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"I always felt trapped in school, with teachers telling me what to do and feeding me information that did not make sense. Honestly, I hated school and rarely paid attention or did homework. Obviously, I was mad when my mother forced me to go to my middle school's Summer Maker Camp. It sounded extremely boring. More school in the summer? I think not. Within the first hour of camp, the teachers presented us with a challenge: Create a project related to something you love, incorporate some type of technology, and possibly start a business around it. I never did anything like this in school before. It was open-ended, and I could do it my own way, instead of sitting at a desk and being told to open to page 84. This excited me. I could work on a project that I chose!"

"Something special is happening in my school district. It's quite magical actually... We are purchasing more and more Legos for our students as tools of learning. Now, don't get me wrong, I know how this sounds... Kids playing with Legos while at school may appear on the surface as counterproductive when it comes to improving standardized test scores. That may be true (there's not a lot of research out there), but I'm feeling optimistic and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that playing with Legos may just have a positive effect on student learning, student growth and development, AND standardized test scores..."

"If you build it, will they come? That is the question many schools have about finding room on campus for a "makerspace." The just-released 6th annual New Media Consortium Horizon Report K-12 Edition listed makerspaces as an emerging technology in the year-or-less adoption timeframe. "Makerspaces are increasingly being looked to as a method for engaging learners in creative, higher-order problem-solving through hands-on design, construction, and iteration," the report noted. That sounds great, but what is the definition of a makerspace, and how do you launch one? As Dale Dougherty, one of the founders of the maker movement, has said, a makerspace might share aspects of shop class, an art studio, science labs and home economics. It could focus on electronics, robotics, woodworking, sewing, laser cutting, programming or any combination of those."

"Augmented Reality is the term used by apps which overlay content on top of real world objects. Imagine viewing a textbook page through your iPad and the pictures come to life with sound and animations. This can have some great educational uses. From bringing spacecraft or animals into the classroom, to bringing worksheets to life with interactive 3D models. The tech is still in its infancy. At the moment you still need to view things through some kind of device - a tablet, phone or webcam. Can you imagine what this would be like when viewed through something like Google Glass? But that's something for the future. There's many different apps out there, but here are a few of my favourites that could be used to teach Science."

"Last summer at the Apple developer conference, WWDC, we learned that there were more than 1.2 million apps in the Apple App Store alone. That's a lot of choices. In a sea that large, understanding how to find apps for the classroom can be challenging. In speaking with numerous educators, we learned that most app downloads result from a colleague's recommendation (i.e., word of mouth) or from choosing the first app in the search results. These are both sound strategies given the limited time educators have to explore each new app. But a larger point has become clear: learning to swiftly evaluate apps has become an essential skill in the fast-growing, ever-changing mobile classroom. The Great App Checklist, go.sas.com/MobileLearning. We offer this checklist to help educators zero in on the app they need and to judge how well it performs key functions. This rubric can help developers understand how educators choose apps, what information would help someone in this audience, which details to mention in the app store summary, and what is the essential functionality. The checklist's themes - Purpose, Alignment, Pedagogically-based, Personalization, Sharing, Ease of Use, Privacy, App Citizenship, and Access - are those discussed throughout Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Developers, Educators, and Learners."

"Those who follow my blog know that I have jumped into and am loving the current emphasis on the Maker Movement and Maker Education. As I was flying back from a recent conference, I noticed a film on the screen embedded in the plane seat in front of me. I was immediately intrigued by the animated film and watch the 10 minute short animation in awe of its brilliance. No sound was needed. Upon further research, I discovered it is called "Me + Her", a Sundance-nominated short film set in a world made entirely out of cardboard."

"Any book lover can tell you: diving into a great novel is an immersive experience that can make your brain come alive with imagery and emotions and even turn on your senses. It sounds romantic, but there's real, hard evidence that supports these things happening to your brain when you read books. In reading, we can actually physically change our brain structure, become more empathetic, and even trick our brains into thinking we've experienced what we've only read in novels."

"For about a month in the spring of 2013, I spent my mornings at Lakeside School, a private school in Seattle whose students are the scions of the Pacific Northwest elite. The beautiful red-brick campus looks like an Ivy League college and costs almost as much to attend. The school boasts Bill Gates among its alumni, and its students come from the families of Amazon and Microsoft executives. Unsurprisingly, there is no dearth of technology: Teachers post assignments on the school's intranet; classes communicate by email; and every student carries a laptop (required) and a smartphone (not). In this context, what do parents do when they think their children need an extra boost? I was there as a substitute tutor for students spanning the academic spectrum. A few of them were taking honors calculus. They were diligent but wanted a sounding board as they worked on tough problems. Others, weighed down by intensive extracurricular activities, struggled in geometry and algebra. I would review material with them and offer pointers as they did assignments. Yet another group required no substantive help at all. They just needed some prodding to finish their homework on time. Despite their differences, the students had one thing in common: What their parents were paying for was extra adult supervision."

"So, you've got an iPad and it's starting to get a little slow on you. Stop me if this sound familiar- first, you do your best to free up as much storage space as you can muster by deleting old, unused apps. Next, you decide to offload your photo library and data to iCloud, or whatever other preferred cloud service you choose. Still not enough? While these are very intuitive, and useful steps, there are still a few additional methods available to you to bring your iPad back to life and make it feel like it's a newer device once again. In no particular order…"

Europeana, Europe's digital library, museum and archive, will re-open as soon as possible. We'll be bringing you digitised books, films, paintings, newspapers, sounds and archives from Europe's greatest collections.

Sound is caused by changes of pressure in the air that is transformed into nerve impulses in the inner ear. Explore "The Ear Pages" and collect the snail shaped symbols to gain points in the quiz!

Welcome to School AUP 2.0 This is a dynamic document designed to support teachers, school media specialists, and education leaders in developing, maintaining, and enforcing policies designed to: 1. Promote the most effective, productive, and instructionally sound uses of digital, networked, and abundant information environments. 2. Provide safe digital environments for learners and to instill safe practices and habits among the learning community.

Podcasting is one of the most explosive technologies to hit the Internet. In this free, on-demand, three-part seminar Apple experts take you behind the scenes to see what it takes to perform a great-sounding podcast, produce a professional show, and promote a podcast to reach as many people as possible.

MathTrax is a graphing tool for middle school and high school students to graph equations, physics simulations or plot data files. The graphs have descriptions and sound so you can hear and read about the graph. Blind and low vision users can access visual math data and graph or experiment with equations and datasets.

This paper focuses on the discussion of the digital literacy skills that are considered necessary for effective and mindful learning in the emerging digital environments. To date, the discourse on this important subject has been practice-oriented, and lacks a sound integrative framework and theoretical foundation.

NaturalReader is a Text to Speech software with natural sounding voices. This easy to use software can convert any written text such as MS Word, Webpage, PDF files, and Emails into spoken words. NaturalReader can also convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV for your CD player or iPod.