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"This episode of ETYSK features the app Kodable, which aims to teach primary grade students how to code by means of an incredibly appealing game. Gretchen, one of the apps founders, explains what Kodable is, how teachers are using it in the classroom, why they target the age of kids that they do, and more."

"The idea that we only use 10 percent of our brains has been roundly debunked - but, according to Paul Howard-Jones, an associate professor of neuroscience and education, teachers don't necessarily know that. In an article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, he reveals the disturbing prevalence of this and other "neuromyths" in classrooms around the world, and explains why they can be so damaging."

"We usually only learn about the magnitude of an earthquake and the location of the epicenter. This infographic explains how ground waves and depth define the magnitude on the Richter Scale and the amount of destruction that implies. It also illustrates plate boundaries on the globe and the regions where most earthquakes occur. The Earthquakes infographic by Weather Underground also describes hydraulic fracking and how this has increased earthquake activity in places where earthquakes don't naturally occur."

""Be sure to cite your sources." "Give credit where credit is due." "Don't plagiarize." It's possible all teachers have said these things to students. But what do those directives mean to students who, in all reality, haven't had to do much citing?  What does it even mean to cite your sources?  The first step in the process is for students to understand the purpose and importance of citations. We found this great resource outlining that information from The Write Direction. One of the co-authors of this piece, Jessica Steege, is a middle school writing teacher. In her first year of teaching she did her best to explain the importance of citing her work. But somewhere along the way, the message got lost. When a student turned in a research project citing just one source-www.google.com - she felt defeated and wondered where she'd gone wrong. She realized that teaching citations from a "handbook," especially one that would quickly become outdated, wasn't the best way to teach her tech savvy students. So she turned to electronic resources. The Internet offers an abundance of online citation tools, from the extremely easy to use, to ones that require more research on the part of the user. We'd suggest teaching students about a few tools and let them decide which one to use to help them successfully cite their research."

"For a new generation of students growing up in a digitally-connected century, all roads lead to code. Coding is the new literacy. It will not replace foreign languages, but it will be the global vernacular for understanding how technologies work. Unlike the Trix cereal, coding and computer science aren't just for kids. Everyone, and especially teachers and parents, can lead by example and learn a few lines of HTML. Here's how Idit Harel, CEO of Globaloria, explains why parents need to co"

"Whether the topic is popcorn or particle physics, you can count on the HowStuffWorks team to explore - and explain - the everyday science in the world around us on BrainStuff."

"I do not use a lot of worksheets in my math program.  So much so, that last week, I gave a worksheet during math to my grade 2 students to do and one of my students cheered.  CHEERED! For a worksheet!  I asked the child in my class why she cheered.  I figured that she would have responded with, "I like worksheets."  If she had answered that way, I would have been fine with that. I believe that we all have our own learning preferences and some children enjoy doing worksheets.  However I would never have anticipated what she said to me.  She responded with, "I like doing worksheets better than using the iPads because I don't have to think as much."  "

"The new update to Book Writer includes a presentation feature that gives students a chance to show off what they've made.  Their new app Book Writer One is free to download and designed for education institutions.  The kid-friendly interface lets young students tell their own stories, document a field trip, or explain what they've learned.  Teachers can also use this app to make picture books to share with their students."

"At first, I have to admit I was not the greatest fan of the iPad. Aside from its obvious advantages, like the battery life and the time gained from not having to get the class to 'log on', it seemed like an expensive gimmick. However, after experimenting with iMovie, I began to see some of its potential and I was hooked. I soon found that many of the content-free apps, such as iMovie, Keynote and PuppetPals provided me with a medium through which I could teach in an inspiring and innovative way. Three years on, the school now has one iPad between two children and the opportunities to use the technology in a creative way have multiplied. The iPad is a valuable and powerful resource which has changed my approach to teaching and learning. My lessons are now more dynamic, with greater opportunities for the children to make decisions and choices for themselves. The pupils are often scattered around the school working in small groups to develop creative ways to record, present, evaluate and explain. My role as a teacher has also changed as I have become a facilitator and guide, providing quality control and advice. I have been able to introduce longer integrated projects combining different subjects and skills where the iPad is a key tool in the process. The iPad has been invaluable in enabling me to make the curriculum change I wanted. I can now say the skills of curiosity, collaboration, critical thinking, reflectiveness and creativity are being practised on a daily basis through this technology. However, it is the ease with which you can create on the iPad that has had the most impact in my classroom. The controls are so intuitive that very little time, if any once an app has been introduced, is spent teaching the children how to use the technology. This means that tasks that would have seemed too complicated or time consuming in the past are now possible."

