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"The role teachers play in the educational system is significant and vital, but if teachers are the heart of the operation, administrators are the bones. You support teachers, forge relationships with students and the public, and strive to create a school environment that is beneficial for everyone who walks through the doors. How can you take your role to the next level and become an even more effective administrator? The following resources may be just what you need."

"Ask any educator, and they've probably at least heard of flipping the classroom. There are articles for days about the benefits and rewards to be reaped from flipping. Plenty of teachers have given it a go, or at least considered it. Too many teachers have ruled it out on account of their students' lack of access. It's true that our students come from all walks of life. We see the ones with the new Jordans or the latest iPhone, and their peers wearing the old hand-me-down sweater. All of them are our future. All of them are entitled to the best education possible. Only some of them are equipped with the means to achieve their fullest potential. Believe it or not, flipping the classroom can actually help close this gap. If only the gap weren't the main reason educators choose not to flip in the first place. So how can we reach kids who don't have consistent access?"

"I facilitated a workshop at Miami Device this past week. Most conference sessions feel rushed with only 45-60 minutes to share, but thanks to Felix Jacomino's  the genius mind behind the conference, scheduled my 10 Tips to Get Started with Sketchnoting workshop for 2 hours!  It gave us the opportunity to DO what we were talking about. Participants were able to practice sketching the content of the workshop as they were learning about sketchnoting! We walked, step by step, through building a sketch by remembering these 10 tips:"

"Teaching compassion, empathy, or knowing how to help someone is best learned through direct experience. Autism Discovery Tool, by Spectrum Idea Lab Inc. is one such app that promotes not only understanding, but also ways to help address an individual's needs, and gives kids and adults a chance to "walk a mile in someone's shoes". It was intended as a tool to help kids on the spectrum, their families and caretakers identify both sensory styles and compensatory techniques so that they could open up a dialogue to communicate and share experiences. This little app however, has a much more powerful impact and reach. I consider it an essential app for all classrooms and families who deal with sensory issues, and not limited to those on the autistic spectrum alone."

"It is getting to be that time of year here in Maine when we can't walk across a carpet then touch a light switch without getting a bit of a shock. What causes that happen? And why does it seem to happen more often in the winter months than in the summer months? The answers to those questions and more are found in the TED-Ed lesson The Science of Static Electricity."

"Hey, friends! I am here to share with you all about how to create and use Audio QR Codes. Last year, Katie King taught me how to make and use traditional QR Codes (with text) attached. You can read that intro tutorial and an -AR freebie I made here. Times are a changing, and with the help from an awesome librarian, I am ALL about QR Codes with audio attached. I've starting attaching them to literacy centers (in case students forget the directions or refuse to read the directions I've included), attaching them to tests (allowing my students who receive readers to work at their own pace), and have this Molly-inspired ReadBox display in the words (ohmyword. Isn't it the best???). So, let's get started! You may scan the code below, and I'll walk you through the process or I've included a step-by-step picture tutorial below!"

"NASA recently occupied the headlines, not for a shuttle launch or moon walk, but for successfully crowdsourcing a test of the Robonaut 2, a robotic astronaut assistant. NASA was so impressed with the quality of the 3D modeling submitted by the community that the agency has already organized two more challenges - and it's only the latest group to jump on the crowdsourcing bandwagon. It's time for higher education to be next. Of the few pioneer universities that have applied a crowdsourcing - or in this case, studentsourcing - model at their institution, all have experienced impressive results."

"Down a locker-lined hallway at Lawrence Central High School in Indianapolis, Zac Felli, a junior, walks to his first class of the day. He wears tortoiseshell glasses and is built like he could hit a ball hard. He has enviable skin for a teenager, smooth as a suede jacket. Over one shoulder he carries a slim forest-green and tan messenger bag that would have been social suicide in 1997. But 1997 was the year Zac was born, so he wouldn't know anything about that. A squat, taupe monolith flanked by parking lots, Lawrence Central smells like old brick and floor polish and grass. Its gleaming floors squeak if you move your foot a certain way. The school has existed on precisely this spot of land since 1963: maroon block letters over the door, tang of chlorine from the indoor pool. None of that has changed. Here's what has: After Zac turns the doorknob of Room 113 and takes his seat in Japanese III, he reaches into his shoulder bag, pushes aside his black iPhone 5S and Nintendo 3DS XL, and pulls out his Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet with purple detachable keyboard, which he props up on his desk using its kickstand. By touching a white and purple icon on his screen, he opens Microsoft OneNote, a program in which each of his classes is separated into digital journals and then into digital color-coded tabs for greater specificity. And then, without a piece of paper in sight and before an adult has said a word, he begins to learn."

"The first 400 teachers to complete Choose to Code can receive $750 in classroom funding from DonorsChoose.org. Choose to Code guides your students through a series of online tutorials, walking them through the process of creating and publishing their own website."

Think of a time when you were completely immersed in a learning challenge. A time when you became aware of the need to master a new skill or concept. A situation that took you outside of your comfort zone, when there were times that you became frustrated, when you thought of quitting, downed tools and walked away, but came back time and time again. Maybe it was a problem you had to solve. Maybe it was a challenge you wanted to overcome.

