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"All of my classes, regardless of student age or demographics - elementary gifted students or graduate students, begin with ice-breakers and team-building activities. I recently developed a passion for using students' mobile devices to do so as this devices have become natural and personalized extensions of students' "selves.""

"The term "blended learning,'' is fast-becoming one of the education buzzwords that you will hear at conferences and in news articles. Some call it digital learning or "personalized learning,'' which is another way of describing how teachers can work with students at their individual skill level and deliver real-time instruction as needed - with the help of technology. Blended learning is a better term than some of awful jargon that has crept into the lexicon of education, but it still merits some explanation. That's why we are posting this this video by The Learning Accelerator, a non-profit whose mission is to accelerate high-quality blended learning in school districts across the U.S."

"STEM education is "an interdisciplinary approach to learning where rigorous academic concepts are coupled with real-world lessons as students apply Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics in contexts that make connections between school, community, work, and the global enterprise enabling the development of STEM literacy and with it the ability to compete in the new economy. (Tsupros, Kohler, & Hallinen, 2009) Not coincidentally, several other trends in learning-from mobile learning and tablets in the classroom, to personalized learning and adaptive learning apps-are all at least somewhat connected to STEM education, which makes the following collection of STEM iPad apps for learning from Listly user Randy Yerrick helpful."

"Sketchnoting, in its purist form, is creating a personal visual story as one is listening to a speaker or reading a text. I also believe the interactive notebook, which includes the process of taking "regular" notes" while listening to a speaker and later creating a sketchnote of the text notes, would also be considered sketchnoting. This page will provide links, ideas, tips,and research evidence dealing with the power of sketchnoting. If you are looking for a book on the topic, the seminal work is this book by Mike Rohde. "

"Blended learning can create new career opportunities and improve conditions for teachers. As student roles evolve within a more personalized, tech-rich learning environment, teacher roles should evolve accordingly."

"TUAW readers of long standing, this post is for your friends and family who are asking you about iOS 7. Feel free to share it with them in person, on your social networks, or randomly in coffee shops and libraries. For more info, scroll to the bottom of the post. Breathe in, breathe out. Namaste! Chances are, you're here because someone you know suggested you look us up regarding iOS 7, the new operating system for the iPhone and iPad. Thanks for reading; we're here to help. Most importantly, don't panic. We're going to run down some of the most commonly asked questions and essential tips for iOS 7, with a minimum of jargon and handwaving."

"Getting students engaged is not an easy task particularly in an age that is full of all kinds of distractions. Some argue that some of the habits that students have developed as a result of their heavy use of emerging technologies and social media have negatively impacted their capacities to concentrate and focus for longer stretches of time. Multitasking in particular is blamed for this and I personally side with the camp that views multitasking as a distractor to productivity and not a positive attribute."

"I still miss that beautiful visual presentation, but you can still use Google News to search contemporaneous news. Contemporaneous news offers students unfiltered, personal connection to the past and forces them to wrestle with issues of bias and historical perspective. Contemporaneous news focuses a media literacy lens on how news is/was reported. How many different ways is the same story reported? How does the story evolve over the course of days, weeks, years? How do stories reported at the time differ from the way a story is reported with the benefit of hindsight or without the homongenization of textbook coverage? We can engage learners in considering why a story is placed where it is placed in a newspaper, why a particular headline was crafted, how our language has shifted, and why search terms may be time-contextual. (For instance, why searches for World War I, African Americans, the Holocaust, might not be effective in contemporaneous sources.)"

"We recently completed a biography unit for which my students researched famous Americans and wrote five paragraph biographical essays. They attached a photo to their essays to serve as the trigger for their auras. The overlay was a video they recorded speaking in the first person about their famous American. Click the video below to see an aura of Barack Obama."

"Google has recently released several updates to some of its major services including its search functionality. Being the top search engine on the web, Google is trying hard to sophisticate the way it filters and respond to users search queries through including some important features like customization, personalization, and localization. Google has also been investing in the power of social media particularly its tool Google Plus to recommend search results to searchers. Whether this is the beginning of a social revolution in web searching is too early to answer."

