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Learning is a social endeavour. Schools need to understand that for our students the social landscape has changed. Rather than turning away from this reality we need to understand what it means and what our children need to know and learn to safely maximise the opportunities it brings.

Today I had the pleasure of joining over three-hundred educators for a day of learning and sharing. That this was a Sunday and that the event was organised as a free event for educators by educators speaks volumes of the quality and care that educators bring to their role. 

Don't put yourself out on a limb. Build a professional learning network and watch links, blog posts, and other resources come to you. A year ago, I had no idea what a PLN was. Before I built my professional learning network, I did all my learning by myself. If I needed to understand something for a new unit, I researched it on my own. That was before I discovered Twitter, the virtual meeting place where your PLN comes together.

"Technology influences education. It's a bit late to discuss how social media and technology may reshape learning and schools. The train has already departed and so we can observe some changes taking place. There are plenty of ways to go about it-social learning networks currently offer first class tickets to the "next-gen" learning."

"With so many great resources on the web, teachers are realizing that they can learn just as much (if not more!) from their personal learning network (PLN) as they can from traditional professional development (PD). Educators are connecting with like-minded individuals across the globe, reading about best practices and new trends in education, and sharing their experiences with friends and colleagues. Through social media, popular blogs and webinars, teachers are taking ownership of their learning and finding PD opportunities that weren't possible a decade ago. Try using these strategies to make your PLN work for you, and take control of your own professional development! "

"Forming and supporting professional learning groups can be particularly important in maker-centered contexts, as maker-based activities often occupy a precarious space in the structure and curriculum of traditional schools. That maker education is not yet a formal discipline and does not have the backing of a professional and organized network makes it especially important to develop learning communities that scaffold and connect educators who often work in isolated siloes."

"I think that "Is MY Professional Development Up-To-Date?" is the first question which you need to ask yourselves! You can ONLY give BEST and QUALITY courses when knowing about the latest knowledge in a 21st Century Education. But ===> HOW TO know this? Life Long Learning!

"To counter common misconceptions and bring clarity to discussions about "Flipped Learning," the governing board and key leaders of the Flipped Learning Network (FLN) announced a formal definition of the term. They also released the Four Pillars of F-L-I-P™ and a checklist of eleven indicators that educators must incorporate into their practice. The group of experienced flipped educators also draws a distinction between Flipped Learning and a Flipped Classroom.  "

"What is on the five-year horizon for K-12 schools worldwide? Which trends and technologies will drive educational change? What are the challenges that we consider as solvable or difficult to overcome, and how can we strategize effective solutions? These questions and similar inquiries regarding technology adoption and transforming teaching and learning steered the collaborative research and discussions of a body of 56 experts to produce the NMC Horizon Report > 2015 K-12 Edition, in partnership with the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). The NMC also gratefully acknowledges ISTE as a dissemination partner. The three key sections of this report - key trends, significant challenges, and important developments in educational technology - constitute a reference and straightforward technology planning guide for educators, school leaders, administrators, policymakers, and technologists. It is our hope that this research will help to inform the choices that institutions are making about technology to improve, support, or extend teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in K-12 education across the globe. View the wiki where the work was produced."

"A group of children on a playground, each kid clutching a slip of paper with a number on it, moves along a line drawn in chalk, comparing numbers as they go and sorting themselves into ascending order from one to ten. Another group of children, sitting in a circle, passes pieces of fruit - an apple, an orange - from hand to hand until the color of the fruit they're holding matches the color of the T-shirt they're wearing. It may not look like it, but the children engaged in these exercises are learning computer science. In the first activity, they've turned themselves into a sorting network: a strategy computers use to sort random numbers into order. And in the second activity, they're acting out the process by which computer networks route information to its intended destination. Both are from a project called Computer Science Unplugged, which endeavors to teach students computer science without using computers."

