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Drag, manipulate and animate visual mathematics to develop and generalize your understanding of fundamental concepts across elementary math, geometry, algebra, trigonometry, calculus, and beyond. Based on the award-winning software The Geometer's Sketchpad®, the Sketchpad Explorer app allows you to interact with, and investigate, any document created in Sketchpad. With a simple, powerful multitouch interface, Sketchpad Explorer puts mathematical comprehension at your fingertips.

Exploratorium : Science is an active process of observation and investigation. Evidence: How Do We Know What We Know? examines that process, revealing the ways in which ideas and information become knowledge and understanding.

"Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures" is a three-year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Carried out by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley, the digital youth project explores how kids use digital media in their everyday lives.

"What is an inquiry diary? Essentially, it is a large book (or digital equivalent - but more on that later) into which the inquiry is recorded as it unfolds - one of those big, spiral bound sketch books is ideal. Some teachers construct a diary for each inquiry while others use a single diary for the whole year. Some teachers reserve the diary for documentation of the unplanned, 'spontaneous' investigations that occur throughout the year (such as the sad death of the preying mantis at St. Fidelis Primary early this year!). Entries can be made at various times throughout the process - daily, weekly, sporadic or regular. The teacher often scribes students' suggestions or invites a small group to work on an entry. Importantly, the diary gives us an opportunity to reinforce the language of inquiry and the transferable skills and strategies that are being used within it. They can be as simple or as detailed as suits. "

"I've been looking at the art-making potential of the Exo Lab scope over the past couple of weeks. In exploring ideas for the creative classroom, it's obvious that there is real potential in this device to enhance opportunities to create rich learning experiences across teaching areas. So here's the scope (below). It's so easy to use - you simply connect it to your iPad and start exploring using an app that couples with the camera. You can take photographs, time-lapse, video recordings, make annotations and measurements… In this project I am using the pictured 'Discovery Stand', which allows you to get up-close, but there are attachments that go into a microscope too. We used those to investigate 'The World's Smallest Monster Drawing' a few weeks ago."

"The Franklin Academy High School implemented a 1:1 iPad deployment a the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year. Over the course of the next two school years, the pilot was expanded to include all grades 9-12 in the high school. This deployment has reached 475 high school students and all teaching staff. Our K-8 program deployed iPads across the grade levels in the form of class sets and mobile carts. This study targeted our 1:1 deployment at the high school to investigate the impact the device has had on teaching and learning. The survey used to gather the student data was administered in April of 2014. Students included in the survey used the device anywhere from 1 to 4 years. The students use the iPad while at school and home. Results of the survey hope to shed light on the impact the use of the iPad has had on academic gains as well as the development of the most important non-cognitive skills our program is founded upon."

"Twitter is a remarkably popular tool with educators the world over for a number of very good reasons. But while it is truly loved by many, its incredibly powerful Advanced Search feature remains underutilized and somewhat underappreciated. With access to torrents of current 'up to the moment' streaming data, thoughts, links, images and videos, the power and versatility of Twitter's Advanced Search feature really is incredible."

"Originally, we used Book Creator in English lessons, where children enjoyed producing more creative and interactive pieces, using the various tools, such as images for scenes in their stories or to link with the subject of their non-fiction work. It also helped our younger years' classes, both with writing and speaking and listening because the children were able to record their sentences, using the microphone tool. Moreover, we have a significant number of children who speak English as an additional language, so Book Creator provides excellent support for them too because they are able to practice both their written and speaking skills simultaneously. Book Creator can really work in the science classroom, according to @MrW_BVPS CLICK TO TWEET The hypothesis Realising the potential of Book Creator, I wanted to see how effective it would be in other subject areas. In this instance, we used it in Science. The children were investigating the importance of surface area when thinking about floating and sinking. I felt this would be a good fit because it would help to immerse the children in the experiment."

"July 16, 2014 While searching for some resources on a paper and writing on  the 21st century learning skills I came across this skills checklist created by the university of Toledo. This checklist is meant to help students build powerful resumes outlining all the skills they master. I spent some time going through the components of this sheet and found it really sharing with you here.  You can use this sheet with your students as an explanatory guide of some of the important skills ( I said some because some other important skills particularly those related to digital citizenship and digital literacy are missing) they need to work. Below is a round-up of the 9 most important skills which I selected from the entire list. You can acccess this list from this link. 1- Research skills Know how to find and collect relevant background information Be able to analyze data, summarize findings and write a report 2- Critical Thinking skills Be able to review different points of view or ideas and make objective judgments Investigate all the possible solutions to a problem, weighing the pros and cons 3- Organizational skills Be able to organize information, people or thins in a systematic way Be able to establish priorities and meet deadlines 4- Problem-solving skills Be able to clarify the nature of a problem Be able to evaluate alternatives, propose viable solutions and determine the outcome of the various options 5- Creative thinking skills Be able to generate new ideas, invent new things, create new images or designs Find new solutions to problems Be able to use wit and humour effectively 6- Analytical/ logical thinking skills Be able to draw specific conclusions from a set of general observations of from a set of specific facts Be able to synthesize information and ideas 7- Public speaking skills Be able to make formal presentations Present ideas, positions and problems in an interesting way 8- Oral communication skills Be able to present information and ideas clearly a

