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For schools in Australia and many parts of the world, we are heading towards the end of another school term and year. That means report writing season. For the next few weeks, teachers across the country will be huddled in front of computer screens, writing reflections on the progress their learners have made. Mark books will be opened, assessments consulted, work samples will be reviewed. All so that in the first week of the long Summer vacation students can sit and read their report and make plans for how they will enhance their learning in the coming year.

"If you've opened this post hoping to read something brand-new, you might be disappointed. There will be no fancy bells or whistles here. That's because a lot of the strategies we're going to talk about are things you've already done; some teachers have probably been doing them for decades. You just might not have known exactly why they worked or how to harness them in the most optimal way. That's what cognitive scientists have been doing, trying to pinpoint exactly which activities work best for storing concepts in long-term memory. Over the past few years, we've been following their progress: In our 2015 study of the book Make it Stick, we first talked about the concepts of retrieval practice, spaced practice, and interleaving. These concepts were also addressed in the 2016 post Six Powerful Learning Strategies You Must Share with Students, and in 2017, where I made a strong push again for using more retrieval practice in our teaching."

In this day and age, teachers need to use every resource at their disposal. With distance learning being something that doesn't seem to be going anywhere soon, one of those tools may very well be YouTube. This platform is a great place to create a video that corresponds with your curriculum for your students to access them at any time.  If you are going to use the platform, there are extra considerations that need to be made. There are also YouTube features every teacher should know how to use before posting those educational videos. Below we are going to take a look at those and why you should use the platform. Let's start with that question first.

"You learned how to Zoom, or Hangout, or Team up. You read all the quick tips about emergency remote teaching. You recorded your lectures or gathered via video call with however many students you could reach each week. You pivoted, shifted and, let's be real, maybe stumbled into a makeshift version of online education. At last, final grades-or pass/fail marks-are turned in. Congratulations, you made it through the virtual semester. Now what?"

"Yes, the Flipped Classroom (Video lessons watched before class time) is a fashionable topic but whilst there's still chalk-and-talk together with standardised testing I feel I must continue to push it. And no, it's not just chalk-and-talk in disguise. It creates a whole new learning environment for the student."

"As we were having a great discussion about the connectivism article and what it meant for universities and their classrooms, one faculty member spoke up with this: I just wish they could find information better. They can't tell the junk from the good stuff. ….and that's when I started appologizing for our K-12 system. I find it sad that university professors are not using technology in their classes. They are not trying new things like posing interesting questions and having students research those questions and come to class ready to have deep discussions about them because "they can't tell the junk from the good stuff". As soon as this statement was made, heads started nodding around the room and with my own recent rantings on this subject as well….I led them into that discussion."

"This week, Grade 5 began a unit on Volume, Capacity and Surface Area. On a weekly basis, I take combined groups from the 4 grades consisting of the higher achievers, while the classroom teachers concentrate on the mainstream group and students needing more individual instruction to achieve success. I made a conscious decision this week to focus on using iPads with my group to explore both volume/capacity as well as surface area."

"Pad's monopoly of the ' school tablet market ' is being compromised now after the announcement of Google Play for Education. Google seems to be moving towards displacing Apple's hegemony of this market by providing a suite of productivity management apps made specifically for teachers and students."

"I made this Webinar a few months ago…. Creation Tools for the iPad… and today I wanted to share some of the apps and ideas around Creating "stuff" on the iPad. With the camera, it's portability and some fabulous apps, it has never been easier for us to create our own resources on the iPad. And when I say "us", I don't just mean educators - teachers, therapists, parents and support staff, I also mean, our students as well. Anyone and everyone can harness the power and possibilities in the iPad to create some amazing things!"

"As Kristin Berbawy packed projects into her car, she lingered over one in particular. Two 3D-printed Makerbots with wire hooks-a pair of earrings. They matched the white braces on her teeth and the white strands in her hair. Her students had made them-as they had all the projects in her car-in their high school makerspace. She was proud of them. She was going to display their work to other teachers. Smack in the middle of AP exams, a growing group of teachers is pouring time, creativity and energy into activities for which there are no standardized tests: makerspaces. The movement is avowedly grassroots and candidly quirky, and its main gathering is the Maker Educator Convening in Oakland, CA, where Kristin Berbawy was headed with a trunkload of laser cut wood and 3D printed objects. "

"As the end of the school year draws to a close, administrators start pulling together their PD plans for the summer in preparation for the next year. Meanwhile, teachers sit anxiously by with the dread that can only come with the anticipation of the dreaded PD days that their contract says they must attend. It's not that teachers don't want to grow and improve their craft. They do, and they find it refreshingly professionalizing when they get to. It's just that this ain't their first rodeo. They've been made to sit through pointless professional development in the past and they lament that they're thinking "how long will this last and what will I have to turn in…and when is lunch?" as they trudge toward the library down the hallway that so obviously lacks the normal student energy they've used as fuel for the past 9 months. But it doesn't have to be like that. In fact, if we do things well, teachers are likely to come away from their professional development energized and excited."

