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"Fact, I have anxiety about math facts. I have a degree in math. I graduated college with honors. I got the highest score at my university on the Putnam exam, which is supposedly a big deal to get a non-zero score. I taught high school math for 14 years. I am the Queen of Spreadsheets. I code for fun and share my coding projects. I repeated the 4th grade due to math facts. After 2 years of 4th grade, I never passed the timed math tests. If you ask me to do basic arithmetic in my head, even 7×8, I freeze. My heart races. I try to dodge the question. I'm perfectly capable. I'm more inclined to use strategies when doing math problems than memorization. When I'm alone and tallying student scores on a paper, I do great. If I need to design a spreadsheet and apply math, I excel at that. I am not alone. Reading Mathematical Mindsets by Jo Boaler, for the first time in my life I realize I am not dumb."

"Educators often talk about 21st-century skills and the benefits of incorporating communication, creativity, collaboration, problem-solving, and critical thinking into lessons. These are skills students rarely learn straight out of a textbook. The best way to teach them, we've found, is by making these skills a relevant part of their active lives. If that sounds daunting, rest assured, it doesn't always have to be. One way we have taught these skills is through project-based learning (PBL), where students apply what they've learned during a hands-on project that is relevant to the real world - and their lives."

"While not new, project-based learning has become a popular method to try and move beyond surface-level learning. Many teachers are trying to figure out the right ingredients for strong projects that interest and engage students, while helping them meet required learning targets. But implementing project-based learning well isn't easy, especially when many teachers are more accustomed to direct instruction, when they can be sure they've at least touched on all the topics in the curriculum. On top of the push toward  projects, some educators are also embracing maker-education, a distinct but often overlapping idea. "There's a lot of research out there about integrating making into project-based learning to ramp up what students are learning in the core content areas that they're going to be tested in," said Michael Stone, an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow, who taught high school in Tennessee."

"Coding brings young children rich opportunities for language development and the "notion of learning from mistakes," says Chip Donohue, the dean of distance learning and continuing education at the Erikson Institute in Chicago, a graduate school in child development. "We actually don't do enough of that with young kids." The sequencing and patterns involved in programming reinforce skills that have always been taught in the early years, but now also create "habits of mind that are essential for the 21st century," adds Donohue, also senior fellow at the Fred Rogers Center, which provides resources and information on media use with young children. When children code together, they are also learning from each other. "In the process of learning to code, people learn many other things. They are not just learning to code, they are coding to learn," Mitchel Resnick, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, wrote in an EdSurge article. "In addition to learning mathematical and computational ideas (such as variables and conditionals), they are also learning strategies for solving problems, designing projects, and communicating ideas." Resnick adds that these skills are useful to everyone "regardless of age, background, interests, or occupation.""

"3D printing and other additive manufacturing techniques are revolutionizing global health systems. Great interest is being seen in the 3D printed prosthetic movement due to the potential for a wide range of people, including novice designers, builders, and students to produce devices that have the potential to effect positive change in a recipient's life. Close Additionally, there is incredible value in having students print and build devices and for those devices to make their way to other young people. Through this work, students are provided with a window into an incredibly authentic application of many of the STEM concepts and 21st century skills they are being taught and recipients have their interest sparked and have a tangible object that offers a glimpse into what is possible when they receive one of these devices."

"If the most recent U.S. Election has taught us anything it's that we live in an era of fake news and sites. With accusations flying of manipulation of stories, the media and voters, it's truly hard to know if what we read on blogs, social media and other sites is actually the truth or a tale spun to generate clicks. To further compound the problem a recent study from Stanford shows that the vast majority of students can't determine it what they read on websites is true or baloney. The study showed More than two out of three middle-schoolers couldn't see any valid reason to mistrust a post written by a bank executive arguing that young adults need more financial-planning help. And nearly four in 10 high-school students believed, based on the headline, that a photo of deformed daisies on a photo-sharing site provided strong evidence of toxic conditions near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, even though no source or location was given for the photo. With many schools and districts rolling out 1:1 initiatives and a push to digitize learning, helping students understand where their information comes from, and if it is reliable and accurate are critical skills, not just for learning for but life as well."

"Coding for kids (otherwise known as computer programming) is growing rapidly in popularity. While programming is offered in a small number of traditional schools in the US, a Gallup poll indicates that 90% of parents would like computer programming to be taught during the school day. Even in the schools that offer computer science in the classroom, the level of rigor has been traditionally low, and many parents have chosen to look for outside resources to provide coding instruction. In this guide, we provide parents with the answers to some of the most common questions that we encounter operating a successful kids coding academy, and we attempt to provide advice on academic approach, curriculum selection, and other resources."