"Parents who have patiently sat through countless music recitals and questioned their sanity at encouraging all those trumpet or violin lessons need do so no longer. Even ear-splitting dissonance has an upside. Music training not only helps children develop fine motor skills, but aids emotional and behavioral maturation as well, according to a new study, one of the largest to investigate the effects of playing an instrument on brain development."

"MADISON, Wis. - Over the course of 12 weeks, twice a week, the prekindergarten students learned their ABCs. Attention, breath and body, caring practice - clearly not the standard letters of the alphabet. Rather, these 4- and 5-year-olds in the Madison Metropolitan School District were part of a study assessing a new curriculum meant to promote social, emotional and academic skills, conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (CIHM) at the Waisman Center. Researchers found that kids who had participated in the curriculum earned higher marks in academic performance measures and showed greater improvements in areas that predict future success than kids who had not. The results were recently published in the journal Developmental Psychology."

"Let me tell you a quick, cautionary tale about using images online and copyright. Last year, I received an email from one of our blog managers communicating that a popular stock photography vendor was claiming one of the images in an ebook I created had been wrongfully used.  Embarrassed, I quickly investigated. When I identified the offending image, I specifically remember ensuring I had properly sourced (and had the right permissions to use) it. As it turned out, another internet user had purchased the image from the stock photography service and uploaded it to a photo-sharing website under a Creative Commons license. So while on the surface it looked safe for the taking, it was in fact falsely promoted as a royalty-free image. Scary story, right? That's when it hit me: What if marketers didn't have to shell out more money for photos, obsess about copyright laws, and fret over permissions? What if we could help solve this issue for them by offering a repository of stock photos that anyone could use completely for free? So that's exactly what we did. We hired a photographer and took a ton of photos to give away for free -- no royalties, fees, or attribution required. (Although we'd never say no to an inbound link or two. ;-) )"

"Schools are busy places filled with competing agendas. At Printrbot Learn, we believe that learning should be hands on. We believe that kids need opportunities to become builders, designers and inventors and that classrooms and schools should be spaces where all learners can pursue their passions. Teachers and students need all kinds of tools to do this. They need paints and clay. They need microscopes and sand tables. They need electronics, robotics and 3D printers. Each of these tools give us opportunities to dream, to imagine, to investigate and to design. We need to build learning spaces which are worthy of the passion and potential of our kids. While skills and tests are part of the reality of education, we want to do all that we can to ensure that kids, their curiosity and passions stay at the forefront of what we do. This is where making needs to be an important part of classroom life."

"Below is a set of good iPad apps that you can use with your kids and students to enhance their mathematical thinking. These apps are meant for young learners and are specifically useful when introducing kids to those rudimentary notions of mathematical computations. The purpose of teaching kids to think mathematically, as detailed in Kaye Stacey's paper, is three folds: First, it will allow kids to conduct mathematical investigations by themselves. Second, it will help them acquire other thinking skills particularly problem-solving and as mathematician Paul Halmos (1980) stated, 'problem solving is the heart of mathematics'. Third, it helps kids get a deeper appreciation of mathematics and use it in their daily and working lives."

The most recent issue of the 21cif Information Fluency newsletter. Feel free to join! Low volume news letter dedicated to searching, evaluating and ethical use of digital information. Includes an invitation for free access to our new 3 hour self paced training course and online assessment: Information Fluency Investigator 3.1.

"Allowing learners to struggle will actually help them learn better, according to research on "productive failure" conducted by Manu Kapur, a researcher at the Learning Sciences Lab at the National Institute of Education of Singapore. Kapur's investigations find that while the model adopted by many teachers and employers when introducing others to new knowledge-providing lots of structure and guidance early on, until the students or workers show that they can do it on their own-makes intuitive sense, it's not the best way to promote learning. Rather, it's better to let neophytes wrestle with the material on their own for a while, refraining from giving them any assistance at the start."

"The gift of time: Often underrated and underestimated Educators know there is much to investigate, debate, and expand on in our profession. Inevitably you will hear, "there doesn't seem to be enough time"…but time, we seem to find. Just go on Twitter and peruse for awhile, you will find dedicated educators taking risks, asking questions and issuing provocations to one another. We somehow find the time because we know our professional development (PD) is essential to the contribution we can make as teachers to student growth and innovative practices. Contrary to some current thinking out there, educators (and their practice) are always evolving, as is the curriculum that guides us. So given the gift of time, how do we use it most effectively or more so, in the most sustainable way? "