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"Summer is a busy time for many. Vacations. Family time. Housework. Yardwork. Painting. Hobbies. Reading. School book studies??? Summer is an opportunity when many educators dedicate time to read, find new ideas to implement in their classrooms, and brainstorm strategies to use the in fall. Teachers want to read, share, and learn together. There is actually now time to collaborate and share! Traditionally, book studies are done in face-to-face meetings. Teachers choose a book to read together, plan which chapters to read, and then decide on meeting times to discuss those chapters. However, with varying schedules and planned commitments, finding a common time to come together to discuss a shared book multiple times throughout the summer is quite difficult. Families take vacations, their children have camps and other commitments, and thus meeting together with everyone is infrequent and often not well-attended. So, with interest in having book studies from my staff, but dealing with tricky schedules, a different solution was necessary."

"About a year ago I first heard Greg Kulowiec of EdTechTeacher talk about App Smashing. App Smashing is the process of using multiple apps together to create a single product. The power of the iPad isn't about one or two innovative apps. It's about finding creative ways to get apps to work together (smashing them together to get something new). Drawing Pad does some cool stuff. So does Chrome. So does Explain Everything. So does iMovie. So does Book Creator. But all of them have their own limitations. Each of them lack some really creative features. But at the same time, each of them does some amazing things the others don't. The power of the iPad is in getting those apps to work together to do some truly creative stuff."

"3 Reasons Why Faculty Meetings Are a Waste of Time By Peter DeWitt on April 10, 2015 6:50 AM Faculty Meeting.png Many school leaders walk into a faculty meeting with a single idea of how they want to move forward and walk out with the same idea. That's telling... John Hattie talks a great deal about the Politics of Distraction, which means we focus on adult issues, and not enough time...if ever...on learning. That is happening around the U.S. for sure. Recently the Assembly of NY State only furthered those distractions, which you can read about here, which means that school leaders and teachers have to work harder to maintain a focus on learning. Quite frankly, well before mandates and accountability, school leaders focused on the politics of distraction and not on learning. Compliance is not new in schools. Faculty meetings were seen as a venue to get through and something that teachers were contractually obligated to attend. During these days of endless measures of compliance, principals can do a great deal to make sure they don't model the same harmful messages to staff that politicians are sending to teachers. Jim Knight calls that "Freedom within form." In Talk Like Ted, Carmine Gallo quotes Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo) when he writes, "Creativity is often misunderstood. People often think of it in terms of artistic work - unbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect. If you look deeper, however, you'll find that some of the most inspiring art forms - haikus, sonatas, religious paintings- are fraught with constraints. (p. 190)" Clearly, constraints have a wide definition. There is a clear difference between the constraints of compliance and the stupidity of the legislation just passed by the assembly in NY. As we move forward, principals still are charged...or at least should be...with the job of making sure they offer part...inspiration, part...teacher voice...and a great deal of focus on learning. There is never a more important tim

"Educators have learned much about the benefits of using projects for learning, and collaboration is easily recognized as an important skill for students to build. There are very few arguments against having students work together in class and on assignments. However, the challenge facing many educators is not in wanting their students to work together, but in figuring out how to group students together in the most effective ways. We do not want to create groups that hinder the progress of any of our students! This simple guide can help you the next time you are creating groups for an assignment or task in your classroom!"

ollaboration Tools Collaborative learning is essentially people working together to solve a problem, create a product, or derive meaning from a body of material. A central question or problem serves to organize and drive activities, and encourage application, analysis, and synthesis of course material. While the landscape of technology that can be used to support central activities of collaborative learning is vast and varied, it is often lumped together under a single label: "collaboration tools." Given this vast and distributed landscape of tools, the difficulty of finding one or a set of tools to meet your goals can be time intensive. We are here to help. For faculty who are interested in learning more, want to explore, or try out a tool, contact us to talk with an Eberly colleague in person.

"Does STEM scare you? I know it scared me. When I was a kid, I watched my brother take apart an entire computer and put it back together without a manual or guide. Me, I could barely change a lightbulb. And no matter how hard I tried, I always seemed to put IKEA furniture together backward. You should see my bookcase. Very embarrassing. It was with this same trepidation and insecurity that I approached STEM. What could I teach kids? I'm not an engineer! I'm not a scientist! I'm not a mathematician! It wasn't until I reluctantly volunteered to help out with a robotics after school program that I started gaining confidence. I put together my first robot (with a lot of help, TLC from the co-instructor, and even guidance from some eight-year-old kids) and its been downhill from there. I soon realized that leading successful STEM experiences has less to do with your actual knowledge as an instructor (though it helps), and more to do with the MINDSET you take with kids. Here are the five MAKER mindsets and how YOU can develop them starting tomorrow."

"One of the things I love most about BreakoutEDU is how freely its creators share resources. There are tons of people creating and sharing digital breakouts that are for you to use with students. And if you can't afford the fabulous official BreakoutEDU boxes, (which run $125 each), they generously provide you with links for purchasing your own materials. Still, putting together a few sets (and you will need a few) can be a little pricey. That said, recently I received a question on Facebook about how I put together my own BreakoutEDU boxes - each of which cost me around $35.00. Depending on the number of locks you purchase, you might be able to put them together even cheaper. The document below lists all the items I purchased for my own boxes and how much they cost."

