"Just glance at your inbox and odds are you'll find at least one variety of phishing scam or email hack. Whether it's spear phishing, spoofing, account takeovers through embedded malware, or that time-honored plea from a Nigerian prince, there's no doubt that our schools' email systems are under near-constant attack. One careless click of a link can turn a teacher's account into a spam factory, landing your email system on a blacklist and cutting off communication with the rest of the world. Providing employee tax information to a phisher posing as your superintendent, for example, can result in the identity theft of hundreds of employees. The sad truth is that phishing and spamming scams are now part of life in this digital age. But through more engaging education, more authentic practice, and more creative protection practices, schools have a much better chance of mitigating the impact."

"When seeing is no longer believing Inside the Pentagon's race against deepfake videos Advances in artificial intelligence could soon make creating convincing fake audio and video - known as "deepfakes" - relatively easy. Making a person appear to say or do something they did not has the potential to take the war of disinformation to a whole new level. Scroll down for more on deepfakes and what the US government is doing to combat them."

"If you've ever felt stuck in a job and are considering a new career, figuring out exactly what you want to do - and how you'll get there - can be overwhelming. What if you could identify and test out different career possibilities, and even game out and compare how they would unfold over the next five years? You can using a solution-focused method called "Design Thinking," which helped product designers create Apple's built-in mouse and other consumer electronics. Sound far-fetched? It's not."

"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."

"The Internet is full of useful information … and it's getting fuller every day. The struggle these days isn't finding enough information. It's knowing what to do with it when we find it. That's curation. Students can act like museum curators, finding the best and most representative pieces to add to their collections to share with others. It's an important life skill, too. As they get older, knowing how to gather, organize and make sense of useful bits of information will help them be more productive and efficient."

"One snowy January day, I asked a classroom of college students to tell me the first word that came to mind when they thought about mathematics. The top two words were "calculation" and "equation." When I asked a room of professional mathematicians the same question, neither of those words were mentioned; instead, they offered phrases like "critical thinking" and "problem-solving." This is unfortunately common. What professional mathematicians think of as mathematics is entirely different from what the general population thinks of as mathematics. When so many describe mathematics as synonymous with calculation, it's no wonder we hear "I hate math" so often. So I set out to solve this problem in a somewhat unconventional way. I decided to offer a class called "The Mathematics of Knitting" at my institution, Carthage College. In it, I chose to eliminate pencil, paper, calculator (gasp) and textbook from the classroom completely. Instead, we talked, used our hands, drew pictures and played with everything from beach balls to measuring tapes. For homework, we reflected by blogging. And of course, we knit."

"QUINCY, Wash. - A few years ago, a young female engineer named Isis Anchalee was featured on one of her company's recruiting posters only to be subjected to a barrage of digital feedback questioning whether she was really an engineer. People posting on Facebook and Twitter said Anchalee was too attractive to be an actual software engineer and must be a model. Anchalee responded like the techie she is. She wrote a blog post about her experience and added a photo of herself with the hashtag #ILookLikeAnEngineer. Twitter exploded with selfies of female engineers of all backgrounds and male engineers of color declaring they looked like engineers, too. If she had known about the hashtag campaign and taken a look, Alessandra Gudino Aguilar, age 8, might have seen a grown-up version of herself. Alessandra, a student at Pioneer Elementary School in rural Quincy, Washington, spent part of the fall term in an enrichment class focused on teaching elementary-age students the principles of engineering design through a curriculum designed by educators and scientists at Boston's Museum of Science."

"When I ask teachers what their biggest struggles are, one issue comes up on a regular basis: student motivation. You are able to reach many of your students, but others are unreachable. No matter what you try, they have no interest in learning, no interest in doing quality work, and you are out of ideas. For a long time, I had no solutions; the problem was too complex. I have had my own unmotivated students, and I never had any magic bullets for them. Still, the issue kept coming up from my readers. So I decided to do some research, to try to find what the most current studies say about what motivates students. This is what I found:"

"The digital revolution, globalisation and demographic changes are transforming labour markets at a time when policy makers are also struggling with persistently slow productivity and wage growth and high levels of income inequality. The new OECD Jobs Strategy provides a comprehensive framework and detailed policy analysis and recommendations to help countries promote not only strong job creation but also foster job quality and inclusiveness as central policy priorities, while emphasising the importance of resilience and adaptability for good economic and labour market performance in a rapidly changing world of work. The key message is that flexibility-enhancing policies in product and labour markets are necessary but not sufficient. Policies and institutions that protect workers, foster inclusiveness and allow workers and firms to make the most of ongoing changes are also needed to promote good and sustainable outcomes. "The OECD's latest Jobs Strategy is a smart and sensible updating and rethinking of how countries should advance the goal of shared prosperity. I hope policymakers around the world not only read it but take its important advice." Jason Furman, Professor Harvard Kennedy School and former Chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers   "Inequality, economic insecurity, economic exclusion, are making the headlines.  Anger is high, populist rhetoric is on the rise.   What can be done?  What strategies to adopt?  These are the challenging questions taken up by the new OECD Jobs Strategy report.  I hope the report triggers the very serious discussions these issues deserve."    Olivier Blanchard, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute, Emeritus Professor at MIT and former Chief Economist of the IMF "

