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"The Maker Movement is one of creativity and invention. Of Do-It-Yourself ingenuity. Of making things with your own hands. Building something from scratch can shift a lesson from a lecture into an experience. Students can play, diverge, tinker, make mistakes, help each other, and express themselves with the appropriate guidance of a teacher/facilitator. The end result can be anywhere from an honest try to a creative wonder. Whatever the case, consider adding the following tools to your experiential learning toolkit. Curated by elementary school technology coach Elizabeth Espinoza, this comprehensive collection contains web, desktop, and mobile apps that can help your students become makers and inventors."

"Below are some of the new educational video resources I have recently discovered. I am adding them to the list of top video resources I have compiled here in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning. The purpose is to help teachers and students lay their hands on some useful educational documentaries, tutorials, clips and many more."

"For the Burlington, MA Public Schools (BPS), the district's 1:1 iPad initiative isn't so much about the devices as it is about changing the classroom environment and creating more hands on learning opportunities. The focus behind the technology is the same as it's always been: good teaching practices. The only change is the workflow."

"EasyBib helps educators provide students with the tools they need to do credible and ethical research, while allowing them to track student progress and understanding before they hand in their final paper. EasyBib has also been recently integrated into Google Docs allowing students to easily and properly cite their resources with one single click."

"An iPad can be a teacher's very handy assistant! Last year I published an infographic titled "iPad as the Teacher's Pet" and I have updated it to version 2.0. It's all about what can be done by Pad-using educators, whether or not their students have iPads. It is divided into seven sections: Show on a Big Screen Manage the Classroom Assess Student Work Interact with Students Manage Your Files Make Instructional Media Learn New Things"

"Walk into a school, airport, shopping mall, or even a church and the image is always the same, teens and tweens have their heads down, ear buds on, and a mobile device in their hand. This generation is commonly referred to as Generation Z and they are coming of age with a new set of rules, expectations, and mannerisms. "

"Augmented reality should not be confused with virtual reality, for the boundaries of each concept are clearly demarcated. While virtual reality denotes a reality that exists only in the virtual world (online), augmented reality, on the other hand, keeps the real world but only adds a digital layer to it. or amplifies it. In other words, augmented reality gives you  actual information without changing or displacing the real world you are experiencing."

"There has been plenty of hand-wringing in recent years about the "overscheduled child." With after-school hours increasingly dominated by piano lessons, soccer practice, and countless other planned activities, many of us have a nagging sense that kids are missing out on something important if they have no time for unstructured play. New research from Germany suggests these fears are justified. It finds people who recall having plenty of free time during childhood enjoy high levels of social success as adults."

"Thursday I'm sharing two presentations at iPadPalooza in Austin, Texas. Here are the titles, descriptions, and slides for these breakout sessions. Both are hands-on workshops, however, so most of the time we'll be exploring and playing with the apps Hopscotch and Brushes!"

"Maker Party is Mozilla's global campaign to teach the web. Through thousands of community-run events around the world, Maker Party unites educators, organizations and enthusiastic web users with hands-on learning and making."

"MyMind is a good iPad app for creating and organizing text, audio, and visual notes. MyMind allows you to type notes or write them free-hand. To each note you can add pictures, audio files, and video files. Your audio files can be recorded within the app. All notes are organized into notebooks that your create and name."

"That computer mouse that fits so nicely in your hand, the way your iPhone reacts to your creative way of spelling, the "so simple why didn't I think of that?" processes you encounter every day -- these are the result of design thinking, a sequential process embraced by innovative companies and entrepreneurs. Design thinking, or human-centered design, is an empowering way to solve problems and design products and solutions by starting with discovery, moving on to ideation and rapid prototyping, then testing, and finally execution. How can this high-level, innovative style of problem solving work in a classroom or after-school program? Quite well, actually. The West Michigan Center for Arts + Technology (WMCAT) engages urban high school students in a best-practice after-school program that is grounded in design thinking. I'll share our journey so that you can find ways to enhance your own learning environment through design thinking. "

"It's that time where schools are deciding what apps students should have on their devices. While many schools stick with just free apps, others know that paid apps have a lot to offer. Paid apps are usually 50% off when purchased through Apple's Volume Purchase Program for Education, so outfitting an entire class with a paid app might not break the bank. I thought I'd share my top paid app picks for students' iPads. These apps are all open-ended and empower students to create something with their learning."

"With most teachers out of school for the summer by now, summer learning loss probably isn't top priority. After all, the kids are back in their parents' hands for at least a couple of months, right? If the students aren't in your classroom, there isn't a whole lot you can do beyond a summer reading list (that the parents may or may not encourage their students to complete, anyway). What you do have to worry about is the amount of catching up you need to do once you have students back in your classroom in the fall. The handy infographic below takes a look at some interesting statistics on summer learning loss, aka the 'summer slide'. It also offers some really simple ways to keep kids' brains churning along during their summer break. You can even offer these as simple recommendations to parents, to show them that summer learning doesn't necessarily mean their kids need to sit down and read all of Dostoevsky's works before the evenings get chilly!"

"We are at the juncture of a monumental period in the history of education where mobile technologies are driving learning.With the growing use of hand-held mobile devices and broad band Internet connection,  mobile learning has become ubiquitous practice. With raise of on-the-go learning, there emerged a range of promising learning trends that address different learning and instructional needs. This beautiful visual from Original Learning provides a succinct overview of some of the most popular mobile learning trends to watch out for in this year and beyond. Some of which include:"

"According to Martinez and Stager, the Maker Movement, a technological and creative learning revolution underway around the globe, has exciting and vast implications for the world of education. New tools and technology, such as 3D printing, robotics, microprocessors, wearable computing, e-textiles, 'smart' materials, and programming languages are being invented at an unprecedented pace. The Maker Movement creates affordable versions of these inventions, while sharing tools and ideas online to create an innovative, collaborative community of global problem seekers and solvers. The Maker Movement in education is built upon the foundation of constructionism, which is the philosophy of hands-on learning through building things. The key message from spending hours in this book was that the Maker Movement overlaps with the natural inclinations of children and the power of learning by doing. By embracing the lessons of the Maker Movement, educators can revamp the best student-centered teaching practices to engage learners of all ages."

"Our school is a 1:1 iPad school. We made the decision to go with iPads knowing that there are relative strengths and weaknesses of the device. For our purposes, it was decided that the strengths outweighed the weaknesses. One strength that factored heavily into the discussion was the camera, and putting the power to create multimedia work in the hands of every student. Here are 7 ways the camera can be leveraged for deeper learning in your class."

"SoundCloud is one of the audio recording tools that I have been recommending for years. I've always liked the ease with which you can record, save, and share audio through the service. The option to insert text comments into SoundCloud tracks has been an appeal of the service too. Today, SoundCloud added a new feature that will appeal to anyone that has wanted to try his or her hand at podcasting."

"Writer's block is  a crippling condition in which one's creative process slows down to the minimum. It's a symptom of 'creativity blockage' which hits writers. People differ in how they deal with their writer's block but one effective way we have at our hands is the use of technology. There are several iPad apps that can provide writers with all kinds of prompts and incentives to write creatively.  Below is a sample of some of the best iPad apps to help you with writer's block. We invite you to check them out and share with us if you have other suggestions: "