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If you've been using Twitter for a while, you might notice that some of the most successful folks on Twitter make a concerted effort to help out their friends / followers. And they seem to ask for nothing in return! Many folks believe, including me, that this practice of selfless giving is central to all success, personal and professional.

"We're sure there's at least one person out there who has been itching to shoot boat-loads of video with their iPad 2. Perhaps even a short film or two. After we pointed out how crazy you are, we might suggest looking into a tripod-mountable case like Makayama's Movie Mount. This simple plastic frame adds a number of things that a budding iPad videographer might appreciate, including a pair of hot shoes for hooking up lights and mics, and a mount for lenses, just in case you prefer wide-angle or telephoto shots. You can even switch between the conversion lenses and the built-in one on the fly thanks to the sliding adapter. The Movie Mount is available to pre-order now for $69.95, with the first deliveries expected to ship in October. Before you go, check out the gallery below, as well as the video and PR after the break."

The Spang Gang Web Program Homepage. This is crazy busy but has many links to good resources

"Both the actively applied Camera filters and the later added Photos apps based color filtering in iOS can add some nice stylizing effects to pictures, helping to give them a unique look, but if you decide you're no longer wanting an image to be filtered through a crazy color lens, you can actually easily remove the filter from the picture and restore it to the original untouched version. "

"Sometimes it feels crazy overwhelming to keep assessing students and know exactly what they do/don't understand. That's where these quick and easy formative assessment ideas comes in! My school district sent us a monthly newsletter from the GATE department. This was a particularly helpful chart, so I kept it. But the image was too small, so I've remade it into an easier to read version (see below)."

"It took just one relentless bout of the flu to remind me of the power of empirical evidence and the importance of shooting data. More than numbers, it was the evidence gleaned from my experiences and the images that I gathered along the way that helped my doctor solve the riddle that was delaying my recovery. My kids thought I was crazy, but I took some photos to save the evidence, and my doctor appreciated this. Gross? Absolutely. Helpful? Definitely! The doctor said that the pictures inspired him to take a different approach in my treatment. "Good data gathering," he joked, and I smiled, recalling one of my greatest pet peeves: educators and parents who rant about their disdain for this very important work. To listen to some, you'd think data are only numbers that shady reformers crunch in order to cash in on imaginary problems created by incompetent teachers. This is a dangerous assumption. The fact is that data are information that matter, and if they don't matter or if the conclusions we reach aren't helping us solve important problems, then we need to change the data we're collecting and the way we approach analysis. After all, isn't it a bit silly to blame data for our own faulty decision making?"

"In just a few short weeks new teachers around the world will embark upon an exciting and crazy adventure. This adventure will surely have its fair share of ups and downs. In spite of that, this adventure will allow for countless opportunities to serve and positively impact current and future generations of students. This adventure will be like no other adventure... Here are 10 pieces of advice I'd like to share with new teachers as they prepare for this adventure:"

"It lights up your brain like fireworks on the Fourth of July, spurring on complicated processes and making connections like crazy. Your synapses fire. Your neurons are in hyperdrive. This is your brain on music."

"So, how do we stretch ourselves, as educators, without losing our educational identity, or our minds for that matter? How can we improve without driving ourselves crazy, going numb, or unplugging completely? "

" After three years in the making, the Minecraft version of Star Wars: A New Hope is almost done. According to the fans making the movie, the individual sets alone took six months to build - "no mods have been used, just custom textures and art." Here's their version of the original movie trailer, released in 1977:"

"For many, Python is the programming language of choice for use in the classroom. Why? There have been many ways to get at Python and make it successful. As mentioned previously, and it will come up with any computer science teacher, there's nothing like a silly missing semi-colon to drive the introductory programming student crazy. In many cases, people will introduce Scratch or Alice as an introductory language since building with blocks overcomes this situation. The programming concepts are great for those getting started."

"omputational thinking is one of the core objectives that runs through the computing program of study in England from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 4. Before computers can be used to solve a problem, computational thinking refers to understanding the problem itself and the ways in which it could be resolved. Software engineers and computer scientists for example, routinely engage in computational thinking. As a higher order thinking skill, computational thinking has applications both across and beyond the school curriculum. There are four key techniques to computational thinking: Abstraction - focusing on the important information only, ignoring irrelevant details Algorithms - developing a step-by-step solution to the problem Decomposition - breaking down the problem into smaller, more manageable parts Logic - looking for similarities among and within problems Learning to program is one of the best ways to develop computational thinking, as it uses each one of these techniques. My intention here is to show an example of a lesson in which computational thinking is taught at Key Stage 1 (5 to 7 years) through programming. I took the lesson plan (attached above) from The Barefoot Computing Project and I taught it to my 1st grade class last week.  It required the children to work in pairs to create step-by-step instructions through pictures.  The pairs then swapped each other's instructions, which they used to draw the 'crazy character' that the other child had in mind."

"Successful and powerful integration of iPads in the classroom depends in no small part on keeping device management, well, manageable. Here's a quick look at how edtech folks are tackling the nuts and bolts of keeping track of, making best use of and not being made crazy by, iPads in the classroom. "

""Wow in the World is a place where we can tap into the crazy cool things that are happening all around us, every day!" says Thomas. "We want to help spark conversations between kids and other kids and also with their grown-ups that will ultimately lead to their own big discoveries." Each episode begins with a series of questions that lead to an explanation about a new amazing scientific discovery or finding. For example, "How long would it take to get to the closest star outside our solar system?" or "How did we Homo sapiens come to dominate the planet?" or "How do astronauts poop in space?" Through comedy and conversation, along with voices from real kids, Mindy and Guy make the news fun and interesting. "

"Anchor says it is "The easiest way to make a podcast. Ever." Well we will just see about that and also see if it is a good fit for you in the classroom. There are three things that make Anchor a bit different than its competition. One, there is no limit to what is hosted. That means no bandwidth limit, no storage limit and no time limit. Go crazy creators. The second thing is that you can "move" your podcast from one site to Anchor. The third thing is that it is completely free. As an educator who has relied on services before, I am a little skeptical about this one but we can discuss that later. There are mobile apps for iOS and Android but for this post I am going to focus on the online webservice."

"The best writing apps for iPad, like any concept of 'best,' is subjective and further based on need and circumstance. Are you a poet drafting when inspiration strikes? A student taking notes and writing essays? A novelist that usually uses a desktop, but needs their new iPad Pro to do work on the go? While the idea of writing more than a few hundred words on an iPad may seem crazy, using the iPad as a powerful portable writing tool allows you to take advantage of inspiration whenever and wherever it strikes. And with iPad screens now approaching 13″ and capable of supporting USB connections to enable standalone keyboards, it's easier and more comfortable than ever to draft a masterpiece while away from your desk with the help of an app, an iPad, and a good idea."

"As you may remember from your own (in)glorious youth, most university students are required to take a statistics course even if they hate math and aren't in a particularly numbers-heavy major. Ellen Peters, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, heard this was driving a lot undergrads on her campus crazy. "A lot of the students are really threatened by it. They're kind of afraid of it, they dread taking it," she says. "If they do dread it, they can end up in a cycle of failure." Curious to see if she could make a positive change among math-phobic Buckeyes, Peters created an intervention that tested whether or not value affirmation could improve student's comfort and ability with numbers, otherwise known as numerical literacy or numeracy. The results, which were published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, indicate that confidence and core values have a lot to do with learning the numbers."