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" "Even young kids have gotten very adept at Minecraft, so it can be quite intimidating for teachers," said Jason Schmidt, an instructional technologist for Bennington Public Schools who will teach the four-week MinecraftEdu MOOC, in a prepared statement. "If I can help get teachers over that hump, imagine how delighted students will be to have a learning environment tailored to their interests for a change." The other, Minecraft for Educators, "is a course for teachers who are wishing to gamify their learning experiences and deliver a unique pedagogy that will engage, enthuse and keep learners coming back for more," according to information released by the company. Both MOOCs are available through the Canvas Network. Minecraft for Educators will start January 26, 2015 and run through March 9. The company has also released a Minecraft app to allow students to submit assignments to the Canvas learning management system from within the game. Using the app, students can tag what they've made in the game for their teachers to visit, upload books they've written in game directly to the speed grader or use the game's circuitry tool to complete assignments that will be automatically graded. A video demonstration of the app is available at YouTube. Other MOOCs for teachers in the suite include: Digital Literacies 1; Digital Literacies 2; Five Habits of Highly Effective Teachers; Teachers without Borders: Educating Girls; and Tinker, Make and Learn. Among the other MOOC offerings in the new suite is a course designed specifically for parents, Parenting in the Digital Age, which aims to help them address issues such as cyberbullying, digital citizenship, exposure to inappropriate content, media literacy and screentime. Taught by Andrew Swickheimer, director of technology at Noblesville Schools, the self-paced course opens September 22. "Parental involvement in K-12 education has one of the biggest impacts on a child's commitment to learning," said Jared Stein, vice pres

"An Ottawa school was in lockdown earlier this week because of a gun reference posted on the social messaging service Yik Yak. And Charlottetown police said this week that some local students aren't attending school because they can't take reading the comments on Yik Yak. Yik Yak is the latest anonymous messaging app to cause trouble among teens Be anonymous, share online with these social networking apps The app has been linked to threats, pranks and cyberbullying at schools across North America, prompting many to block it. But is that a good idea? Here's what you need to know about Yik Yak."

"We need to teach students about how to properly use and leverage social media. For many very good reasons, social media has been given a bad rap in the past few years. There have been far too many cases of cyberbullying with tragic results. However, social media is not going to go away. It is here to stay and we as educators have a responsibility to teach students how to use it properly. Instead of banning it from our classrooms, we need to embrace it and model the many great ways that it can be used. (Sylvia Duckworth in https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/pmate-ppmee.nsf/eng/wz02162.html)"

"October is National Bullying Prevention month. I like to focus on getting students to spread kindness and feel the benefits of being kind versus being mean to others. Many children play social games, such as Roblox and Fortnite, and experience cyberbullying much more than we did in the past. Many students have shared with me their experiences of others being mean, trash talking, or cursing at them during the games. Many of the children don't realize the impact of their reactions or words on others. To help students reflect more on how their words and actions impact others our objective this month is, "How to be kind online and offline!" Below are some resources and ideas related to this theme so you can challenge your students to choose to be kind online and offline."

"Sleepless night and eyeball fatigue. Cyberbullying and profound device-separation anxiety. Research identifies harmful side effects of too much tech on teens with alarming regularity. But a new report from the Pew Research Center suggests parents are just as compromised by our portable screens. In "How Teens and Parents Navigate Screen Time and Device Distractions," researchers not only compiled data on the behavior of tech-addled kids (they're on their phones from the moment they wake up!) or the concerns of hand-wringing parents (what do we do about the fact they're on their phones from the moment they wake up!), but on the behavior of parents, too."