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"I teach fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade Resource Room in a small public school. We are well endowed and all students grades 6 - 8 have their own iPads. I wanted to share some of the apps we use regularly in school. Please keep in mind, this is not a complete list, just what seems to be used over and over again. Also, make note that I am a special education teacher and some of these apps may be intended for younger students. Remember that not all kids are on page 39, let alone the same book - "

"The maker movement was front and center at the 2015 ISTE conference-and that's a good thing for me. After following maker initiatives with great interest for some time now, I have the opportunity to design a maker space this year for 6th-12th grade students at my school, Worcester (MA) Academy. A search of this year's program at ISTE, held June 28 to July 1 in Philadelphia, using the term "constructivist learning/maker movement" resulted in 67 related sessions. The ISTE Librarians Network hosted a maker station at their Digital Age Playground and convened a panel on library maker spaces, featuring elementary and middle school librarians, a school administrator, and the coordinator of a public library maker initiative. Vendors and exhibitors demonstrated tools, lessons, and ideas for maker spaces. Meanwhile, a four-hour Maker Playground Wednesday morning drew a huge crowd of attendees. One of my goals at the conference was to gather ideas and tips to help me create my library's maker space. Here are some highlights of what I discovered at ISTE."

"A picture is worth a thousand words, but it might also be worth a thousand dollars if your school gets hit with a copyright violation claim. This happens to schools every year as students or teachers inappropriately use an image that they do not have the rights to. Thankfully this does not have to be the case as there are loads of high quality pictures that can be used in school projects without any licensing concerns. These can include images that are released under creative commons, or are in the public domain, or simply are copyright-free. Of course depending on the license, it may still be necessary to cite where the image came from to provide proper attribution (and it can be a good practice to do even if not required). There are many sites and tools that can help educators and students find free photos, clipart, icons, and more. See below for a list of many of these, and be sure to share your suggestions for other resources to add to this collection."

In this article, we use evidence to describe seven key lessons from a four-year district-wide computer science implementation project between Howard University and the District of Columbia Public Schools. These lessons are: (a) Get to know the school counselors (and other key personnel); (b) Expect personnel changes and strategic reorganization within school districts; (c) Be innovative to build and maintain community; (d) Be flexible when developing instruments and curricula; (e) Maintain a firm commitment to equity; (f) Develop tiered content and prepare to make philosophical adjustments; and (g) Identify markers of sustainability. We also include original curricula materials including the Computer Science Course Evaluation and the Computational Thinking Survey. The seven lessons and curricula materials provided in this study can be used to inform the development of future computer science researcher-practitioner partnerships.

"You may have heard the educational buzz about the free app Periscope. With this app, you can record a live broadcast and share it with followers or with the public. If you aren't familiar with the it, check out this Education Closet article from the fall: http://educationcloset.com/2015/09/15/up-periscope-reimagining-arts-integration-professional-development/ Many educators have jumped on the Periscope platform, broadcasting tips after school hours or live from their classrooms. While it is easy to sign up and follow broadcasts, it can be daunting to record a public broadcast yourself. After learning about Periscope, I thought this might be a useful tool for my school district to help teachers network and learn from one another. I ran the idea by my principal, and she was immediately supportive. To help with privacy concerns, we decided all of our broadcasts would be set to private. In order for anyone to see a private broadcast, though, our staff must be mutual followers of each other. Here's the plan we followed when rolling out a school-wide Periscope community."

"The maker movement was front and center at the 2015 ISTE conference-and that's a good thing for me. After following maker initiatives with great interest for some time now, I have the opportunity to design a maker space this year for 6th-12th grade students at my school, Worcester (MA) Academy. A search of this year's program at ISTE, held June 28 to July 1 in Philadelphia, using the term "constructivist learning/maker movement" resulted in 67 related sessions. The ISTE Librarians Network hosted a maker station at their Digital Age Playground and convened a panel on library maker spaces, featuring elementary and middle school librarians, a school administrator, and the coordinator of a public library maker initiative. Vendors and exhibitors demonstrated tools, lessons, and ideas for maker spaces. Meanwhile, a four-hour Maker Playground Wednesday morning drew a huge crowd of attendees. One of my goals at the conference was to gather ideas and tips to help me create my library's maker space. Here are some highlights of what I discovered at ISTE."

