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I was recently at Our Lady of the Angels Rouse Hill doing a workshop with them in creating iBooks using iBooks Author.  The Principal Eva La Rocco and the teachers saw the main benefit for the software as a way of students demonstrating their own understanding and knowledge by creating  an iBook that incorporated all their work.  The focus being for the students to create content rather than it being pushed to them via a teacher created iBook textbook.

"Today it's possible to film, edit, and publish movies all on an iOS device. There's no more importing video into a computer, and apps are making the process easier than ever! See a demonstration and examples of how to create excellent educational films by using a variety of iPhone and iPad apps to film, edit, enhance, and publish videos. Learn about tips and tricks for helping students memorize lines, improving sound quality, changing camera angles, improving lighting, and much more. We'll even produce a short film together!"

"A person's culture deeply impacts his or her way of thinking and learning; that presents a special challenge to educators because modern classrooms often have a beautiful mishmash of students from different backgrounds. How can you adapt and demonstrate cultural awareness in your teaching? The following resources may help."

"A couple of nights ago my friend Joe, a middle school social studies teacher, sent me a Facebook message about creating multimedia collages. My suggestion to Joe was to use PicMonkey and Thinglink. In the video below I demonstrate how to do that."

"Teachers know that video making is a tried and true way to get kids engaged in building, demonstrating, and sharing knowledge. These apps and sites feature user-friendly tools and features that make it more fun than ever before to get kids' productions edited and polished."

"There's no shortage of research around the benefits of sleep and its critical relationship to learning. So how much sleep is enough? Researchers have looked at the differences in cognitive function of people who have slept four or six or eight hours and how their brains function. This AsapSCIENCE video demonstrates what your capabilities are after those various amounts of sleep."

"Within YouTube there is a free tool for creating audio slideshows. You supply the images and YouTube supplies the audio track. You can pick from thousands of audio tracks to match to your slides. After adding your slides and selecting an audio track you can add speech bubbles to your slides. I demonstrate all of these steps in the video embedded below."

"Did you know that your students can use coding to show the lifecycle of a butterfly? Create a history timeline or interactive story? Demonstrate fractions or probability? With our new STEM Project Library - featuring ready-to-use project templates that support many academic areas - you can easily enhance STEM learning by making coding a part of what you already teach, while adding a new level of fun for your students."

"The Art of Tinkering looks at over 150 different artists and makers and how they weave science and technology into their work.  It's beautifully designed and inspiring.   It clearly demonstrates the important part that art, whimsy and creativity play in making.  Each chapter focuses on a different technique, from aerial photography to cardboard automata to wearable circuits to toy take apart.  The chapters each feature an artist or professional who uses that technique in their work, with an intimate look into their design processes, studios and tools.  The chapters then follow up with step-by-step instructions for a DIY activity, which are often excellent for maker stations.  I'm eager to try out the DIY wind tunnel and the marble run with my students."

""Coding is one piece of computational literacy and should be taught explicitly in school, but a semester or two of coding won't do," said Sweeney, who emphasized that a more "broad and deep approach" is necessary. He advocates a progression where students are challenged to use design thinking-a method that draws on logic, intuition, and different types of reasoning-to identify opportunities, harness the appropriate tools and resources, and demonstrate their outcomes."

But Apps and the developers (many of who are bringing teachers onto their teams) are changing. The philosophy has changed. The products they are producing have a new focus. These Apps are gaining a vote of confidence from teachers who are downloading them. So why are these Apps dominating school App lists and gaining respect from the educational community. Quite simply they promote elements that we know have a positive impact on learning. Applications such as Book Creator and Explain Everything start with a blank canvas and lead students to use multimedia to demonstrate learning, produce digital products and make learning more visible.

"Block Posters is a web-based tool to which you can upload a high quality graphic then divide it into letter-sized chunks for printing. Print out each section and put them together on a poster board to make your own poster. If you find a great infographic or poster that you want to display in your classroom, Block Posters is a good tool to use. Block Posters is also good for creating large jigsaw puzzles. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use Block Posters. "

"This sample rubric from Lisa Yokana can help guide efforts to assess the materials and knowledge students come to understand through the process of making, as well as the habits of mind and qualities they demonstrate. For more information, read the associated post: "Creating an Authentic Maker Education Rubric." For an editable version of this rubric, check out this "Editable Sample Rubric.""

"Over the last week Twitter has been rolling out a new polling feature to its users. The new polling option allows you to post a Tweet that contains a short poll question. Using a poll is different than just asking people to reply to a question that you Tweet. When you post a poll people don't have to reply to you with an "@" reply. Instead of sending a written reply people just choose from one of your response choices. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how the new polling feature works. "

"Zing is a service offering thousands of free fiction and non-fiction ebooks to teachers and students. On Zing you can browse for books by topic, language, or reading level. You can read the books in your web browser on a laptop or tablet. Zing is more than just a repository of free ebooks. In the Zing reader students will find a built-in dictionary and tools for taking notes while they read. In the video embedded below I demonstrate some of the features of Zing."

"I want people to realize that the concept of coding happens all the time in many classrooms. Kids tinker, make, solve problems, collaborate and challenge each other all the time. I'd argue that most teachers already do most of this list, without the awareness. The Hour of Code movement is great because it raises awareness but does little from the aforementioned list. HOC is a superb entry point but not a destination. Coding isn't the only way to demonstrate these skills - and technology isn't even required. I've been pushing coding for close to a decade now and am pleased to see it finally get some traction (and there were many before me). Now it is time for a next step. As such, I am proposing a new hashtag #CTMindset (Computational Thinking Mindset) to remind us how people think, computers think and technology works. If we can combine the three, maybe there is some hope."

"Our virtual reality project took shape during the 2017 iPad and Digital Education Summit [in French]. A high school geography teacher presented pedagogical examples of how to use virtual reality to visit tourist sites. One participant pointed out that virtual reality could also be used to create empathy. This idea immediately caught our attention, since our respective courses appeal to this notion and we face challenges in the acquisition and demonstration of this skill by the students."