"It's the bottom of the ninth with two outs and it's all tied up. You've got a runner on first base and you need to decide who you're sending to the plate. You have a player with a stellar batting average, a player reliable for drawing walks and one who promises they can win it all for you-who do you play? In the fall of 2002, the Oakland Athletics shattered a 55-year-old record with twenty consecutive games won. The A's accomplished this on a shoestring budget and despite losing three of their best players at the start of the season. How, you ask? By applying rich data analysis to the sport, a practice known as sabermetrics. When we set out to design an engaging kickball unit for our middle school students, we asked ourselves how we could learn from the 2002 A's. In short, we wondered how we could combine data analysis, computational thinking and kickball to make the P.E. experience more personal, more academically rigorous and more inclusive to students of all athletic abilities."

"For as long as I've been aware of makerspaces, I haven't quite understood them. I have seen plenty of photos on social media, with the towers made of marshmallows and toothpicks. I've walked through exhibit halls at conferences where the coding and robotics displays cause me to stop, stare, and try to look like I have some idea of what I'm looking at. I even stumbled into a Twitter chat one night where a group of school librarians was throwing around some pretty great ideas about building makerspaces in their libraries. And yet, I still feel like I don't get it. I have this picture in my mind of kids kind of messing around with Legos instead of, I don't know, reading primary source materials that would shed light on some period in history. Or taping together some cardboard strips to make them into a car. Or attaching some kind of wire to a banana. I don't know…the more traditional, stodgy, control-freak part of me says it looks like a bunch of hooey. But some of the smartest people I know are pretty into makerspaces, and the part of me that's not a stodgy control freak, the part that knows there's a lot about tradition we need to question, that part of me wants to find out once and for all what's so great about makerspaces."

"Bike to School Month is four weeks of events, workshops, and incentives to encourage students to bike or wheel to school. May 6 - June 5, 2019 Students and staff learn about active transportation, bike safety, healthy habits, clean air, and the fun of riding a bike! Bike to School Month is for everyone: students and staff can bike, walk, wheel or roll. Sign up your school to participate, and host an event for one day, one week, or the whole month! "

"Last month, TIME and Felix & Paul Studios launched VR cameras to the International Space Station (ISS) in a new project to bring viewers an intimate look aboard one of the most exclusive places in human existence. Dubbed The ISS Experience, over the course of the next year VR cameras will provide what the makers call "unprecedented access to a participatory experience-one that will culminate with the first-ever filming of a spacewalk in cinematic virtual reality." The year-long project was announced at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah this weekend. The project's first VR scene was filmed on Friday, January 25th."

"When Abby walked in, I was speaking about metacognition for a reason. Part of that concept has to do with differentiating what is known from what isn't. Top students often figure out that they must focus their time studying less familiar material. But for most student's this is not intuitive. That's where I come in. Students learn early on that my first commitment is to teach them how to learn, and my second commitment is to my course content. Students go from "I'm not smart" to "I just haven't learned that...yet." It's a mindset shift that can make all the difference."

Machines are already superintelligent on many axes, including memory and processing speed. Unfortunately, those are the attributes our education system currently rewards, with an emphasis on learning by rote. It doesn't make sense to me. Part of my job as an investor is to attempt to predict the future - I need to make bets on the way we'll be behaving in the next two, five, ten and 20 years. Computers already store facts faster and better than we do, but struggle to perfect things we learn as toddlers, such as dexterity and walking. We need to rethink the way we teach our children and the things we teach them. Creativity will be increasingly be the defining human talent. Our education system should emphasise the use of human imagination to spark original ideas and create new meaning. It's the one thing machines won't be able to do.

"Something that bothers me so much is when I read articles that talk about how libraries are becoming makerspaces.  Our makerspace is one component of the participatory culture that runs through our space.  Anyone who knows my story knows that my point of entry into the Maker Movement was through literacy, so for me, literacy and making have always gone hand in hand.   When I began as the Library Media Specialist at New Milford High School, I walked into a library that was similar to many school libraries in older schools.  It was very traditional looking, with tall stacks and lots and lots of books that students simply did not check out, nor have an interest in.  The collection was out of date and had not been weeded in decades.  One of the tasks for me was to weed the books.  During that weeding process, I decided that traditional nonfiction that made it through the weeding process would be sent to classrooms to build up their classroom research libraries.  I decided to keep any memoirs or narrative nonfiction that we had in our collection, since those were the kinds of books I discovered so many of our students did enjoy reading and would check out.  Amongst the vast fiction collection, we did find a few gems, but mostly we either discarded books that were no longer relevant to our students, gave them to classrooms who wanted them, or to individual students who showed an interest.  In the end, I was able to preserve just a few shelves of books.  As a result, I was tasked with rebuilding our collection."

"If you're anything like me, you spend a lot of time each day clicking through your inbox. (And, admittedly, if you're anything like me you also walk away from the inbox with a seemingly never-ending pile of unread messages and junk mail. Does it ever stop?!) But what if there was a way to make sifting through that inbox easier? Enter Gmail shortcuts. Here are 10 essential shortcuts everyone should know. Just don't forget to turn on your keyboard shortcuts (this option is in the "settings" tab of your account) first. "

"After so many people asked me this question, I wanted to take some time and walk you through my process of editing pictures for Instagram."

"FacebookTwitter18 Any college student eventually comes up against that academic kryptonite: the dreaded research paper. Most students consider it a necessary evil, but research papers are actually a very effective way to hone research and writing skills. These are important things to have in any profession, especially if you are into science, and it does help your personal development. Editor's note: Antonio helps you walk through each step of the research paper process - links to the 17 apps and web tools are highlighted within each step."