"I believe in the importance of participating in ongoing and continuous reflective practice as an educator. This is my reflection on my Cardboard Challenges Maker Education Camp that was taught to twelve 5 to 10 year old learners for five days, 2.5 hours each morning.  My Cardboard Challenges webpage of ideas can be found at http://www.makereducation.com/cardboard-challenge.html. This post is divided into three sections: (1) a rationale for using no tech, minimal cost materials, (2) some of my general observations about how the learners interacted with the materials, the projects, and each other during the camp, and (3) a description of the specific cardboard activities along with my observations how well they worked with the learners."

"When in Boston, I taught next to a Geometry teacher who would later go on to become Teacher of the Year. Lining the walls of his high school Geometry classroom, from floor to ceiling, were vocabulary words with drawings and examples. At the time I thought it was a bit extreme. I mean, aren't these kids in high school? Over the years since, I have come to realize just how important word walls are and that he was absolutely right in putting it all out there like that. If you think about it, there's a measly 5 year age difference between a 4th grader and a 9th grader. Yes, kids do grow up quick, but what is it about those 5 short years that suddenly allows students to remember and recall everything and no longer need visual reminders?"

"It's sounds like a paradox. How can you teach computer programming without a screen? Computer programming is a term synonymous with coding, after all. Text, letters, syntax, arranged in meaningful sequences that give machines instructions. We code with our keyboards and we see code on our screens. But there is a clear distinction between coding and computer programming, and an even greater distinction between coding and computational thinking, the logical foundations of computer programming. It is basics of computational thinking that children in Pre-K should learn first, in fact, and they can be taught these skills through hands on play, with no screen time at all."

"According to Wikipedia, a QR code is " a specific matrix bar code ( or two-dimensional code ), readable by dedicated QR bar code readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL, or other data." Teachers can use this technology for a wide variety of educational purposes. In this excellent video tutorial, Red Squirrel demonstrates 11 ways you can use QR codes in your class (e.g: create handouts with links to online content; enrich your content by adding links to online videos, documents and PDFs where students can access more information about topics taught; create QR codes that can show answers to a specific exercise or instructions on how to carry out a certain activity …etc, make books interactive and many more)."

"One of the most important skills of the 21st century - web literacy - is often overlooked in the classroom. The ability to read, write and participate online is an indispensable skill for learners, but it's curiously absent from many educators' curricula. At Mozilla, we believe web literacy should be a cornerstone of education. When students can create their own content on the Web, tinker with HTML, and understand the basics of online privacy, they're empowered to do great things. We also believe web literacy is best taught through hands-on, interactive learning. We've just wrapped up Maker Party, Mozilla's annual celebration of teaching and learning the Web through hands-on activities. But Maker Parties can be held anywhere, anytime. And our resources for teaching web literacy are free and open source, always. To kickstart web literacy learning in your classroom - or outside of it - here are six tools and activities from Maker Party for teaching critical 21st-century skills:"

"Even after teaching for a decade, Pamela Baack found herself battling the calendar as she tried to keep her students on track. She's the first to admit it wasn't easy to change the way she had been teaching for a decade. "We were always on someone else's pace, not our kids' pace," says Baack, who teaches at the Bella Romero Academy of Applied Technology, a K-8 public school in Greeley, Colorado. Most lessons were taught to the entire class, requiring Baack to constantly search for opportunities to help the students who struggled. "It was hard to differentiate, because it was hard to find the time to go back," she says. Today, students in Baack's third-grade classroom work through addition, multiplication, and division activities at their own pace. Some progress through lessons quickly, while others get the opportunities they need to relearn and practice key concepts until they are ready to move forward. Importantly, Baack says, even the students who struggle the most are at grade level. "They're still doing what every else is doing, but at a different pace," she says. "They're exposed to grade-level standards and content and will be able to move up." "

"But who will teach those students-and how they'll be taught-has emerged as a concern among some education experts.  "If Congress passes this funding opportunity, we really need to focus on how to prepare existing teachers who have no computer programming experience on how to integrate computing into math and science education," Harry Cheng, the director of the Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education at the University of California, Davis, told TakePart. "

Only those who have taught a class for a year, who have struggled with the challenges faced by students and who have shared in the moments of success will truly understand why we teach. Maybe that is why we seek out opportunities to gather and share what we do, to spend even a Saturday in the company of those who "get" what it is that we do and why we do it. Teaching is a beautiful thing to be a part. 

"In December 2011 I taught a series of workshops over video which I called, 'The 12 Days of Playing with Media." "

"This week, we completed our 10th Annual Summer Teaching with Technology Workshop Series. During that time, we taught five iPad workshops ranging from Leveraging iPads, Laptops, and other Digital Tools to Create Differentiated Learning Environments to The iPad Classroom to iPads, ePubs, & iBooks Author. We often say that we learn as much from our participants as they learn from us. To prove it, we've compiled a Top 10 List of what we learned this summer."

"A while back I did a post on top sites for Digital Storytelling. This has been a skill that is being taught in school districts all around the world, and is a key for developing technology literacy. With the recent wave of mobile devices and technologies, a giant step has been taken in how students develop these skills (via touch screen) in a brand new way ."