"Phishing--trying to trick someone into providing their username and password to a malicious site--is the most common form of cyberattack, according to Justin Henck, product manager at Jigsaw, formerly named Google Ideas. With that in mind, Jigsaw is providing an 8-question online quiz about spotting a phishing email before you give hackers access to your accounts. It's not as easy as you'd think, but the quiz will teach you to be better at it."

"My students come from a small, rural community and lack a broad understanding of the larger world around them. This inspired me to seek out a game, or online environment, that could provide more expansive experiences for them-a place that would allow them to explore, on their own or with others, and where I could embed history content for them to discover. On Twitter I came across an exploratory discussion of Minecraft's potential for school use. I dove in and began a journey that ultimately changed my perception of teaching and how I interact with my students. Minecraft is easy to use and implement in a classroom. It promotes student independence and creativity, but it is also an immensely collaborative tool that I have witnessed being integrated across all grade levels and content areas. Students can apply their understanding in truly unique and often unanticipated ways. Previously, my kids struggled with writing. Today, they are more creative and confident writers. Instead of getting 125 essays written in the exact same style with the same details, I now get unique historical narratives, rich with sensory experiences and observations made with their own eyes."

"The Power of Play takes us around the world to meet the people who are turning play science into one of the most promising areas of research today."

"What is a makerspace? What projects and materials do you recommend for a makerspace? Why are makerspaces becoming so popular in schools and libraries? These are just some of the questions we hear often. In order to help, we decided to put together a collection of our favorite makerspace resources and websites. In this post, you will find over 101+ links to makerspace related articles, guides, checklists and more that will help you get started with hands-on maker education."

"In this series we explore Powerful Learning, a set of principles to guide educators designing learning experiences that engage the hearts and minds of learners and incorporate technology in ways that contribute to closing the Digital Learning Gap. In this second post, we explore how Powerful Learning is authentic and challenging, share research that grounds these two principles, and provide resources to support your own learning and teaching practices."

"If we collectively want to keep our jobs we must change the way we look at hard and soft skills. We have to find a way to redefine what they are, what is intensely human and what will remain our competitive advantage over the year in the advent of AI and job-threatening-robots.  With research showing that less and less importance is placed on conventional intelligence and with studies indicating that it can actually be counterproductive at work to employ too much of one's IQ while at the same time having organizations move away from formal education, what role does knowledge still play in this brave new world of soft skills and humanity? Professionals who attach a lot of their self-esteem to their intelligence will get bored easily, will get frustrated repeatedly and will feel less inclined to be truly engaged with their colleagues. What's the answer to that? Should they all aim lower to fit in? Is playing dumb a success condition? We have enough trouble getting passion and courage into ourselves and our people - if we now decide knowledge is superfluous what are we left with?"

"For centuries, the majority of kids who attend school do so for one reason: it is mandatory. Think back to when you were in school, now envision you were offered the following choices: You master the material and receive a low grade You don't understand the material and receive a high-grade Which would you choose? Sure, some would rather master the material, but the majority would aim for the higher grade. In order to transform the learning process from standardization to personalization, we need to help students shift their view of school away from focusing on grades to focusing on their personal self-growth. We need to show them they are not just there because they have to be."

"During CS Ed Week, countless teachers and students experienced computer science for the first time. Whether it was their first, second, or hundredth time, I hope that this taste of CS left them hungry for more. Code.org has created a great compilation of resources for how students can continue learning. In this post, I'd like to suggest some ideas for how teachers who are new(ish) to CS can go beyond the Hour of Code."

"The British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) - the post-secondary institution recognized for integrating education and industry - is announcing a partnership with Microsoft Corp. and its Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program to teach foundation computational skills for BC high-school students. This partnership recognizes the value of exposing young learners to the jobs of the future while equipping them with the appropriate knowledge and skills for success in the future tech workforce. With support from the BC Ministry of Education and BCIT, the BC branch of TEALS has already educated more than 400 students across four BC high schools. Credit: Microsoft Microsoft TEALS exists because many high schools want to offer computer science courses but often don't have teachers who are trained on the subject. To fill this gap, TEALS volunteers work with classroom teachers to team-teach students, and to equip instructors with the knowledge to teach students on their own."

"7 Components of #Creativity" - via Creativity Catapult @BADM_org Read the entire whitepaper here. https://t.co/on9jQL6P5Q #STEAM #STEM #makered #STEAMmakers #makerspace https://t.co/nSjQ72wrgL