"BYOD (and its initialistic cousin, BYOT), 1:1, and other trends are symbolic of (at least) three things: 1. Schools, teachers, and students want technology in the classroom 2. Technology is expensive 3. Schools are looking for solutions The following excellent graphic from byodsandpit.weebly.com offers a plan to begin guiding your school towards a BYOD policy or plan that works for you. In that way, it is better than copy/pasting another school or district's policy, making sure whatever you come up with is, at worst, personalized for your application."

"In today's complicated economic times, many parents and educators are advocating for the importance of instilling financial literacy and wisdom in children early on to prevent fiscal irresponsibility in the future. In response to these sentiments, numerous companies - many of them startups - have started developing mobile apps and games to teach children (and adults) about spending, saving, loans, investments and other aspects of personal finance. Several such apps include:"

"This is a video project that I created for my Mobile Technologies class (ETEC 565M) in the UBC Master of Educational Technology program. My personal journey with this social media has opened up and transformed my educational world. Because of Twitter, I have enjoyed several professional experiences over the past six months like connecting with colleagues at edcamps, traveling to California to attend conference and collaborate with other educators, and establishing online communities and conversations through hashtags like #bcedchat. I am passionate about the use of this tool, among many, to help educators connect and transform their own professional learning experience. Check out my video below to find out more!"

"Comic book writers are indebted to scientists, and they demonstrate their gratitude by giving these real life mega-minds special places in the pantheon of superhero mythologies. Bruce Banner, who goes Hulk when angered, developed the Gamma Bomb for the US government. Susan Storm, also known as the Invisible Woman, holds four doctorates in biochemistry and still finds time to save the world. Even the X-Men's Beast is a much-lauded biochemist. Close study of comic book universes and the science concepts upon which they are founded can be enlightening for students and teachers alike. Boys and girls are riveted by the unique powers and compelling personalities and histories of superheroes."

"Last year my grade 1 students were uploading videos to their personal blogs and to youtube, tweeting from our classroom Twitter feed, face timing, skyping and participating in Google Hangouts with peers, soon to be teachers, teachers, experts in a certain field, and the class down the hall. We participated in global projects like the Global Read Aloud and created our own global projects. Why?"

"School is a time in a students life where they are learning as much about how to be students and operate successfully in a school as they are about how to read, write, and think. But oftentimes, the demand for pure academic instruction and practice can fly in the face for a student's need-at any age-to play, build, interact, explore, and construct their own learning experience. Issues like these can make mobile technology like tablets a boon to learning, as they can allow individual access to the right app-and the right content, creative opportunity, game, or learning simulation-at the right time. It is the collision of the need for interaction, personalization, creativity, and constant feedback that can make video games powerful tools for learning-and the following 38 games, curated by Sam Gliksman-and excellent place to start. "

But to suggest that video versus in-person PD is the real play here totally ignores what is happening back in reality. A reality where we merge online and real-life everyday through the act of sharing.

"It's been 30 years since I developed the notion of "multiple intelligences." I have been gratified by the interest shown in this idea and the ways it's been used in schools, museums, and businesses around the world. But one unanticipated consequence has driven me to distraction-and that's the tendency of many people, including persons whom I cherish, to credit me with the notion of 'learning styles' or to collapse 'multiple intelligences' with 'learning styles.' It's high time to relieve my pain and to set the record straight."

"The U.S. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act defines the concept of the Least Restrictive Environment as the opportunity for a student with a disability to be "provided with supplementary aids and services necessary to achieve educational goals if placed in a setting with non-disabled peers." (Daniel R.r. v. State Bd. of Educ., 874 F.2d 1036, 1050, 5th Cir.1989) This concept of providing students with "supplementary aids and services necessary to achieve educational goals" could be applied to all students. By leveraging the capabilities of mobile devices, teachers can support their students in creating a personalized learning environment with the least number of barriers. "

"How would you feel if someone described you as being colorless? Yeah, it's not exactly a compliment. Being called colorless is basically an unsubtle way of being told you are dull, uninteresting or boring. And just as some people are 'colorless', so is a lot of the content we deliver to our kids. But luckily it is a lot easier to inject a bit of color into a curriculum than it is into a personality. In a recently published slideshare titled 'Colour in Mathematics' Math teacher and blogger, Colleen Young, shows how she uses color to add clarity and engagement to her lessons:"