"The role teachers play in the educational system is significant and vital, but if teachers are the heart of the operation, administrators are the bones. You support teachers, forge relationships with students and the public, and strive to create a school environment that is beneficial for everyone who walks through the doors. How can you take your role to the next level and become an even more effective administrator? The following resources may be just what you need."

"If you visit Lighthouse Community Charter classrooms this fall, you'll see kindergarteners using power tools, second graders doing logo programming, third graders building circuit blocks, sixth graders programming microcontrollers to respond to sensor inputs, eighth graders using hot-glue guns, and high school students building chairs, building and programming robots, and using a laser to cut out pieces of wood for prototypes. As we look across our school, we're pretty excited by two things. First, we're pleased to see making (broadly defined as using your hands, heart, and mind to create or improve things) happening as part of our students' core classroom experiences. And second, we're thrilled that our students - poor, urban students of color - have access to making, especially because our educational system so often provides them with experiences filled with seat time and back-to-basics instruction. Lighthouse operates two high-performing, K-12 public schools in Oakland: our flagship campus, Lighthouse, and our brand new campus, Lodestar (to open in East Oakland in the fall of 2016). Our mission is to prepare a diverse, K-12 student population for college and the career of their choice by equipping each student with the skills, knowledge, and tools to become a self-motivated, competent, lifelong learner."

"Yes, National Computer Science Week is over and more than 10 million students participated in the Hour of Code and the feedback from all over the country is pretty incredible. Chicago Public Schools announced they are adding Computer Science into the core curriculum for all students. Schools and districts that have been promoting coding for years, like Los Altos School District, are getting great press about what they accomplish with students. New apps, programs and teacher training resources are popping up all over. 2014 definitely feels like it is going to be the year of the student coder!"

"Both project-based learning and STEAM education (science, technology, engineering, art and math) are growing rapidly in our schools. Some schools are doing STEAM, some are doing PBL, and some are leveraging the strengths of both to do STEAM PBL. With a push for deeper learning, teaching and assessment of 21st-century skills, both PBL and STEAM help schools target rigorous learning and problem solving. They are not exactly the same, but teachers can easily connect to them to teach not only STEAM content and design challenges, but also authentic learning and public, high-quality work. In fact, many know that STEAM education isn't just the content, but the process of being scientists, mathematicians, engineers, artists and technological entrepreneurs. Here are some ways that PBL and STEAM can complement each other as you deliver instruction"

"For many years New Milford High School was just like virtually every other public school in this country defined solely by traditional indicators of success such as standardized test scores, graduation rates, and acceptances to four year colleges. These indicators have become so embedded in the minds of those judging our schools and work that we, like everyone else, worked hard to focus only on initiatives that would hopefully produce favorable outcomes in those areas. If we were doing well we continued down the same path allowing the status quo to reign supreme. The mentality of if it ins't broke than why fix it resonated so profoundly with us that we would not have even considered changing our ways. If results were not what our stakeholders wanted this would then trigger meetings leading to the development of action plans to get us back on course. "

"From Creative Schools by Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica, published April 21, 2015, by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright by Ken Robinson, 2015. Creative Teaching Let me say a few words about creativity. I've written a lot about this theme in other publications. Rather than test your patience here with repetition of those ideas, let me refer you to them if you have a special interest. In Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, I look in some detail at the nature of creativity and how it relates to the idea of intelligence in the arts, the sciences, and other areas of human achievement. In 1997, I was asked by the U.K. government to convene a national commission to advise on how creativity can be developed throughout the school system from ages five through eighteen. That group brought together scientists, artists, educators, and business leaders in a common mission to explain the nature and critical importance of creativity in education. Our report, All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education, set our detailed proposals for how to make this happen in practice and was addressed to people working at all levels of education, from schools to government."

