"From content consumption to content creation, there are many ways to use mobile devices with students. They can create how-to videos for authentic audiences, explain their thinking through screencasting, or use scannable technology in the math classroom, for example. Mobile devices can also be used to help students practice foundational math skills and build their math fluency. You might decide to use an app on this list as part of an intervention plan or add it to a newsletter for families."

"The Periodic Table of Elements, in Pictures and Words is an interactive site that shows students how each element is used or is present in familiar products. When students click on an element in the interactive display an image of a familiar product or object appears along with a description of the element and its characteristics. For example, if you click on aluminum an image of airplane appears along with a description of aluminum, its uses, and its characteristics."

This site is a student resource for the study of programming concepts for grades 10 - 12.

"Summer fun. It is the absolute best. Whether you visit Six Flags, Kings Island, a Disney Park, Busch Gardens, or another amusement park, the looping lines of roller coasters offer the perfect lens for getting students to interact with STEM concepts. An old garden hose, duct tape, and a marble: the only materials that you need to build a roller coaster. Cut the hose in half, and then duct tape the two segments together down the back to create a nice groove where the two hoses meet for the marble to ride, on top. Then the materials are ready for students to explore the potential and kinetic energy of roller coasters."

"As you may remember from your own (in)glorious youth, most university students are required to take a statistics course even if they hate math and aren't in a particularly numbers-heavy major. Ellen Peters, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, heard this was driving a lot undergrads on her campus crazy. "A lot of the students are really threatened by it. They're kind of afraid of it, they dread taking it," she says. "If they do dread it, they can end up in a cycle of failure." Curious to see if she could make a positive change among math-phobic Buckeyes, Peters created an intervention that tested whether or not value affirmation could improve student's comfort and ability with numbers, otherwise known as numerical literacy or numeracy. The results, which were published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, indicate that confidence and core values have a lot to do with learning the numbers."

"Workbench provides a ready-made platform for makers of great products to connect with end users and build online communities. Makers can find new ways to use products, teachers can find new ways to teach, and everyone can share their own programming code, lessons, and experiences within the community"

"A recent report  from Adrian F. Ward, Kristen Duke, Ayelet Gneezy, and Maarten W. Bos at the University of Texas at Austin has me questioning my professional decision last year to allow students to bring their cell phones to my classroom."

"In the last post, I explored this idea that every student deserves a makerspace. In this post, I look at some of the most common myths I see regarding makerspaces. "

"This blog post includes a 5 minute video, a lesson plan and examples of student that show integration of visual art curriculum and Computational Thinking in my grade 3 classroom. Thank you to Bea Leiderman, Carolyn Skibba, Douglas Kian and my experience at the Apple Institute in Berlin for this idea.  Using Keynote and Kandinsky is Bea's idea. It's brilliant. Bea, Carolyn and I went to the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin where we saw Kandinsky's work. We also had in depth workshops on Keynote. The combination of these experiences at the Apple Institute in Berlin lead to this idea and a project. Bea, Douglas and I are currently working on a project where we are investigating how these ideas of art, coding, and Computational Thinking might fit together. This is the early stage of this team project. This video gives an overview of the lesson and a chance to peak inside my grade 3 classroom:"

"This is my third summer offering maker education summer camps as part of a bigger program at a local school.  During mornings (9 to 12 with a half hour recess), campers, grades Kindergarten through 6th grade, can choose from one of four enrichment classes: art, drama, games, foreign languages, computers, and in my case, maker camps. During the afternoons, all campers get together for typical camp activities - fun and games, field trips, water sports, silly competitions. Each camp lasts a week. This summer I am offering: Cardboard Creations, Circuit Crafts, Toy Making and Hacking, and Robotics and Coding. I often discuss the need to implement maker education programs with minimal cost materials and ones that offer the potential to tap into diverse learners and their diverse interests:"

"A Raspberry Pi and a 3D printer are a match made in maker's heaven. Here are the best Raspberry Pi projects you can do with a 3D printer. Got a Raspberry Pi? Need a use case for your 3D printer? Then let us inspire you with some of the greatest Raspberry Pi projects for your 3D printer we could find."

