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"After posting about the "10 ways to get your students engaged" here is another good visual I learned about from Mindshift and which outlines different levels of engagement. As I have already argued elsewhere here in this blog, getting today's students deeply engaged (the first level of engagement below) in the learning experience taking place in class is not an easy task. Unless students see a direct relevance between what they are going to learn and how that information will help them them in their actual life , it becomes hard to hook and maintain their attention. Proponents of socio-cultural linguistics emphasize the importance of "context" in learning. Learning materials that are contextualized and tailored to speak to the immediate context of the learners are more likely to get students engaged and hence increase their rate of retention and comprehensibility."

Sadly, moments of full immersion are not the memories that most of us have from our years as students. It is clear that schools -- and learning -- are more powerful and effective when students are deeply connected to their work. What would it take for students to regularly experience the kind of engagement where they are fully immersed and "lost" in their tasks? Learning that leads to deep engagement should be thoughtfully and carefully structured to work for many different types of learners. One of the wonderful challenges of our craft is to structure learning so that it draws in young people with many different interests, abilities and skill levels.

"One of the most pure and deeply inspirational relationships is that of a devoted teacher and a willing student. Almost everyone has a favorite teacher, and those we liked less. What causes us to still cherish these relationships and harbor powerful sentiments of respect and affection (and sometimes a shuddering dislike) for those individuals who were responsible for mentoring us? The answer is quite simple. It's how the student teacher relationships were developed, nurtured, and given space to evolve."

"In the first week of April, I participated in a Twitter chat for the ASCD Leader to Leader initiative, hashtag #ASCDL2L, on the role of the modern teacher. As the conversation unfolded, it caused me to think more deeply than I have before about what elements teachers might consider on their path to developing a more modern version of their current role."

"A new wave of e-textbooks is giving students more than just words and a few hotlinks on a digital page. Publishers over the last few years have been adding video, interactive maps and gamified quizzes designed to engage students more deeply in their learning. "Think of it as making the textbook a hands-on activity," says Andrew Miller, an ASCD faculty member and technology expert. "It's making the content come to life in a way that meets the needs of different learners-auditory learners, visual leaders, text-based learners." The latest e-textbooks, developed by traditional publishers as well as new players like Discovery Education, are powered by a host of adaptive features, such as adjustable levels of difficulty and instant translation into other languages. And in some districts, teachers are using platforms like Apple's iBooks to create their own digital course materials."

"The Maker Movement has crept into the consciousness of schools in the past few years. For some, it's a wake up call that over-tested, over-scheduled young people are not going to become the creative, enthusiastic learners we all hope to nurture. For others, it's a personal reconnection to our collective, deeply-felt human impulses to create, invent, and shape the world. Makerspaces, genius hour, design thinking, and other frameworks can help make these ideas come to life in classrooms, libraries, museums, and community centers. But are these innovations accessible to everyone, to every child?"

"In recent years researchers have begun to build a science of interest, investigating what interest is, how interest develops, what makes things interesting, and how we can cultivate interest in ourselves and others. They are finding that interest can help us think more clearly, understand more deeply, and remember more accurately. Interest has the power to transform struggling performers, and to lift high achievers to a new plane."

"In response to the question of what one actually learns from 3D printing, I thought more deeply about the work we do in our school. While I know conceiving an idea and shepherding it into a tangible form is significant, it is important to be able to articulate its value within an educational setting. It's also important to reveal the many stages in digital fabrication, especially illuminating the often hidden design process where much of the learning takes place."

"Can the act of making or designing something help kids feel like they have agency over the objects and systems in their lives? That's the main question a group of researchers at Project Zero, a research group out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, are tackling alongside classroom-based teachers in Oakland, California. In an evolving process, researchers are testing out activities they've designed to help students to look more closely, explain more deeply and take on opportunities to change things they see around them."

"(CNN)"I would rather not eat for a week than get my phone taken away. It's really bad," said Gia, a13-year-old. "I literally feel like I'm going to die." "When I get my phone taken away, I feel kind of naked," said Kyla, another 13-year-old. "I do feel kind of empty without my phone." Both participated in "#Being13: Inside the Secret World of Teens," a first-of-its-kind CNN study on social media and teens. More than 200 eighth graders from across the country allowed their social media feeds to be studied by child development experts who partnered with CNN. This is the first large scale study to analyze what kids actually say to each other on social media and why it matters so deeply to them."