"Art has long been recognized as an important part of a well-rounded education - but when it comes down to setting budget priorities, the arts rarely rise to the top. Many public schools saw their visual, performing and musical arts programs cut completely during the last recession, despite the many studies showing that exposure to the arts can help with academics too. A few schools are taking the research to heart, weaving the arts into everything they do and finding that the approach not only boosts academic achievement but also promotes creativity, self-confidence and school pride."

"It started with a move by resourceful students who were able to unlock security settings on their iPads. The disastrous $1 billion iPad rollout by the Los Angeles Unified School District in September 2013 provided a cautionary tale to districts looking to spend public dollars on technology and digital curriculum. But below the surface of the news stories were thousands of kids feeling hurt by the way they were portrayed by the media and the school district's lack of trust in them. To explore the aftermath of the scandal that put them front and center of that cautionary education technology tale, students at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights conducted their own research on how the rollout was handled, talking to peers and family members and ultimately painting a very different picture of the lasting consequences."

"3D printing really does sound more like a plot point in a science fiction film than an implementable educational tool, but it's swiftly becoming an accessible option to educators everywhere. In fact, MakerBot, a leading manufacturer of 3D printers, has recently announced the MakerBot academy, which is seeking individual investors to fund an initiative to get 3D printers into every public school in the United States. Other 3D printing start-ups have followed in other parts of the world as well."

"ll ludicrous jokes aside, isn't this how some educational institutions operate? Totally unaware of students' opinions about the very aspect of their own lives that will impact them the most? What might the educators excuses be? Too little time? Too many papers to grade? Unwillingness to learn something new? Fear of being knocked off the sage-on-the-stage pedestal? An allegiance to out-dated and inflexible lesson plans? Fear of facilitating a class full of learning noise and having it mistaken by administrators as chaos? Or, plain ole professional stagnation due to a detachment from the ever-burgeoning world of the connected, 21st Century Educator? But please excuse my lack of manners. I should not be treating readers like participants in a twenty questions session. Instead, I got an idea. Let's just ask the students some questions. Got time to listen? The Questions If you could improve public education, what three changes would you make? If you were a school principal, what types of teachers would you hire? If you were a school principal, what types of teachers would you fire? Do you believe smartphones should be allowed in school? How can all teachers integrate students' passions/talents/interests into their curricula? What are your passions/talents/interests? Please describe your future plans."

"Currently, there seems to be a gap between what our schools and universities teach and the lifelong learning skills students must learn to master on their own. And yet, the need for students to master lifelong skills has never been greater. Corporate leaders confirm their importance for promotion and advancement, while economists contend these skills hold the key to countering projected job losses due to automation. With all the buzz around the Common Core, MOOCs, and blended learning, it's time to prioritize skills that prepare students to learn for life. With schools like Summit Public Schools and Lindsay Unified making efforts to experiment with new approaches to learning, there's an opportunity to focus on a new set of skills. I believe these skills can be broken into three categories: Reflection, Research, and Resolving. Grounded in educator Malcolm Knowles' definition of learning, these 3Rs take students beyond the centuries-old, subject-specific 3Rs of reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmetic. Armed with them, learners can thrive in a world where learning never ends."

"rt has long been recognized as an important part of a well-rounded education - but when it comes down to setting budget priorities, the arts rarely rise to the top. Many public schools saw their visual, performing and musical arts programs cut completely during the last recession, despite the many studies showing that exposure to the arts can help with academics too. A few schools are taking the research to heart, weaving the arts into everything they do and finding that the approach not only boosts academic achievement but also promotes creativity, self-confidence and school pride."