"While using twitter one night, I saw a teacher using coding blocks.  Hand's on, tangible, printed blocks.  No actually technology was involved.  I loved that this was a fun and easy way to include coding for French learners.  I googled the blocks and found them.  (http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/resources/vector-scratch-blocks).  I knew that these blocks could help my students, but I needed them in French.  I asked on Twitter, on Facebook, anywhere I could.  They were nowhere to be found.  So I decided to make them and I would like to share them with you all.  You can find them here:  https://goo.gl/A1ajhN (or in the folder below). This link will take you to the blocks that I have made and other helpful documents."

"I love teaching! I love being a School Librarian & Technology Specialist. I love my practice, my profession, my school, my library, my students, my families, and my community! I can't imagine doing anything else that feeds my soul like being an educator. I love the seasons and the time and tide of it. * Every new school year is a do-over. Any and all the mistakes or things you didn't get to do the year before can be corrected the next year. I can't think of any other profession that gives you such a clear start and stop and a time to reflect. The great thing about summers off (other than that they are made of awesome) is the ability to step back and reflect about the past school year. "

"Ten years ago, I walked past a newsstand and out of the myriad of multicolored covers, one jumped out at me: MAKE magazine. As someone who grew up making stuff, this magazine spoke directly to me. I bought copies and immediately brought them to the director of my school. I remember triumphantly exclaiming "We should show this to all of the teachers-think of the projects we can do!" A decade later, well-intentioned schools that create dedicated "maker spaces" worry me. For the uninitiated, a maker space often houses ultramodern tools like a laser cutter or 3D printers, mixed with drill presses, table saws, and soldering irons, or perhaps screen printing equipment or sewing machines. My fear is that stand-alone maker spaces will cause the powerful act of creation to be confined to only certain parts of the school building. I worry that yesterday's centralized computer lab-which we rightly democratized and decentralized by putting computers in every classroom-is today's maker space. When I walk past a new room being outfitted with a laser cutter or a drill press and hear, "This is our maker space!" I am tempted to ask: "What happens in all of the other spaces? What do people do there?" The act of creation is transformative. An individual's self-image is forever changed when he or she can hold up a real object-a real contribution to the world-and say, "I made this." In a time when students' lives are increasingly virtual, abstract and vicarious experiences, it is every teacher's job to make learning, and life, "hands-on." "

"Yesterday after school my fourth-quarter filmmaking group made up of fourth and fifth grade students, met for the first time to start filming "The Ghost of Bethke." Although we have been writing the script and planning the movie for the past few weeks, this was the first time we met to start filming, but this time there is a twist. This time we are filming our movie exclusively on a new iPad (the iPad 3). I was impressed with the new camera on this iPad and I wanted to see if a movie could really be shot and edited on it."

"We often get asked by teachers how they can share the books they have made using Book Creator for iPad or any other iBooks with people who don't own an Apple device. A common example might be to share the work of their students with parents, or on the school's blog. Although there are a few workarounds for sharing iBooks, this article explores an excellent way to convert iBooks into video format, which can easily be shared across a number of platforms."

"The idea of combining great teachers with individualized learning platforms, leveraging technology is what blended learning is all about. In the newest installment of the DLN Smart Series videos, we hear from teachers, administrators and edtech specialists who have made the leap and fully believe that blended digital learning truly makes school better for all students."

"I have made no secret of my fondness for generic apps that enhance learning. Explain Everything, Google Drive and Evernote can aid the educator and student alike. However, there is a new contender on the block for the No.1 app in education. Socrative 1.0 was very good - Socrative 2.0 looks excellent. This brief introduction to Socrative 2.0 highlights its potential and possible use in the classroom. I look forward to hearing about the effect it has in schools."

"So this collection wasn't as easy to curate as it'd seem. It wasn't a matter of simply choosing the best apps across content areas-math, science, social studies, etc. The title says "every iPad," which seems to imply universal needs. Every. iPad. Same with age and grade level, reading level, and gender. So we took at look at apps that could be used in any content area, and at (almost) any grade level K-5. (Phonics Genius likely wouldn't be as necessary in later elementary grades as it might in K-3, for example.) The focus is on literacy, content, and play. An argument could be made that elementary school students may be better served with an Encyclopedia app rather than Google Search. You almost may want something with a subscription as Brainpop has, or a slightly more child-friendly word processor than Pages. Substitute away!"