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"Billy's history with littleBits started in 2015 when he heard about littleBits at an ISTE conference and won a free kit later that Summer at an education conference. That fall, Billy applied for a Donor's Choose grant and was able to start his small collection of littleBits which he used with his Gifted and Talented students. Billy slowly built his collection the following year with a donation from the Home and School Association. Students loved exploring and learning with the kits. Billy and I were thrilled to as being selected as one of 20 participants in the littleBits Lead Educator program that took place back in May and June of this past school year. As a result, we were one of the very first educators in the world to get the new littleBits Code Kit and had the opportunity to test the kit with their students and create resources and activities to use in the classroom."

"It is super simple with CodeCampus! Watch the video below for a 2 minute description of what the site can do for your teaching.  This is a great opportunity! CodeCampus gives you FREE easy to follow tutorial videos, so you can learn the basics of Scratch in about 4-5 hours."

"Summer fun. It is the absolute best. Whether you visit Six Flags, Kings Island, a Disney Park, Busch Gardens, or another amusement park, the looping lines of roller coasters offer the perfect lens for getting students to interact with STEM concepts. An old garden hose, duct tape, and a marble: the only materials that you need to build a roller coaster. Cut the hose in half, and then duct tape the two segments together down the back to create a nice groove where the two hoses meet for the marble to ride, on top. Then the materials are ready for students to explore the potential and kinetic energy of roller coasters."

"Watching a Red Sox game or listening to one on the radio is one of my favorite things to do on a warm summer night like we're having tonight in Maine. During the pregame show this evening the broadcasters were talking about the launch angle of some of the homeruns hit by Red Sox players this year. That discussion of launch angle triggered my memory of some resources that I've shared over the years regarding the math and science of baseball. "

"Glide is a free tool for making your own mobile apps. It's a tool that has quickly risen to the top of my list of favorite tools for teachers and students. It's a tool that we'll spend time using during the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. With Glide anyone who can make a spreadsheet in Google Sheets can make his or her own mobile app."

"Please, No More Professional Development! By Peter DeWitt on April 17, 2015 8:10 AM Today's guest blog is written by Kristine Fox (Ed.D), Senior Field Specialist/Research Associate at Quaglia Institute for Student Aspirations (QISA). She is a former teacher and administrator who has passion for teacher learning and student voice. Kris works directly with teachers and leaders across the country to help all learners reach their fullest potential. Peter DeWitt recently outlined why "faculty meetings are a waste of time." Furthering on his idea, most professional development opportunities don't offer optimal learning experiences and the rare teacher is sitting in her classroom thinking "I can't wait until my district's next PD day." When I inform a fellow educator that I am a PD provider, I can read her thoughts - boring, painful, waste of time, useless, irrelevant - one would think my job is equal to going to the dentist (sorry to my dentist friends). According to the Quaglia Institute and Teacher Voice and Aspirations International Center's National Teacher Voice Report only 54% percent of teachers agree "Meaningful staff development exists in my school." I can't imagine any other profession being satisfied with that number when it comes to employee learning and growth. What sense does it make for the science teacher to spend a day learning about upcoming English assessments? Or, for the veteran teacher to learn for the hundredth time how to use conceptual conflict as a hook. Why does education insist everyone attend the same type of training regardless of specialization, experience, or need? As a nod to the upcoming political campaigns and the inevitable introduction of plans with lots of points, here is my 5 Point Plan for revamping professional development. 5 Point Plan Point I - Change the Term: Semantics Matter We cannot reclaim the term Professional Development for teachers. It has a long, baggage-laden history of conformity that does not

"Architectural Design is not a subject normally taught in schools. Because it presents something of a novelty to children, it often produces some very creative and exciting results. Furzedown Primary School in South West London regularly hold a sequence of lessons in its summer term focusing on this with a Year 5 class. The process starts looking at structure and continues with spacial design, materials, drawing techniques followed by model making. The children are normally given a brief and asked to design a pavilion. To conclude the sequence of lessons, a selection of projects is chosen to build full scale."

"Many of us have started our breaks. If you have a website, blog, virtual learning site or messaging system like Remind to connect with your learners then you can motivate your students to continue the learning with photo and video challenges. Learners of all ages love taking pictures and videos, especially with their mobile devices. Students are surrounded by science, math, geography, history, and literacy. Often, they just need to be challenged to take a closer look, investigate their surroundings, capture their learning, and present it to others. For any subject you can send your students on learning missions and challenges to capture the learning around them and demonstrate to others what they have learned!"

