"What if you could squeeze an extra ten minutes out of your busy day and devote them to more meaningful interactions with students, colleagues and parents? While a school day is estimated to be around 6.7 hours, every educator knows that a teacher's workday is much longer. Carving out extra time in a teaching day may seem like a tall order for many educators, who often must steal hours from their evenings, cutting into their own professional development time and tipping the scales on their work-life balance. While a school day is estimated to be around 6.7 hours, every educator knows that a teacher's workday is much longer. Add the time required for all the other parts of the job-lesson planning, providing students extra support, grading, and parent and staff meetings-and teachers can expect to put in a 12- to 16-hour workday. Recent advancements in data analytics and artificial intelligence, however, may help teachers gain back some of those hours. These technologies offer new efficiencies and insights into classroom learning, allowing educators to harness the power of data from their learning management systems (LMSs) and freeing them up to focus their time on activities that truly lead to better learning outcomes."

"One evening last week, I collapsed into bed after homework was finished, lunches were packed, and bedtime stories were read and happened upon an impassioned Los Angeles Times op-ed by high school political science teacher Jeremy Adams. In it, Adams decries his students' lack of interest in reading and places the blame squarely on smartphones. My kids are still young, but I'm always thinking of how to instill in them a passion for books, so I read on...on my smartphone."

"Reading aloud can help young children learn about new words and how to sound them. There's great value too in providing opportunities for children to enjoy regular silent reading, which is sustained reading of materials they select for pleasure. But not all schools consistently offer this opportunity for all of their students. We regularly hear from teachers and teacher librarians who are concerned about the state of silent reading in schools. They're worried students don't have enough opportunity to enjoy sustained reading in school. This is important, as many children do not read at home. For some young people, silent reading at school is the only reading for pleasure they experience."

"Many teachers' tech toolkits are bursting at the seams and sometimes it can be a good idea to use a few tools well, rather than jump on every new resource. However, it's hard to resist a useful tool to help organise your classroom and provide structure for students. Some resources require a bit of thought and exploration to figure out how they could be implemented in your classroom. Not ClassroomScreen. It's free."

"You can customize your own spinner with your own labels using the tools below the spinner. You can save your spinner for later use by either copying the address from the browser or by using the sharing buttons embedded on this page."

"The start of a new school year is a great time to think about long-term plans for the upcoming year, but also the plans we need to make for our students for years to come. Each day there are news alerts on topics such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, augmented and virtual reality, digital citizenship and literacy and their relation to education. These are the trends and terms that are already a part of our world and will become an increasing part of our future. Beyond these technology-themed trends, we're learning more about social-emotional learning (SEL), mental health awareness, mindfulness and trauma-informed teaching. These are important issues and educators must stay informed on best practices and ways to make these 'themes' part of our daily practice. As educators today, it's no longer about simply planning instruction with our students in mind. We also have to consider how changing technology trends and important societal issues will impact our students both now and beyond high school. How can we best prepare them to not only find success for themselves but also make an impact on others? So the pressure is on, to really consider how we can best prepare students not just for this school year, not just for life after high school graduation, but well beyond. We need to prepare our students for the year 2030 and the future. But how?"

"A federal election is coming and Canadians should be wary of being exposed to fake and misleading news, particularly on social media. What you need to look out for most during this election cycle is your own emotional bias. This is what leads us to share fake news without checking the facts first.  We have been researching the psychology of fake news for almost three years now, with the goal of finding out why people believe fake news and what each of us do to avoid falling for it ourselves. We have uncovered a few answers; one of the most important of which was recently detailed in a paper titled Reliance on Emotion Promotes Belief in Fake News. "

"I can't stop thinking about Caine's Arcade. If you haven't seen it, you gotta check it out. It's a bit dated - 2012 is ancient history in the EdTech world - but to date, this YouTube video has over 8 million views. Caine's Arcade is still inspiring people everywhere. If you still haven't seen it, then let me break it down for you. Caine, a nine-year-old boy hanging out at his dad's auto parts store in a rough East LA neighborhood, had an idea to use the stuff lying around - mostly used cardboard - to create his own arcade. One particularly inspired customer stumbled upon it and…well, just go watch the video. Trust me, it's worth your time."