"Did you know that you can view multiple web pages and/or applications at once on your digital device? My friend, Jennifer Kimbrell from Tech with Jen, and I were talking the other day about Chrome extensions that make viewing multiple webpages easy for students. I discovered that my "go to" extension, Split Screen, no longer was available and I started to look into other options. Just like everything else involved in the world of ed tech, I am constantly learning something new. Therefore, I wanted to share with you what I discovered last week! "

"That you probably use Wikipedia but tell your students not to is why we're here. Wikipedia has long been the bane of educators-a poster child for the 'don't believe everything you read on the internet because anyone can publish anything' movement. While making for wonderful subject matter in teaching credibility, authority, source citations, and more, the idea of actually using Wikipedia to teach explicitly teach research for an entire unit is lesson common. Luckily, the good folks at Wikipedia Education have you covered with the following (very long) unit. In the unit, students will create, edit, expand, and otherwise immerse themselves in the surprisingly complex world of public-knowledge-article editing."

"As society anticipates a future filled with artificial intelligence, experts are theorizing ways that we humans can outperform the computers that are being programmed to perfection. Some believe educators should focus on building soft skills like empathy and interpersonal communication so humans and robots can complement one another. However, other education thought leaders are ready to beat computers at their own game by teaching people to think like intelligent machines. Why do so many of our kids struggle with math problem-solving? Because they don't know where to start; they don't know how to decompose the problem. Heidi Williams The term for getting humans to think like computers has been coined Computational Thinking, and the idea is taking off. Author Heidi Williams can attest to its popularity after her book on the subject, No Fear Coding Computational Thinking Across the K-5 Curriculum, sold out at the International Society for Technology in Education conference. Inside the book, Williams breaks down computational thinking standards into four parts: 1. Formulating problems through data analysis, abstract models and algorithmic thinking; 2. Collecting, analyzing and presenting data; 3. Breaking down problems into parts and extracting information to understand the system in place; and 4. Using algorithmic thinking to develop sequences and testing automated solutions."

"Every year thousands of educators gather for the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference eager to learn about the newest features in favorite apps and to glean ideas from one another about how to effectively teach in new ways. The conference seems to grow every year and there is palpable excitement from educators who finally get to commune with their "tribe" - techy teachers from around the globe. But many of the products currently being marketed to educators are firmly rooted in the current moment of education. For the most part, they focus on how to help educators do what they already do more efficiently. Or they offer flashy digital tools meant to engage learners presumed to have short attention spans, and entice teachers with the analytics under the hood. But too often the conversations around what educators can do with technology in their classrooms focus on the current moment in a system that almost no one thinks is perfect. "I'm fascinated by trying to look forward rather than looking at what schools look like now," said Alan November during a presentation at the conference. November has long been invested in education, first as a teacher and now has a consultant and speaker. He suggests that to fundamentally change, education leaders need to define a new role for learners and then hire teachers who can help nurture those qualities. With that in mind, November proposes seven questions that he thinks should become standard in the interviewing and hiring process. "

"Though purists may say nothing can replace a printed topographic map, the world's leading smartphone apps are getting close. Technology is making it easier than ever to get lost in an adventure without getting lost in the wilderness, and there are plenty of ways to enjoy these benefits even when you've ventured to signal-free zones. Try one of these useful off-line apps on your next remote mountain trek, camping trip, or deep-sea dive to stay connected and informed without an internet connection."

"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."

"We all know it is best to learn math by using our hands (interactive stuff) and using our heads (critical thinking). But how about if we also use our faces"

"In this Tinkercad tutorial for beginners, we will show you in just five easy steps how to create 3D models in Tinkercad. You can do it! "