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"Adam Savage took a few minutes on Sunday at the Maker Faire Bay Area to share what he feels are the 10 Commandments of Making. Braving the somewhat precarious elevated stage of the crowd-favorite Life-Sized Mousetrap, Adam addressed the audience with bits of wisdom and jewels of experience. It was obvious from the laughter that many of these insights and observations struck close to home."

"Adam Savage is no stranger to mixing science with whimsy. With his hit show Mythbusters, he and partner Jamie Hyneman have tackled everything from shark attacks to death rays. Of course, that show can't film all the time. To fill the other hours in the day, Savage runs a web series called Inside Adam Savage's Cave, where he does experiments, shows off oddities, and generally makes merriment. In today's episode, Savage has invited animator Marty Cooper into his cave to talk about traditional hand-drawn animation and augmented reality cartoons. The best part? All of the animation is made with an iPhone. Using the app StopMotion Recorder, a series of by-hand drawings made on transparencies, and a little bit of time, Savage and Cooper are able to create a few glorious stop-motion cartoons that delightfully float in the real world."

"When you find something cool that Adam Bellow likes, the chances are high that you will like it too! For me, this truism manifested itself recently in the form of a tweet Adam sent declaring his love for the recently released Tickle app for iOS. Tickle is a free coding app for the iPad that lets students create programs to control Spheros, Air Parrot Drones, and even Philips Hue Lights. Intrigued? I thought you might be! Here's what you need to know. Tickle started as a Kickstarter campaign, and uses block coding elements that were inspired by the likes of Scratch, Tynker, Blockly and Hopscotch. The simple coding interface is accessible enough to be used with early elementary students, but it has enough potential to challenge middle school students and beyond. Programs can be written and tested in the app without connecting to any other devices, but connecting to a Sphero or an Air Parrot Mini Drone is where the real fun begins."

"One evening last week, I collapsed into bed after homework was finished, lunches were packed, and bedtime stories were read and happened upon an impassioned Los Angeles Times op-ed by high school political science teacher Jeremy Adams. In it, Adams decries his students' lack of interest in reading and places the blame squarely on smartphones. My kids are still young, but I'm always thinking of how to instill in them a passion for books, so I read on...on my smartphone."

"Social Media: Why This Matters To Everyone In Education"

"How do you know if something you read is true? Why should you care? We pose these questions this week in honor of News Engagement Day on Oct. 6, and try to answer them with resources from The Times as well as from Edutopia, the Center for News Literacy, TEDEd and the Newseum. Although we doubt we need to convince teachers that this skill is important, we like the way Peter Adams from the News Literacy Project frames it in a post for Edutopia. As he points out, every teacher is familiar with "digital natives" and the way they seem to have been born with the ability to use technology. But what about "digital naïveté" - when students trust sources of information that are obviously unreliable?"

Adams County School District 50 in Colorado throws out grade levels and groups students by mastery levels.

"It seems like this must have been in the works for a while already, but Entertainment Weekly is reporting that the inimitable Mythbusters (Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman) will be hosting a one-hour special on the life and achievements of Steve Jobs."

"From the smartphone Annie Leibovitzes to the Instagram Ansel Adams, it seems that everybody is a photographer these days. This is a fact teachers can and should take advantage of in the classroom - and for many reasons more than to expand the student photo repertoire beyond the selfie (though that is certainly an admirable goal). While a good lesson in photography itself is a fruitful place to start, digital photography can be a launching point for lessons in writing creatively, thinking critically, expanding the student worldview and building empathy that extends far outside the classroom. Let's take a look at a few of the best photo sites out there today and discuss a number of ways you can make the most of them in your classroom."

"One thing it doesn't mean, or it really shouldn't mean, is that we replace any existing teachers with engineers or computer science specialists. "Learning how to code is certainly not an easy task, but it pales in comparison to learning how to teach," says Adam Enbar, cofounder of the Flatiron School, a coding academy in New York. Indeed, it doesn't matter how well you know your way around a line of code if you can't impart that information clearly to a pupil, a lesson Gina Sipley, a former English and social studies teacher, experienced firsthand when she herself was learning to code through a General Assembly course. "The teacher we had was a brilliant programmer, that was clear, but had never taught before," she explains. "So as the course went on, people sought out the teachers in the room and said, 'This doesn't make sense. How would you present the information?' I don't have a deep content knowledge at all, but I know how people learn best and how to structure lessons so people are going to get the most out of it." So, what's the smartest, most effective way to go about teaching our 3.1 million existing public school teachers to code, so they're prepared to teach our students?"

"Teachers strive to help learners find their own answers by doing one thing-giving them the skills to do so. Although this seems like a tall order, in reality it's simpler than you think. Part of it resides in ensuring students know they have options for this. Exploring these options is the essence of philosophy of 3B4ME. If you haven't heard of it, we discovered it on Adam Schoenbart's blog. It's an ingenious way to help learners find their own answers using simple paths to discovery. Using this strategy, learners can seek answers on their own-and usually find them-before needing to resort to asking a teacher."

"Our recent article on reading levels and the dangers of using strictly prescribed leveling systems in libraries for young readers sparked much dialogue and debate. One of the most popular and widely used reading systems is the "A to Z" gradient, developed by Irene C. Fountas, professor in the School of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, and Gay Su Pinnell, professor in the School of Teaching and Learning at Ohio State University. Both researchers have been adamant that their leveling system was designed as "a teacher's tool, not a child's label." We caught up with Fountas and Pinnell, who jointly gave their perspective on leveling, libraries, reading comprehension, and what they say to districts mandating leveled collections. "

"You wouldn't use a hammer to try to cut down a tree. Try to use an axe to drive nails and you're likely to lose a finger. Different physical jobs call for different tools. So, too, do different mental jobs.  Optimism and big-picture thinking will help you sell your business idea. Keeping your books in order requires a more detail-oriented approach. Motivating employees requires more empathy than analytical thinking.  Different modes of thinking are best suited for different situations, and according to a new interview with star Wharton professor and best-selling author Adam Grant most of us don't utilize one particularly powerful mindset nearly enough. "

"Educreations is a recordable interactive whiteboard that captures your voice, handwriting, typed text, and images. The final product is a cool video lesson that teachers can share with students. This is both a web-based app and iPad app. The cost: Free! With Educreations, students can replay a teacher's lesson online on or their iPads as often as the need to master the content. It also takes the camera off the instructor and turns the focus toward the content, and the content is key, right? It's like a video of your chalkboard or smartboa"