today I am adding another wonderful iPad app in this direction. Brainfeed is one of the top ranked apps in the iTunes store. Designed to inform, entertain and inspire, Brainfeed provides children 7+, tweens, teens and even inquisitive adults with a safe corner of the web to explore a universe of educational videos. Each video in Brainfeed  is handpicked by a team of enthusiastic educators from around the globe who are tasked with finding short (under 10 minutes) and documentary style videos that meet the following criteria:Curriculum-based, entertaining & engaging, visually stimulating, high quality content, age-appropriate , and child-friendly."

"There are now a wide variety of iPad apps that you can use to organize your life and create an effective workflow. In this regard, I handpicked for you some really interesting apps that you should definitely consider to enhance your productivity. These apps provide a bunch of excellent features such as : easy ways to create to-do lists, scheduled notifications, reminders, notifications of upcoming tasks and events, and many more. Some of these apps are also integrated with Google and Google Apps accounts ."

"In today's post I am introducing you to a set of powerful free iPad apps to use with students to create 3D models and artefacts.Students can use these apps to sculpt and paint  3D shapes, make 3D printable designs, transform pictures and images into interactive 3D models, and create 3D characters. The digital artefacts students create through these apps can be used for a variety of scholastic tasks from creating 3D models for  science experiments to designing 3D characters for digital storytelling. All of these apps are created by the popular Autodesk."

"Keeping up with the biggest trends in education is no easy task. There are many that come and go before you even realize what they were. There are a few major learning trends that don't look like they're going away anytime soon. That's become they've proven themselves to effective methods of helping students of any age learn. That is the idea of education, after all, no? One of the biggest trends that you should try (not just know about and ignore) is personalized learning. So what is personalized learning, you ask? Here's my take:"

"Imagine you could create a single button on your iPhone that does whatever you want. Want to order an Uber for your next Calendar event? Easy. Want a button designated for calling mom? Done. Wish you could tap a button and get directions to the nearest coffee shop? Who wouldn't? Want to tweet the last photo you took or song you're listening to? Just drag and drop each step of the process inside of Workflow and it turns into its own app. That's the concept behind Workflow, a new app designed to save you time by allowing you to string together various tasks and combine them into one action. You can then turn that action into an app on your homescreen or add it to your iPhone's share screen so you always have quick access."

"If you're embarking on a video project, perhaps an explainer video, podcast, school project or video presentation, using the right production music can be the key to successfully drawing your viewers in; but finding the perfect song can seem a daunting task. Of course you could commission a track to be composed especially for you, but that can run into tens of thousands of dollars. Luckily, there are plenty of places available for you to find free music for your video project, but where can you get it from and how do you know if you have the legal right to use it for your project? Using copyrighted material in your video may seem like an easy mistake to make, but it's illegal and can get you into a lot of trouble. So how do you make sure that your choice of track is acceptable to use in your video?"

"The International Reading Association has a fantastic app for students called Alphabet Organizer.  Available for both iOS and Android tablets, this app lets students work with different letters to create their very own alphabet book.  Alphabet Organizer can be tailored to different tasks and is a great choice for elementary school classrooms.  Students can use this in literacy centers or in learning environments where kids share the screen with a peer."

"Today I am sharing with you a number of useful websites that are particularity designed for younger learners. Yes, finding kids-friendly website is not an easy task and it even becomes harder for those busy teachers and parents who can hardly afford an extra hour or two to conduct online searches. The list below is not comprehensive but it does include some of the best websites for helping kids learn better."

"Pushing students to go beyond what they think they can do is at the core of good teaching. This Teaching Channel video follows students and educators at Springfield Renaissance School, part of the Expeditionary Learning network. Students at the school understand that struggling with a particular task is part of learning. Teachers have high expectations of students, expect a positive classroom culture and are willing to gently prod students to dig deeper and reveal more. Teachers embed Common Core standards like the ability to use textual evidence to back up arguments, into the culture of class. They also understand that the love of learning takes ownership and self-awareness."

