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"Do you like change? If you do, then living in the present is an exhilarating experience.  For those who don't, buckle up as we are only going to see unprecedented innovations at exponential rates involving technology.  You can't run or hide from it. The revolution, or evolution depending on your respective lens, of our world, will transform everything as we know it. We must adapt, but more importantly, prepare our learners for a bold new world that is totally unpredictable.  Welcome to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.  "

" NASA's Solar System Exploration website contains interactive displays of the planets, dwarf planets, and moons of our solar system. To launch an interactive display just choose one of the planets, dwarf planets, or moons from the menu in the site's header. Each display includes little markers in it. Click one of the markers to open a side panel that contains information about that particular feature of the planet, dwarf planet, or moon. Below each interactive display you'll find additional facts and figures."

""Eighty-two percent of elementary school kids can't tell the difference between a sponsored website and a real news website," he said. They may know the tools better than the grown-ups do, but they have a lot to learn."

"In today's day and age, Google, Twitter and Pinterest are three of the largest employers in the United States and internationally. Are students gaining the skills that one might need to eventually apply to one of those tech giants, if they chose to do so? In the year 2017, what hard and soft skills should students be developing in order to succeed in the 21st century workplace? What about in the year 2020? 2050? Let's stick with the "now," for a moment. In a recent interview, EdSurge explored which skill sets lead to career success for students-but we didn't talk to anyone in K-12 or higher education. In fact, we interviewed three individuals-Alexandrea Alphonso, Ryan Greenberg, and Trisha Quan-from each of those aforementioned tech companies. While the thoughts and feelings of each of the folks we interviewed do not represent the opinions of their employers, each of these technology leaders offered their thoughts in this exclusive Q&A on equity and access, areas that formal education didn't prepare them for, and their advice for teachers working to prepare students for an ever-changing workplace."

"Never have design thinking, design practice and creative skills been as important to Canada's future as they are now. Today, competitive success is determined by the ability to understand human needs and desires and to deliver richly imagined ways of addressing them. Many organizations recognize the importance of innovation, but they don't know how to achieve it. The answer is design. Designers allow companies to stay ahead of their customers by anticipating and addressing human needs and behaviours in a complex and changing world. Technology needs to be intentionally designed for and with people. Design creates the experience of a product, system or service, the individual, social and cultural experience, and the value and the impact it has. Design is the bridge between raw invention and application. The essence of design thinking involves empathizing deeply, listening to people and observing them to identify tough problems to address or new opportunities to explore. Design thinking marries systems analysis with outcomes-oriented problem solving. It's relevant to the development and enhancement of services, products and business methods. It's as applicable to large companies as it is to startups and non-profits."

"As the new school year gets going there will be plenty of students and teachers who are adjusting to a new sleeping schedule. It can be tempting to stay up late to get "just one more thing" done. We're actually better off going to bed and getting up early than we are if stay up late trying to get something done. The Benefits of a Good Night's Sleep is a TED-Ed lesson that teaches us about the importance of sleeping on a steady schedule."

"Part of the purpose for student usage of technology in the classroom is to allow students to become creators not just consumers. A large part of this creative process for our learners is the resources that they find to put into their product. In this case we are talking about visual resources, or images. Many students and teachers go directly to Google and search images. They then copy and paste away. As many of us know, this can rise several issues. Two of them being: Inappropriate images appearing within the search. The use of pictures without permission of the rightful owner. These issues (and several others) have created the need of safe searching creative commons photos for educational use. Luckily there are several websites that students can go to for that very purpose!"

"Canada Learning Code will drive the development and implementation of an action plan to create 10 million meaningful technology education experiences for Canadians over the next 10 years. Through program design and delivery, strategic industry and public partnerships, educator training, research, advocacy and awareness we aim to unify coding education in Canada and drive results."

"I've been playing Minecraft Education-mostly with students or other teachers-for about four years now. My experience came to a head two weekends ago, when I attended MINECON, the annual Minecraft convention and fan fest held this year in Anaheim on September 24-25. I go to a lot of educational technology conferences, but I don't have a lot of experience with "fandom conventions." Experiencing MINECON 2016 as an educator, I found it to be a melding of the two-and a clear indicator as to why the education world is obsessed with Minecraft."