"For the first time in four years, I am without a makerspace.  My new school's library is beautiful and huge and has a school culture that is just ripe for making.  Even though it was tempting, I decided not to change it up and create a makerspace over the summer.  I want to be sure that the library program, including a new makerspace, is responsive to the needs of the school and its culture.  Therefore, I plan on spending at least the first-semester making plans for how this space will work.  It will likely be very different from my previous space, but I'm excited to see what forms. Making plans for a new makerspace can be daunting, so I've gathered together some tips to help get started:"

"I work part-time with elementary learners - with gifted learners during the school year and teaching maker education camps during the summer. The one thing almost all of them have in common is yelling out, "I can't do this" when the tasks aren't completed upon first attempts or get a little too difficult for them. I partially blame this on the way most school curriculum is structured. Too much school curriculum is based on paper for quick and one shot learning experiences (or the comparable online worksheets). Students are asked to do worksheets on paper, answer end-of-chapter questions on paper, write essays on paper, do math problems on paper, fill in the blanks on paper, and pick the correct answer out of a multiple choice set of answers on paper. These tasks are then graded as to the percentage correct and then the teacher moves onto the next task. So it is no wonder that when learners are given hands-on tasks such as those common to maker education, STEM, and STEAM, they sometimes struggle with their completion. Struggles are good. Struggles with authentic tasks mimics real life so much more than completing those types of tasks and assessments done at most schools. Problems like yelling out, "I can't do this" arise when the tasks get a little too difficult, but ultimately are manageable. I used to work with delinquent kids within Outward Bound-type programs. Most at-risk kids have some self-defeating behaviors including those that result in personal failure. The model for these types of programs is that helping participants push past their self-perceived limitations results in the beginnings of a success rather than a failure orientation. This leads into a success building upon success behavioral cycle."

"I've spent much of the summer working with teachers who are eager to integrate making and writing but uncertain where to begin. This is what I tell them:  I tell them that making must elevate writing, otherwise it will merely replace it. And writing matters. I tell them that we need frameworks that help us see how making and writing can connect inside of our classrooms and workshops. Making writing looks like play, but it's purposeful. Intentional. I tell them that we need tools and strategies and protocols that inspire complex, creative, and high quality work. I tell them that for all of these reasons, planning matters. Planning really matters. So, this is where my return to blogging will begin."

For schools in Australia and many parts of the world, we are heading towards the end of another school term and year. That means report writing season. For the next few weeks, teachers across the country will be huddled in front of computer screens, writing reflections on the progress their learners have made. Mark books will be opened, assessments consulted, work samples will be reviewed. All so that in the first week of the long Summer vacation students can sit and read their report and make plans for how they will enhance their learning in the coming year.

The bushfire crisis that is currently impacting Australia is beyond devastating. The scale of these fires defies the imagination. For so long now we have lived with skies laden with smoke as a constant and inescapable reminder that this is not an ordinary summer. This is weather and drought at its most extreme. Our only salvation will be rain but this is not the season for that and the long term forecasts are not promising. Our young people, in particular, will be affected and will need special care in the weeks and months to come. What might this mean for schools and for student agency?

With summer in the southern hemisphere, long days combined with school holidays for school teachers create the perfect opportunity to relax with a good book. Here are five great reads that might spark some curiosity and keep the brain working over the break.

"School days might seem as if they move at a glacial pace after winter break. The spring and summer breaks seem too far away, and whether students are learning in-person or online, they could use a bit of fun. Teachers can use TED-Ed Lessons to liven up long days and highlight students' different personal interests. The TED-Ed platform is especially cool because educators can build lessons around any TED-Ed Original, TED Talk, or YouTube video. Once you find the video you want to use, you can use the TED-Ed Lessons editor to add questions, discussion prompts, and additional resources. Use these TED-Ed Lessons for brain breaks, to introduce new lessons, or to inject some fun and engaging conversation into your class. "

"Over the summer of 2021, I collaborated with our 6th grade science teacher as part of a grant to find ways to incorporate makerspace activities into the curriculum. (Look for posts coming soon about some of the projects we did).  Part of our work was reading the book, Making Science: Reimagining STEM Education in Middle School and Beyond.  I found it to be a fantastic, practical resource for bringing hands-on maker learning into the classroom.  Reading this book as a maker librarian gave me a ton of ideas for new ways to collaborate with our STEM classes.   And it's an excellent resource for classroom teachers as well."

"These days, you can't turn around without hearing something about STEM. Schools are adding STEM courses and STEM summer camps are popping up across the country. A well-publicized public-private partnership aims to develop 100,000 new STEM teachers over the next decade. But what is all this STEM stuff anyway? Technically, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. STEM programs typically blend together at least two of these subject areas. However, STEM is much more than the sum of its individual parts."