"July 16, 2014 While searching for some resources on a paper and writing on  the 21st century learning skills I came across this skills checklist created by the university of Toledo. This checklist is meant to help students build powerful resumes outlining all the skills they master. I spent some time going through the components of this sheet and found it really sharing with you here.  You can use this sheet with your students as an explanatory guide of some of the important skills ( I said some because some other important skills particularly those related to digital citizenship and digital literacy are missing) they need to work. Below is a round-up of the 9 most important skills which I selected from the entire list. You can acccess this list from this link. 1- Research skills Know how to find and collect relevant background information Be able to analyze data, summarize findings and write a report 2- Critical Thinking skills Be able to review different points of view or ideas and make objective judgments Investigate all the possible solutions to a problem, weighing the pros and cons 3- Organizational skills Be able to organize information, people or thins in a systematic way Be able to establish priorities and meet deadlines 4- Problem-solving skills Be able to clarify the nature of a problem Be able to evaluate alternatives, propose viable solutions and determine the outcome of the various options 5- Creative thinking skills Be able to generate new ideas, invent new things, create new images or designs Find new solutions to problems Be able to use wit and humour effectively 6- Analytical/ logical thinking skills Be able to draw specific conclusions from a set of general observations of from a set of specific facts Be able to synthesize information and ideas 7- Public speaking skills Be able to make formal presentations Present ideas, positions and problems in an interesting way 8- Oral communication skills Be able to present information and ideas clearly a

"We're all familiar with the term "muscle memory." Once you've learned to do something--serve a tennis ball, play a difficult piece of piano music, or draw a lifelike human hand--your body seems to intuitively "know" how to reproduce that action. But researchers at Johns Hopkins university have recently discovered that our ability to perform a physical athletic or creative task isn't entirely about what the body has learned to do right. Instead, we owe our success to the hundred times we've tried to master a skill and failed."

"My wife came home the other day and started describing a new problem arising in her school, where students were claiming to be tired of using devices for everything. The students were apparently saying "Can't we just do a lesson on paper today or you just teach us." As she told me this, my wife didn't notice that she was simultaneously picking up her iPad to check Facebook and that made me think. Photo Credit In my observations around my school, it's those same students claiming device fatigue in the classroom that are not hesitating to turn to their device for 'life updates' as they leave that very same room. I would propose that it's not fatigue caused by device use but that caused by the pain of trying to carry out conventional, 20th century classroom tasks on devices that are designed for a world that conducts itself very differently."

"Paying attention is a task people take for granted; they rarely stop to think about the complex neurocognitive processes involved. However, it is an important topic for eLearning developers who are often so concerned about the superficial elements of their courses and neglect to learn how the brain works. After all, paying attention is the first step in the learning process, so ensuring learners pay attention is fundamental."

"Using Legos in the classroom is not a new concept at all. There are so many different classroom applications for the popular brightly colored bricks, and despite the myriad of uses, the go-to task for Legos is most often math. The handy little nubs sitting atop the bricks offer a chance to teach things like area and perimeter, the different colors lend themselves well to fractions. "

"Creating effective slide decks that can engage the audience and pull them right in is a task that requires some serious training. This training comes in the form of practice in the key elements that make a better presentation. These elements are: the choice of images used in the slides, the amount of text used with these images, the font and type size of the text, the placement and arrangement of text vis-a-vis the images, and the transitions and effects used in the slides. These elements, if used properly, are enough to make your presentations slick and charming."

"English grammar is a topic that actually frustrates a number of people. Irrespective of learning level or nationality, spelling and grammar error seems to confuse a lot of individuals. And in case anyone has a learning debility such as dyslexia, using accurate grammar looks like a terrible task. Using grammar correctly could be challenging may be not for those who are English native speaker, but surely for those who learn English from scratch. English language and its difficulties can be very much puzzling. Although, a dictionary or software can assist learners but it cannot give accurate answer. In fact, word processing programs are not very much effective in correcting grammar errors completely. Now, the question is how one can improve or nourish their English grammar skill? With the advancement in the technology, there are a number of tools that might help those struggling to improve their grammar. Web technology has actually contributed a lot in this through the ease of access. Today, you can find a number of tools, apps and websites available over the web that helps in learning and improving grammar from scratch. Here is a list of top ten websites for teaching or learning grammar lessons."

"Google is usually one of the first places students turn to when tasked with an assignment. Whether it's for research, real-time results, or just a little digital exploration … it's important they know how to properly Google. Lucky for teachers (and students, of course), Google has a handy set of lesson plans that are just waiting to be unleashed upon the leaders of tomorrow."