"Technology is critical for innovation, yet schools struggle to get students interested in this area. Could teaching robotics change this? The Queensland government has just announced plans to make teaching robotics compulsory in its new curriculum - aimed at students from prep through to year 10. Robotics matches the new digital technologies curriculum, strongly supported by the university sector and states, including Victoria. But while, worldwide, there are increasing initiatives such as the Robotics Academy in the US to teach robotics in schools, Australia isn't doing enough to get it taught in schools. To explain why we should teach children how to program robots in schools, we first need to understand what a robot is. "

"Back in March of this year at the Future Ready Schools Summit at Leyden High School, I attended one of the featured speaker sessions led by James Sanders. It was a great session with lots of takeaways about meaningful digital learning. My biggest takeaway though, was one of the last things he mentioned in the session. I looked back at my notes and this is the last thing I typed… "Breakout room idea". James shared with us this breakout room idea and gave us a little background about how this all came about. He went on to explain to us that there are these escape rooms around the world where you pay to get "locked in" a room with friends and try to escape by solving puzzles and unlocking codes. He was in Edmonton, Canada, with some high school students playing one of these escape games and he was amazed at how hard these students were working during this game. James wanted to turn this incredible learning experience of problem solving and fun and into something that can be used in the classroom. I left there super excited about this."

"This past Friday, my wife (@sfryer) and I facilitated a full-day, hands-on workshop about ways to use iPads in the classroom with students to "show what they know with media." 164 teachers participated in the workshop, which was held in two adjacent ballrooms of the Alumni Center at Kansas State University. The event, iCamp iPad Day, was hosted by the College of Education at Kansas State (@ksucollegeofed) and organized by Cyndi Danner Kuhn (@cyndidannerkuhn). The workshop included many elements of iPad Media Camp (@iPadMediaCamp), a 3 day workshop I've offered in the summertime the past four years. During the planning stages for "iCamp iPad Day," Shelly and I discussed the different sharing options we wanted to model for participants and encourage them to use. We decided to use the term "INSIDE SHARING" for the private sharing we'd do during the workshop using SeeSaw. We decided to use the term "OUTSIDE SHARING" for public sharing on Twitter using our #iCampKSU hashtag and other open websites. In this post, I'll explain why both inside and outside digital sharing are important, and how we can use these terms with students, teachers, parents and others to advocate for SHARING AS A MORAL IMPERATIVE (hat tip to Dean Shareski @shareski)."

"In this introductory Keynote for iOS tutorial from The Epic Guide to Keynote for iOS, you are introduced to Keynote's interface and learn how it is laid out. We look at the buttons and toolbars in some depth and learn what each button in Keynote actually does. The Presentation Manager and Presentation Editor How to create folders in Keynote How to duplicate and delete Keynote Presentations How to create, import and share Keynote Presentations The Slide Manager and how to create new slides The Keynote Toolbar Explained (undo/redo, the format inspector, add new objects, Keynote settings, sharing and Presentation Mode) "

"Since the late 1990s, the virtual yellow line has been quietly enhancing football broadcasts by giving viewers a live, intuitive guide to the state of play. The graphic is engineered to appear painted on the field, rather than simply plopped on top of the players, so it doesn't distract from the game at all. The line debuted during a September 27, 1998, game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Cincinnati Bengals. It was developed by a company called Sportvision Inc. and operated by six people in a 48-foot semi-truck parked outside the stadium. ESPN was the only network that immediately agreed to pay the steep price of $25,000 per game. Before long, other companies began offering the yellow line to the other networks, and now you won't see a football game without it. "

"One thing it doesn't mean, or it really shouldn't mean, is that we replace any existing teachers with engineers or computer science specialists. "Learning how to code is certainly not an easy task, but it pales in comparison to learning how to teach," says Adam Enbar, cofounder of the Flatiron School, a coding academy in New York. Indeed, it doesn't matter how well you know your way around a line of code if you can't impart that information clearly to a pupil, a lesson Gina Sipley, a former English and social studies teacher, experienced firsthand when she herself was learning to code through a General Assembly course. "The teacher we had was a brilliant programmer, that was clear, but had never taught before," she explains. "So as the course went on, people sought out the teachers in the room and said, 'This doesn't make sense. How would you present the information?' I don't have a deep content knowledge at all, but I know how people learn best and how to structure lessons so people are going to get the most out of it." So, what's the smartest, most effective way to go about teaching our 3.1 million existing public school teachers to code, so they're prepared to teach our students?"

But Apps and the developers (many of who are bringing teachers onto their teams) are changing. The philosophy has changed. The products they are producing have a new focus. These Apps are gaining a vote of confidence from teachers who are downloading them. So why are these Apps dominating school App lists and gaining respect from the educational community. Quite simply they promote elements that we know have a positive impact on learning. Applications such as Book Creator and Explain Everything start with a blank canvas and lead students to use multimedia to demonstrate learning, produce digital products and make learning more visible.

"Lego is phenomenal super-toy, which helps stimulate kids' creativity, imagination, as well as logical thinking. Yet, school teacher Alycia Zimmerman do not only use it as a toy, but also as a great aid to develop basic math skills among her young minds. Lego blocks, she finds, are good tool to explain fractions, squares and other mathematical concepts. "In the classroom, the tiny bricks are now my favorite possibility-packed math manipulative," she writes in an article for Scholastic that goes more into depth about these bricks' potential uses."