"Do you know how to change the oil on your car? What about how to knit a scarf? Or how to make compost? If you need some help with life's little chores, the internet is full of guidance. But which sites should you head to when you need some advice? Here are 12 how-to sites that everyone needs to have saved in their bookmarks."

"Here are some great questions for starting a conversation. There are a lot of random conversation starters to get you started and then conversation questions listed by topic. You can start with the random questions or find a topic that interests you. There's no right place to start, just scroll down to wherever you want and get started! There are tons of ways to use these questions. I find that the most rewarding way is for everyone to pull up this list of conversation starters on a phone or tablet, and then take turns letting everyone choose a question to ask the group. Remember don't be afraid to delve deeply into the conversation. Answering the specific question isn't the goal, having an interesting conversation is!"

"The spread of online misinformation poses serious challenges to societies worldwide. In a novel attempt to address this issue, we designed a psychological intervention in the form of an online browser game. In the game, players take on the role of a fake news producer and learn to master six documented techniques commonly used in the production of misinformation: polarisation, invoking emotions, spreading conspiracy theories, trolling people online, deflecting blame, and impersonating fake accounts. The game draws on an inoculation metaphor, where preemptively exposing, warning, and familiarising people with the strategies used in the production of fake news helps confer cognitive immunity when exposed to real misinformation. We conducted a large-scale evaluation of the game with N = 15,000 participants in a pre-post gameplay design. We provide initial evidence that people's ability to spot and resist misinformation improves after gameplay, irrespective of education, age, political ideology, and cognitive style."

"All over Canada, and at many schools in North America, today is the first day of school. Doing the work that I do today, I did not realize that until I opened up Facebook this morning and was hit by a barrage of "the first day of grade _____" pictures all over my feed.  The excitement on the faces of many students was contagious, but it also seemed that some parents were pretty happy to send their kids back to school as well What I have been thinking about a lot lately is about how we maintain that "first-day" excitement in our students throughout the year? Although this is something that I do my best to support in my work, I know that this is not an easy task for educators and schools as there are so many variables in the lives of our students and ourselves that have an impact on our experience in school. My focus here is on how do we create an experience in school that is both joyous while challenging.  The reason both elements are essential is that it is easier to "challenge" our students to grow in a space where they are excited to be in the first place. If a student hates coming to school every day, it is going to be a lot tougher to push them toward growth."

"Bad News is a website that offers simulations that show visitors how misinformation is spread through social media. Bad News is available in two versions. The regular version is intended for those who are high school age or older. Bad News Junior is appropriate for middle school and older elementary school students. The difference between the two versions is found in the news topics that are used in the simulations. "

"he Rigor and Relevance Framework-an action ­oriented continuum that describes putting knowledge to use-gives teachers and administrators a way to develop both instruction and assessment while providing students with a way a way to project learning goals. This framework, based on traditional elements of education yet encouraging movement from acquisition of knowledge to application of knowledge, charts learning along the two dimensions of higher standards and student achievement.  Capable teacher presence and teacher­ centered instruction always belong in the foreground and always underpin lasting student learning, no matter what digital tools are in use. Grounded in rigor and relevance, instruction and learning with digital tools are limitless. This is the foundation of uncommon learning."

"Sharing is something vital to a society's progression toward advancement. It is a practice that helps make a community stronger and more responsive to change. We may not be aware of it, but most of our formative education has been a form of sharing:.young learners often teach each other skills they have acquired, middle and high school students share information and ideas over lunch, and professors share expertise and perspectives with us in college. But for some reason, the close-the-door-isolationism of schools, combined with contrived PLC structures and a serious lack of time in the workday, has halted prolific sharing and schools are suffering as a result."

"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."

"Playtime. Downtime. Family time. According to Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, these three factors - or PDF as she calls them - protect kids against a host of negative outcomes, strengthen resilience, and bolster students' mental wellness and academic engagement. "

"The call for mathematical play is beyond some desired learning objective. Combined with the rise of mental illness and anxiety among children/adolescents, and the championing of play by Pediatricians and Child Psychologists, play in mathematics must be seen as a moral imperative."