"Obviously a lot can change in 15 years. We all know this, but these images put that reality into perspective for me. It makes me wonder about things. It make me ask myself, "If that's what was on the movie of the summer, what was in our classrooms? How much has changed with technology? What about in our classrooms?" Why innovate? Here's my worry: Schools that don't innovate are going to look like this, and it likely won't take 15 years to happen. In all likelihood, it's probably happening more places than we'd like to admit right now. If we don't change, we're going to end up looking like that picture appears to us now-irrelevant, a relic of the past. For some (maybe even many) what we were doing now will be nearly unrecognizable in the not so distant future. In hindsight, some of what we understood as best practice not too long ago seems that way. We can't control the fact that our schools will continue to grow, but if we don't start getting some movement now and gaining momentum today, we're going to end up so big and so settled in that our own inertia will keep us from moving forward. With each day that passes without innovation, we only make it harder to make change happen in the future."

"A topic I don't cover enough is 3D printing. It's relatively new on the education landscape and I have yet to reach a comfort level with it. Thankfully, Ask a Tech Teacher contributor, Lisa Michaels, has lots of knowledge and experience on this topic. Here are her thoughts on the importance of 3D printing in education: The range of possibilities which 3D printing provides is almost limitless. As the technology evolves, 3D printers are being used to create everything from simple plastic toys to automobile bodies, prosthetic limbs, replacement parts, and even gourmet dishes. One area where 3D printing has yet to make a difference despite the potential of fulfilling many needs is within the educational systems. Elementary schools, high schools, universities and even vocational training courses are ideal places to incorporate 3D printing as part of the curriculum. "

"Like most students at the time, I did not have access to computer science classes when I attended Wilde Lake High School in Columbia during the 1980s. I only stumbled upon the field when my high school math teacher recommended that I take a FORTRAN programming course at Howard Community College. I quickly learned that programming was like nothing I had experienced in school before. Whenever I finally solved a problem, there was a deeply satisfying "aha!" moment. As a result, I studied computer science at Harvard and received my Ph.D. in the field from the University of California, Berkeley. Nearly four decades after I took that first FORTRAN class, I'm a professor of computer science and associate dean at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. I was fortunate to have found my passion, even though computer science was not taught at my school. The unfortunate fact is that most K-12 schools still do not teach computer science, and most of today's high school and college students - particularly women - have still had little or no exposure to computational thinking, coding or computer science. There are certainly many students who would make great computer scientists, or who could leverage computing skills to achieve success in any number of other fields, who never take a single related class. Even in Maryland, one of the most technologically advanced states in the nation, only 14 percent of students take a computer science class in high school, and nearly half of the public high schools do not offer any AP computer science classes."

"As we look at future jobs and technological advancements, having creativity is essential in the workplace. Robots and AI will be able to handle many tasks, even replacing some types of jobs, but we will still need creative thinkers and designers to move ahead globally. As educators, how do we ensure that students learn this skill in our curriculums? Can creativity be taught? Why are some people more creative than others? If you tell students to be creative, do they even know what it means or where to begin?"

"It's high time for students to move beyond an hour of coding exercises and learn computational thinking. That's the message of a new report from Digital Promise that examines what's important to know and be able to do in a "computational world." Digital Promise is a non-profit that that promotes the use of innovation in education, particularly as it uses digital technologies. The new report, "Computational Thinking for a Computational World," explains its theme of computational thinking by borrowing a description from a long-ago article published by the Association for Computing Machinery: It is "a way of solving problems, designing systems and understanding human behavior that draws on concepts fundamental to computer science… a fundamental skill for everyone, not just computer scientists." More simply, the report noted, "The skill required to tell a computer what to do is programming. The thought process behind programming is computational thinking." What it isn't is humans thinking like computers. And, according to the report's authors, it's something that needs to be taught across subjects in K-12 schools."