Is there a place beyond the physical world where we may go as avatars? Where do we get together with our friends and family, go to concerts together, pursue hobbies, work, shop...? Many are looking forward to such a "metaverse". We simply explain.

Is there a place beyond the physical world where we may go as avatars? Where do we get together with our friends and family, go to concerts together, pursue hobbies, work, shop...? Many are looking forward to such a "metaverse". We simply explain.

7 over-arching tensions, these being: 1. The tension between the global and the local. 2. The tension between the universal and the individual. 3. The tension between tradition and modernity. 4. The tension between long term and short term considerations. 5. The tension between competition and concern for equality of opportunity. 6. The tension between expansion of knowledge and our capacity to assimilate it. 7. The tension between the spiritual and the material.

"When it comes to education, it seems no matter where in the world you are from, the same innovative practices bring us together. This week at Microsoft's Partners in Learning Global Forum hundreds of educators from more than 80 countries came together to showcase, learn, discuss and think about innovative teaching, learning, and leading practices. "

"The World Wildlife Fund's free iPad app called WWF Together is one of the most beautifully designed apps that I've tried over the last year."

"Each morning as we start our day together, I draw attention to things that my students may have missed or mentions from our Twitter feed. This short time together each morning discussing our Twitter feed has resulted in rich discussions that prompt thinking, cause us to wonder and lead us to seek out further information. There are many opportunities during the school day to incorporate the use of twitter. A good place to start is to read the tweets from the other classes you follow, ask questions or provide comments as a whole class. The following examples will give you some ideas on how to involve Twitter in literacy, math and science. All of the Twitter activities explained can be done as a whole group, small group or by individual students. "

"Want to Amplify Student Voice? Write a Book Together"

"I always try to do a video or something sweet to show the mom's of my students just how special they are! This week, as we celebrate our moms, my students did some "App Smashing" (When you use one or more apps together to achieve a final product) with ABCya's Word Cloud App, Photo and Video Transfer Over Wifi, Explain Everything, and I put it all together in iMovie."

"Summer and vacation go together like, well, two of the best things in the world. Parents have time off from work, kids have time off from school, the weather is nice, the sun is shining, and travel beckons. Whether it's a day at a local fun spot, a trip across country, or an adventure half-way around the world, memories will be made. Amazing memories, crazy memories, shared memories. No matter how great a vacation is, however, you can never be there forever, nor can you take everyone you love with you. What you can do is bring the vacation home for you and for them! With your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, not only can you take videos and pictures of those magic travel moments, but you can edit and share them right in iMovie, even right away if you want to. Best of all, for kids (of all ages!), iMovie's trailer templates make it incredibly quick and easy to put together something short, sweet, and fun!"

"Too much time can easily be wasted trying to format documents that have already been put together by someone else. If you use Google Docs, here are 24 time-saving templates that'll let you get on with using the documents, rather than struggling with putting them together in the first place. The templates below have been split into four sections; work, health, home, and travel, so feel free to scroll to the section that's most relevant to you."

"littleBits are ingenious snap-together magnetic elements used to create whimsical machines and prototype complex electronic circuits. It's impossible to short-circuit the littleBits or create a syntax error in your physical "program" since they only snap together the "correct" way. Kids from 5-85 love inventing with littleBits. We recently created two "Quick Start" guides for the trickier aspects of working with littleBits. You may download them here: littleBits Quick Start Guide littleBits Arduino Bit Quick Start Guide (for programming your littleBits-based machine) littleBits Cloudbit Quick Start Guide (for Internet of Things) Download our complete 20+ page workshop kit"

"Stop Motion was one of the original video creation techniques. By stringing together a series of single images and displaying them quickly in order, film was born. Now on iPad, Stop Motion can be used as a technique for capturing learning as it happens, making drawings, models, science projects, or counting exercises come alive. Consider the power of creating a digital flipbook that could later be viewed as a video. Introduction to KomaKoma KomaKoma is a FREE Stop Motion iPad App that can compile together a series of photos taken in the app and then export them to the Camera Roll as a video. With a simple user interface consisting of only a few buttons, KomaKoma is very intuitive. The app launches the camera automatically (first time app users will have to allow the Camera access). A big red record button captures each image in sequence, and a big green play button plays the images back as a video. The only other 2 editing buttons are a blue "X" to delete the last image taken, and a yellow arrow for saving the video to the app's Gallery. "

""The minute you're born, you learn by playing together," says Åsmund Furuseth, VP for business development of Kahoot!, a game-based learning platform with one exclamation mark and 13 million monthly users. Furuseth and his colleagues at Kahoot! want students, parents and teachers to keep that process going into school and beyond. His company enables anyone to create their own game-based educational content, and helps to found new types of classrooms in which to best exploit it. Furuseth tells WIRED.co.uk he wants to "create an emotional connection between the learners so that they learn much better together -- this is what we believe is the future of how you learn"."

Interlacing lives, culture and learning, Classroom Braids is a metaphor for weaving together lives and cultures. Welcome students. During the year, you will be working together to learn about sailing and a world trip. Let's begin with introductions.