"With so many schools adopting the use of iPads I find it strange that we aren't hearing more about the incredible opportunities available in iTunes U. Well I suppose it isn't that strange given that schools in the early stages of transitioning to an iPad platform are extremely busy and learning one more thing can seem overwhelming. Trust me, I understand that, but I believe if you were to learn one more thing it should be about the power of iTunes U. The possibilities of this incredible tool are endless. I'd like to provide you with just a few examples of the many uses of iTunes U in the hopes that more schools will join this incredible network of learning resources."

"In my classroom over the last few years I've shown many Youtube videos to inspire resiliency, grit, hope, and discussion prior to guiding them in the creation of their inquiry questions about their passions and wonders during our weekly Genius Hour time.  This post is a follow up post to my post 23 Videos that Sparked Genius Hour Thinking, Collaboration, and Actions.  Many of those videos and the ones I am sharing now were shared with me through the wonderful connections I have made with educators learners on Twitter, Facebook, and at workshops.  I am continually inspired by the educators in my personal learning network.  Thank you to all of you who share your learning and inspirations daily.  You have helped me make sense of the ideas that are floating around in my head.  I am proud to say that students in my classes are constantly inspiring each other and their teacher.  Some of their work is shared on the list below."

Understanding how mobile, global and virtual social networks influence our interpretation of socio-cultural theories of learning might allow us to better understand the interplay of settings and contexts within which learning occurs and in doing so better understand how learning may be facilitated.

"Like many kids of my generation growing up in India, I was an avid reader of Enid Blyton's novels. Many of her books were written as a series ("The Famous Five," "The Secret Seven" and "Five Find-Outers") and I recall wondering if the lives of characters overlapped in any way. Did a character from one series ever run into one from another, for example? I recall wondering the same thing in later years about P.G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle and Jeeves series. Today, in a world where communities real and imagined are digitally connected via platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, we can reframe that question in terms of those common nodes (or friends) in those characters' social networks. As it turns out, network theory as an analytic technique, or what I'd call computational literary analysis, is not just a bona fide research endeavor. It's also a great example of how computational thinking (CT) is truly a cross-disciplinary skill that can be weaved to enrich learning in any subject (not just math and science, as is sometimes the assumption). In an earlier article on computational thinking, I offered teasers of how CT could be integrated into language arts and social studies, in addition to math and science. Here's a detailed treatment of one of those examples, drawn from the work of Franco Moretti's group on "Computational Criticism," which is part of the broader Digital Humanities initiative at Stanford. (See this New York Times profile for more on the work of this group)."

On Saturday PZ Sydney Network hosted Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church for a conversation about their new book, "The Power of Making Thinking Visible". What follows is a summary of some of the key messages from this conversation. You can watch the whole conversation above. For more learning opportunities like this visit the PZ Sydney Network or follow @pzsydnetwork on Twitter.

"Following the post on iPad Apps for Music Education I received a couple of requests to feature a post on  iPad apps for  teaching and learning piano. And because I don't know any that I would recommend I crowdsourced the topic on my personal learning network and got a lot of feedback from music teachers. Based on these responses I compiled the list below for other piano teachers to consider. I hope you will find the list helpful. Enjoy."

"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 UK is on a mission to create a nation of coders. A new GCSE for programming is set to launch and everyone from business leaders to celebrities are getting behind the campaign to boost the country's tech talent. The current trend follows the influential Next Gen report, which warned that the UK was losing out to overseas developers through the lack of technology specialists at home. The move from infrastructure to the cloud and the boom in smartphones and tablets have further increased demand. To meet the challenge, the government is spearheading a push to get more kids coding and to increase vocational skills. Education secretary, Nicky Morgan, recently told teenagers to stay away from the arts and to opt for science and maths if they want access to the widest range of jobs. Every child should learn to program, but not necessarily how to code Read more As an employer of more than 85 staff at a fast-growing UK tech company, I consider Morgan's approach as potentially short-sighted. For Potato, while coding expertise has been essential, employing staff from a variety of backgrounds has also been key to our success."