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"I had the pleasure of being at SLATE (technology conference here in Wisconsin) the last two days, and beside the wonderful people I got to connect and re-connect with, there was also one session that made me terribly excited. And while I am not usually one to share tech tools, these are all pretty easy, free and fantastic. All of this come courtesy of Mickey Chavannes @mchavannes."

"The interest in inquiry-based learning seems to ebb and flow based on-well, it's not clear why it ever ebbs. In short, it is a student-centered, Constructivist approach to learning that requires critical thinking, and benefits from technology, collaboration, resourcefulness, and other modern learning skills that never seem to fall out of favor themselves. Regardless, St Oliver Plunkett Primary School has put together two very useful images that can help you populate your iPad-or classroom of iPads-with apps that support both inquiry-based learning (the second image below), and a more general approach to pedagogy based on Apple's uber-popular tablet (the top image)."

"I have been sharing several visuals on Bloom's Taxonomy over the last couple of years but I never came across a graphic that captures the essence of the three versions of Bloom's taxonomy as the one below. Actually, Bloom's taxonomy comes only into two versions, the original which was created by a committee of educators chaired by Benjamin Bloom sometime in the 1950s of last century. During the 1990s another group of educators and cognitive psychologists led by Lorin Anderson ( a former student of Bloom) updated the original version to make it convenient with the learning needs of the 21st century."

"It is that time of year again, when teacher's are desperately trying to prepare for SATs tests and looking for ways in which to get those all important results. The Year 6 teachers asked are there any really good apps to help with revising different topics. I have previously blogged about ways in which I use the iPads to make the SPAG more bearable - read here. I have recently discovered two new apps from Andrew Brodie, focusing on Mental Maths and they both are BRILLIANT!"

"Last fall I wrote an ABC/25 Foundation grant through my district for the supplies for Green Screen Stop-Motion Animation Stations. My ideas for what to purchase evolved a bit with more research to include green display board from BLICK and iPad stands from Anker. We will have two stages of production. "

"Two 5-year-old boys, one with autism, were having some friendly playtime when they had a communication breakdown. One boy didn't respond to the other and walked away. The ignored kid got frustrated and pushed over a small staircase, causing the first boy to fall. Their speech therapist, Jordan Sadler, decided to address the issue by recreating it in an iPad app called Puppet Pals. She restaged the scenario as a movie, even taking photos of the room for the background and of the kids for the characters. Using the app to show an instant replay of the scuffle, Sadler and the kids identified what went wrong and then recreated the scene, this time making better decisions. Creating custom stories to help kids learn communication skills or understand complex situations is just one of the ways parents, therapists and educators have taken advantage of tablets to work with kids with autism."

"Today Google released two standalone apps for Google Docs and Google Sheets. They are available for iOS and Android, and perhaps most exciting of all, another new app for Slides is on its way. So, how are they different to the iOS Drive app? Let's find out."

"I enjoy discussing iPad and other edtech resources with my colleague and friend Sylvia Duckworth almost every week through Twitter. Sylvia is a leader in the French teaching community in Canada, and has created an enormous amount of resources for language teachers to use. I asked her if she wanted to collaborate on this post, and she quickly agreed to do so. Below is a list of iPad apps that we both use in our language classrooms. The ones marked with an * are the essential, must-have ones. We have divided the list into two categories: Content consumption apps and content creation apps."

"When I talk to people about mind mapping, I usually find myself facing one of two reactions: The person I'm speaking with either LOVES mind maps, or pretty much has no idea what they are or what they could be used for. We've discussed mind maps occasionally in the past, but I recently stumbled on this great graphic from Daniel Tay(who creates a bunch of different mind maps on different topics)."

"We all love to cuddle up with a good book and read a chapter or two before we fall asleep. That was before the massive uptake of ebooks and the widespread of ebook readers and tablets. Now that life becomes excessively digitized, digital reading is virtually the norm."

