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"The following example is a piece of work about simplifying algebraic fractions that illustrates the value of student explanations. The task was to make a video explaining how to simplify the three fractions below, complete with full explanations. No training was given on how to do this, and no apps were recommended. This was my first attempt at asking this particular group of students to create a video. It follows that after years of simply writing down answers and them either being right or wrong, several students decided to assume that I was joking with this task and simply handed me in a copy of the answers. Job done. Or was it Wolfram Alpha's job done? Anyway, here is what a few responses to the task looked like"

"I never really learned how to cook. Other than scrambling eggs over a fire during Boy Scout camping trips, it just wasn't something I was taught growing up. Because I never learned how to make a healthy meal for myself, I ended up eating a lot more fast food than I should've-especially when I was young and early in my career. That's not the case for Robert Hand's students. Robert works at Mount Vernon High School, which is about an hour north of Seattle. He teaches family and consumer science-what we would've called "home economics" when I was in school. In other words, he helps his students learn how to take care of themselves after high school, including how to make a nutritious and delicious homemade meal. In just six years of teaching, Robert has had such a big impact on his school that he was named the 2019 Teacher of the Year for my home state of Washington. He was nice enough to visit my office earlier this year and show me how to make one of his students' favorite dishes: barbecue chicken."

"Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a flipped classroom workshop. As many of you know, I have been fairly critical and skeptical of the flipped classroom model. I was engaged in a conversation with some folks on twitter about the model and was extended an invite to a workshop so I could see firsthand what it was all about. I wanted to attend this workshop to either prove myself right or to put my foot in my mouth and I was very much open to both possibilities. For those not familiar with the flipped model or flipped classroom, there are plenty of articles out there explaining it…just google it. "

"Carolyn Cameron, one of the most open and progressive principals I have ever known (she was also my former boss), shared the following video regarding student expectations for school. The first point was that it was important to build relationships and know students as individuals. The nine other points are things that I really believe in, but it was great hearing it from a student perspective."

"At last week's iPad site visit, a student on the panel was describing her favorite iLesson: "It was in science. It is an interactive periodic table (app). We were learning about the elements. You click on an element and it gives you the history, who made it, how you use it, what it is used for. Another cool feature is you can make them. You can keep on adding neutrons, electrons, and protons as much as you like and every time you click on the plus or minus, it tells you what element you just made. The results were really amazing. We had more interest in the periodic table than we ever had before mainly because it was fun, it was interesting, we actually got to play around with it and see what we could make with it instead of just giving us a piece of paper and telling us 'research these'.""

"One of the justifiable criticisms of the iPad was that it was difficult to impossible to transfer files between many apps or networks. With the addition of some apps like PocketCloud and FileBrowser, and the improvement of the Open in… function in later systems , especially iOS 6, this has become even less of an issue. Still, I'm terms of downloading files on web based apps, you were often limited to photos from the camera roll. This was the case with the Edmodo app. An Edmodo app update earlier in the year allowed access to the Camera Roll and Google Docs. This however, was still too limiting to use the Library/Backpack feature of Edmodo to upload, store and download most files. Today that changed. The latest Edmodo iPad app now adds File Sharing functionality, both uploading and downloading to Edmodo' s Library (for teachers) and Backpack (students)."

"Until last week, if you'd googled the name "Klara Bowman," the search would have come back with a series of stories about a drunk teacher who was fired from her job in Tacoma, Washington. That was before a columnist with The News Tribune in Tacoma decided to uncover Klara Bowman's full story. A search of her name today will yield stories about a woman who took her own life, about her struggle with addiction, and about the need for frank talk about alcoholism. Columnist Matt Driscoll first raised concerns about the coverage and reaction to Bowman's story back in March. Bowman was fired from her job after being found intoxicated while in the classroom. It was the second time she had been caught drinking at work. "We lost the humanity of Klara Bowman in these "

"Luckily, I realized (sooner rather than later) that I was part of their reading problem, not the change in their reading lives I hoped to be. This aha! moment led me to dig deep, talk to my boys about their reading experiences and help them unpack what was really going on underneath the surface. My ultimate goal was to figure out what was blocking boys from reading for pleasure and most importantly, how to open them up and let it into their lives. After lots of conversations with 9- to 14-year-old boys, here's what I discovered."

"Prior to presenting Hour of Code lessons in my classroom, and eventually to my entire school, my knowledge of computer programming was limited to knowing it had something to do with ones and zeroes. I understood a lot of work went into constructing the digital world we now rely on, but what that work entailed was hazy at best. In fact, prior to Hour of Code, I didn't know the second week of December was Computer Science Education Week, which is when Hour of Code is held. It was all thanks to a buzz on Twitter that I first heard about Hour of Code's launch in 2013 and its simple, but powerful, mission: to expose children (and adults!) to one hour of computer science. After a trial run with my class the first year, I dove in headfirst and presented Hour of Code lessons in every class at my pre-kindergarten-through-second-grade school -- and with only a little prep, so can you!"

"Five years ago when I started DIY Girls, I envisioned a community for girls driven by an interest in making. I was inspired by the maker movement. The movement was making equipment and resources that were formerly only available in engineering labs more accessible and I wanted to teach girls to use and create with them. I was excited. Then reality hit. I started in the Los Angeles community I grew up in and I quickly ran into what I thought were barriers of working in an under-resourced public school. The classroom space where I was going to run the program for girls didn't have wi-fi, there were no computers and I didn't have enough money to buy the equipment I thought would make this a real maker program. People also thought I would prepare the girls to compete in expensive engineering and robotics competitions. That couldn't happen."