"Recently the Center for Teaching Quality launched a #Teachingis campaign for teachers to tweet different visions and realities of teaching. The responses were varied and poignant. As we know, teaching is ever changing and virtually indescribable in its complexity. Reading the tweets of "what #Teachingis" helped me think more deeply about the multilayered identities that we have as teachers. These many roles and identities change from moment to moment, and shift throughout the course of a school year. "

"Internet of Things (IoT) is a relatively new concept that is making such a buzz online. I have come across it in several instances but never really inquired deeply about its meaning. However, today I read a really interesting article by Jacob Morgan entitled " A Simple Explanation of 'The Internet of Things'. In this article, Jacob defined IoT as "the concept of basically connecting any device with an on and off switch to the Internet (and/or to each other). This includes everything from cell phones, coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable devices and almost anything else you can think of.  This also applies to components of machines, for example a jet engine of an airplane or the drill of an oil rig.""

"Close-reading is the product of a dynamic and deeply personal interaction between the reader and a text. It is an active process characterized by questioning, adjusting reading rate, judgement thinking, and dozens of other "strategies" readers use to make sense of what they're reading. This is an interaction that doesn't require technology, but can be changed by it.  It is a matter of fluency, strategy, and will. Two of these are easier to promote in students than the third (we'll let you guess which are which). And if we're going to start this conversation (monologue?) from a position of full transparency, technology isn't at all necessary for close reading. In fact, some might (effectively) argue that it's counter-productive there. There is so much potential to do anything but sit and roll around in a text that it can make using an iPad for reading seem like using a sharp pocketknife for a fork. But the other side of that argument is that, well applied, technology offers additional tools-and possibility-for readers, and to promote close reading of a text. (Something we discuss here in "Trying To Understand How Technology Changes Reading.")"

"The other day, I noticed one of my daughters playing a puzzle type game on my iPad. It was obviously challenging and often frustrating but she kept at it regardless. The game was direct problem solving and my girl was deeply engaged. It was then I had an idea. If any learner who found themselves disengaged from a school task had permission to select from a list of problem-solving, "brain igniting" games, it might mean they return to the task more energised to tackle it or suggest other solutions."

"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."

"Using technology for learning makes sense. Technology creates access, transparency, and opportunity. Any smartphone or tablet is media incarnate-video, animation, eBooks, essays, blog posts, messages, music, games. The modalities of light, color, and sound all arranged just so to communicate a message or create an experience. But there is a difference, claims this graphic from teachbytes, between using technology and integrating it deeply into the learning experiences of students. This is, of course, what models like the SAMR model are based on-that idea of mere use to automate, to redefining what's possible."

"Great teaching can be learned. This web site provides a vision of ambitious science instruction for elementary, middle school and high school classrooms. Ambitious teaching deliberately aims to support students of all backgrounds to deeply understand science ideas, participate in the activities of the discipline, and solve authentic problems."

"There is something deeply satisfying about a simple and elegant (and cheap!) solution to an annoying storage problem. There is also something especially gratifying about utilizing normally wasted space, as a number of these racks and holders do. "Working the cube," a mentor of mine in my youth used to call it; always considering how to optimize every square inch of a workspace, not just the walls and the floors. Here are five great ways to work your cube with some clever shop storage."

"As someone who has been fortunate enough to spend much of her professional career working in elementary schools -- both as an early-childhood (K-3) teacher and university-based teacher educator -- I'm often struck by the difference between how young children and teachers talk about literacy in the earliest years of school. Whether they're drawing pictures and asking you to "read" their latest story or eagerly inviting you to listen to an account of a favorite book, young children enter school enthusiastic about learning to read and write. In a world where they see print all around them -- scrolling on phone screens, in the books that they love, on the billboards they ponder -- learning to read and write makes a young child feel independent and capable. Yet early-childhood teachers point to the pressures associated with the Common Core State Standards and the accompanying standardized testing culture as deeply affecting classrooms, often characterized by a heightened focus on teaching young children to read and write as early as possible."

"At the end of Lord of the Flies, there is a section titled "Notes on the Lord of the Flies," in which William Golding says, "The theme [of the novel] is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable." I asked students to design a thematic art gallery that explored the truth about human nature. Because art often serves as a mirror reflecting people, society and life, I thought this would challenge students to confront the realities of human nature-the good and the bad. It also allowed students to contrast this theme in the text with this same theme in art. Although I used this project to explore the theme of human nature, it can be done to encourage students to think deeply about any theme they are studying."