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"Last month our middle school tech class went to Lansing to attend the MACUL ATT Student Showcase. While there, I asked the students to use an iPad to somehow create a project to document what happened on the trip. I gave them a list of suggested apps, but left it open for students to make their own creative choices about the project. Several students used the wonderful Book Creator app to create epub books about the trip. Here are links to two of the books that can be directly downloaded into iBooks on your iPad, iPod, or iPhone. (Note, it will take several minutes for the books to download, then select to open in iBooks.)"

1- 8 Great YouTube Channels for Math 2- 7 Great YouTube Channels for Science 3- 7 Excellent YouTube Channels for History Teachers 4- 8 Wonderful YouTube Channels for Kids 5- YouTube 's Official Channels for Educators 6- 10 Great YouTube Channels for Teachers 7- The 10 Most Important Educational Channels for Educators

"This is the last post on iPad for this year. I have recently published several guides on the use of iPad in education starting with the best educational iPad apps for teachers and concluding with these tutorials and a soon to be released eBook that will be comprehensive enough to include everything we have covered about iPad so far. If you are an Android user and wondering why I don't talk about Android as much as I do about iPad , I recommend that you subscribe to my second blog Teacher's Mobile Technology to stay updated about educational Android tips and apps."

"Whenever I hear talk of student engagement I wonder what the problem is. I doubt that it's the students, their role possibly - but not them personally. I don't buy into the idea that most of our students are lazy or incompetent. Instead, I think they're bored. Every student I've taught could learn, just often not the same thing, or in the same way. And when I've asked my students about it, I've always found they love to learn; they just don't like school."

"Conducting an extensive data mining for writing a scholarly academic paper does definitely require using online digital resources. Admittedly, a lot of the resources you want to cite in your paper can be found online and most of them through social media like Twitter. I have been experiencing this myself while working on the literature review of my thesis. I included many tweets in my paper using the APA style. To be sure my citations meet the academic standards I bought Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th Edition . However after reading this guide, I wrote a short post on how to include citations in scholarly papers and today I am sharing with you another great resource on the same topic . This is basically an awesome chart featuring the different ways to cite social media using both MLA and APA style. I knew about this from our wonderful techy specialist Aditi Rao. "

"Digital differentiation is a new concept I learned from our colleague Susan Oxnevad. She did a really wonderful job crafting and designing the tools for digital differentiation which I am sharing with you below in the form of interactive images created using Thinglink."

"A good friend of mine, Mary Fraizer, is the Tech Integration Specialist in the Buhler School District. The Buhler School District is implementing iPads fast & furiously. Mary created this absolutely wonderful resource to help her teachers. I thought it might be useful to many of you, feel free to share the link with anyone you think would benefit. Our iPads Launchpad http://buhleripads.wikispaces.com/Home"

"The superb TED app for iPad and iPhone has been updated this week, to Version 2.0. This is the app that brings more than 1,000 wonderful TEDTalk videos to the iPad - or as they're touted 'riveting talks by remarkable people'. "

"The most powerful thing she said was something that education policy makers will ignore at all costs. That is that Creativity is the next essential literacy. Now keep in mind I am just beginning to try and wrap my mind around what that may look like. My first belief in this discussion is that creativity is something that begins at a young age. I also believe that creativity and imagination go hand and hand. When I teach my courses for the college I refer to imagination as a sense of wonder because often people are distracted by the word imagination. This is because it brings up a short time in their life when they were encouraged to imagine. As an education system we ignore imagination and we have quickly weeded out that perceived "unnecessary" tool over the past 20 years. "

"One area that I don't have time to explore very often during the school year is creating music on my iPad. It seems with all the day to day activities of teaching that I totally loose touch with musical explorations and composing. I've been taking more time lately to do this and I am floored at what I can do with an iPad and a few apps. I am not going to give you a history lesson here but I will say that at one time in my career I dreamed of creating a wonderful MIDI lab outfitted with computers, keyboards, speakers and mixers for my students to use. That dream never happened because of the crazy cost involved. My dream has been reshaped. Here is what I've found…."

"It is always such a pleasure to see student creativity. To watch their creative muscles grow and see their fantastic imaginations blossom into works of art. Technology is a great medium through which students can craft their wonders. It offers abilities that aren't possible in other media. Here is a recommended collection of creative iPad and iPhone apps from Glenda Stewart-Smith of Surrey School District #36 in Canada. It is a diverse collection covering creativity in art, photography, music, writing, and more. What apps would you recommend to foster creativity in students?"

"Skype is an instructional tool that provides boundlessopportunities for authentic teaching and learning.  It allows us to explore beyond the four walls of our classrooms.  As elementary teachers, we sometimes battle to hold our students' short attention spans. Integrating Skype lessons brings the curriculum to life in ways never before possible.  You know that special moment when you announce a class activity, and it's greeted with claps, screams, and cheers?  That's Skype.  It brings pure joy, wonder, and intrigue to your students. Here's a list of ten ways to utilize it in the elementary setting, followed by some logistical tips for success."

"Given the importance of confidence in building powerful personalities and successful learners, here is a wonderful video from TED Ed to share with your students in class. This is an animated lesson explaining what confidence is all about and suggesting 3 main tips to boost ones confidence. You can access the full lesson with comprehension and discussion questions from this page. Enjoy"

Ask any teacher what they wish they had more of and the most common answer is likely to be time. Schools are inherently busy places and there is always much to be done. We all want to meet the needs of every student, add value to their education with breadth and depth, ensure adequate coverage of the curriculum and include aspects of play and discovery. Add up all that is done in a day over and above face-to-face teaching and you can only wonder at how we manage to fit it all into the time we have. So is there an answer to this dilemma, is there a secret method to finding more time in our schedules to achieve all that we want to?

"According to Marc-André Lalande,  "a Personal Learning Network is a way of describing the group of people that you connect with to learn their ideas, their questions, their reflections, and their references. Your PLN is not limited to online interactions, but it is that online, global interactive part that really makes it special. It is personal because you choose who's part of that group; you choose if you want to lurk-just check out what people are saying-or if you share; because you choose when to do so, and how to do so." As for this graphic? You can thank Sylvia Duckworth, who always does a great job sharing simple sketch notes to help teachers. (She also took our 12 Rules of Great Teaching and created a predictably wonderful graphic to supplement the text, among others.) We've taken her graphic and provided starting points for each 'reason' a teacher need a PLN."

"Ever wondered how your mind deals with complex sums and multiplications? A new study has imaged how the brain's activity levels change while taking on serious maths problems, and reveals for the first time that there are four distinct neural stages involved in coming up with a solution."