"On the morning of Wednesday, February 22, 2017, my cell phone rang at 5:30 a.m. The caller ID told me that the call was from our school district. Even before I swiped to answer, the pop-up notification on my phone told me the nature of the call. School had been canceled for the day. That's not such an odd occurrence in February in southwest Missouri. Snow and ice have canceled school as late in the year as early May. However, we'd been enjoying a stretch of record high temperatures, and while I wasn't really awake enough for my rational mind to rule that out, I knew something was off. There has been a lot of construction to and around a few of the school buildings in our district. In December 2016, I happened to be privy to a conversation regarding low water pressure at one of the schools due to a water main issue at a construction site near that particular school. So, non-functioning utilities was certainly a possibility for canceling school that zipped through my not-yet-awake mind. I was not prepared for what the recorded voice of our district superintendent told me. School had been canceled because of the threat of violence."

"I read an article yesterday that was really an extension of an ongoing conversation that I have been hearing for some time now. The article was "Mobility and its Impact on Learning" and was written by Ruth Reynard over at the Campus Technology site. Make sure that you have a look, it discusses some of the issues around the move to mobility and the implications for education. What it did do was get me thinking. "

"I was fortunate enough last weekend to receive an invitation to the Sydney Catholic Schools Early Years Conference. I was interested because the conference was centred around creating a clear and coherent vision around Early Years pedagogy. I was also intrigued to see how the iPad fitted in with this vision. "

"Today, I'm going to tell you a fairy tale: Once upon a time, my mother in law (a third grade teacher) was in her classroom at school when her principal walked in and gave her an iPad for her class to use. Well, technically it was supposed to be for the entire third grade to share, but that's almost beside the point. After some initial excitement, she discussed how the entire third grade was supposed to share a single iPad with her fellow third grade teachers, and the iPad was promptly banished into a drawer, never to see the light of day again. The end."

"One of the most iconic freedom fighter has just left us a couple of days ago leaving behind him a huge legacy for next generations to learn from. Nelson Mandella's life was a genuine fight for human rights and justice and it was thanks to his civil activism that apartheid was abolished in South Africa. The fight for freedom cost Nelson so dearly, 27 years of his life was spent in prison. The lessons we can draw from Nelson's eventful life experiences are inestimable and here are some of the teaching resources I have curated fro you to help yu teach your students about this legendary man."

"Yesterday was a Flex Day in our district, so my teaching partner and I had a very small group of first grade students to do some very focused instruction. It was a great day, but was made even better through a mid-morning surprise! Our kiddos discovered that both classroom's praying mantis egg sacs had hatched new baby praying mantises! We were so excited, and disappointed at the same time, because not everyone was there to see it! We needed to set them free quickly because they can actually eat each other if you don't get them a food source quickly enough. I suggested that we try out the Book Creator app, since it's on my "To Purchase" list for school iPads, to document our investigation and release."

"In school, it was those who could recall the facts, and particularly those who could recall them quickly.  If you could memorize your multiplication tables you were quickly labelled as "smart".  Smart was a product of a system based on sorting - some kids were smart, and the other kids were . . . well, we didn't really call them anything aloud, but the implication was that they were less than smart. And in the traditional school smart hierarchy - the matching of provinces and capital cities along with the ability to memorize weekly spelling words was the apex of smartness. Of course, the last 20 years have moved us away from a world of knowledge scarcity to knowledge abundance; now, all manner of information is available to everyone. For better or worse, we no longer look to our political and intellectual leaders for their all-knowing guidance, we quickly check what they have said with what we read on Wikipedia, Web Doctor MD or other online information available to us."

" Inspired by ideas like project based learning and #20Time, I decided to take a stand against "Google-able questions." Instead of students only finding information and curating content, they needed to create the learning for themselves. Our students live in a world of Web 2.0, social media, and content creation, and I needed to bring this into their learning. And together, we did. Halfway through this school year, I explained that we will no longer produce work that is forgettable and can be left in a backpack. Instead, we will create content that we can be proud of, will remember, and will help each other learn. I wanted to push students to develop more meaningful and diverse skills to prepare them for their futures by creating work that matters to them. To do this, we needed to produce for an audience; all learning was now public to the world. Suddenly, the learning was visible, the technology was more purposeful and complex, and class was more fun. Students' work wasn't hidden in their notebooks, but shared, produced, and even live-streamed, like the argument videos below. "

Today was Dr. Davey's first Maker Day, and an amazing one at that! Here's a look at our day. All of the Grade 1-Grade 7 students participated in today's Maker Day. Students attended two of seven different sessions based on their interests: Minecraft/Coding, Collaborative Art, Beautiful Junk, Positive Graffiti, Making Music, Lego/Blocks, and Egg Drop. Staff members paired up together to facilitate the learning at each of the sessions, and the students directed most of the learning based on their interests. I (Aviva) worked with an amazing Grade 4 student that led the Minecraft/Coding session, and even worked with small groups of students on coding the Arduino. It was really quite incredible! After two sessions, students reflected on the day and on their learning, and then extended the "Maker Learning" back in the classroom. Today was all about the Learning Skills, problem solving, creativity and critical thinking. As you can hear in our video reflection, there were also links to our classroom learning including Science (Structures) and Math (shapes, figures, and non-standard measurement). There was also a lot of Arts learning today (with creating music and creating works of art including the elements of design). What an amazing day!"

The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros' Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century. Anyone is free to use this video for educational purposes. You may download, translate, or use as part of another presentation. Please share.