"Children's unorthodox spelling and grammar while texting does not stop them learning the rules of formal English, suggests research. Just over 160 children, aged between eight and 16, from the West Midlands, took part in the snapshot study. The researchers compared spelling and grammar in formal tests and in text messages, at the start of the project and again after a year. The results showed the most creative texters were among the best spellers. The children were asked to copy out all their text messages over a two-day period."

"We have a problem-and the odd thing is we not only know about it, we're celebrating it. Just today, someone boasted to me that she was so busy she's averaged four hours of sleep a night for the last two weeks. She wasn't complaining; she was proud of the fact. She is not alone."

"For the last two years, everyone's been talking about learning to code. From Google chairman Eric Schmidt, to will.i.am and Barack Obama. But what is coding and why is it important for our kids to learn to do it? Coding, also known as programming, is giving a computer instructions to follow in a language that it understands. It can be as simple as programming a short sequence of instructions into a robot to make it move, or as complex as creating an app using a language called Objective-C. Political leaders and technologists believe it is important for the current generation to learn to code, so that in the future we have people with the necessary skills to create the new technologies we will need. This is going to be great for our economy in the future, but there is much more to it than this: it's also empowering, creative, social and great for developing problem solving skills."

"Thursday I'm sharing two presentations at iPadPalooza in Austin, Texas. Here are the titles, descriptions, and slides for these breakout sessions. Both are hands-on workshops, however, so most of the time we'll be exploring and playing with the apps Hopscotch and Brushes!"

"The legendary Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) can teach us a thing or two about engaging an audience. I stumbled upon this 1963 Playboy interview with Sinatra recently, and it's pure gold. "When I sing, I believe," says Sinatra. "I'm honest. If you want to get an audience with you, there's only one way. You have to reach out to them with total honesty and humility." Whether we're talking about an entertainer or about life in general, you can't be indifferent, Frank says. People do not connect with indifference. "This isn't a grandstand play on my part; I've discovered-and you can see it in other entertainers-when they don't reach out to the audience, nothing happens." "

"I'm in the midst of teaching my STEM students how to use the iPad app "Explain Everything" to create short, narrated slideshows about the cantilever spans project we've been doing recently. My students share iPads on our STEM cart, and do not have their own Google logins to upload videos to YouTube. So, after they complete their narrated slideshows and export their finished videos to their iPad camera roll, the challenge is: How can we readily get these videos uploaded to YouTube? This situation is complicated further by the fact that YouTube uploads are blocked on our school network by our content filter, unless a teacher logs in in to bypass the filter. Here are two ways I've dealt with these constraints and requirements. I am sharing this post today because one of the librarians in our district ran into this same problem and asked for help!"

"It's not easy being a teacher today. National, state and local politicians, philanthropists, researchers, journalists and many other people who have never actually taught a K-12 student are deciding how and what teachers should teach, and how their effectiveness should be assessed. Sadly, I've met many veteran teachers who are seriously considering retirement. Worse, I've encountered many promising young teachers who are wondering if they chose the wrong profession. How do I counsel teachers who share these thoughts with me? I remind them of two simple words: you matter. Indeed, teachers matter more now than ever."

"If it's true, in Sir Ken Robinson's words, that "Creativity is not an option, it's an absolute necessity," then it's that much more imperative to find ways to bring creativity to learning. But first, we have to understand what conditions foster true creativity. One definition that scientists have agreed upon for creativity is the ability to create something that's both novel as compared to what came before, and has value. "It's this intersection of novelty and value, a combination of those two features that's particularly important," Dr. Robert Bilder, a psychiatry and psychology professor at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. In any system, there are forces pushing towards organization and others introducing unpredictability. A truly creative idea straddles both of those states. "The truly creative changes and the big shifts occur right at the edge of chaos," Bilder said."

"Augmented reality is a new technology with some promising potential for education. The basic premise behind augmented reality is the extension of the physical world to include components of the digitally virtual world. According to Drew Minock, Co-Author of Two Guys and Some iPads , augmented reality is :"