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"One evening last week, I collapsed into bed after homework was finished, lunches were packed, and bedtime stories were read and happened upon an impassioned Los Angeles Times op-ed by high school political science teacher Jeremy Adams. In it, Adams decries his students' lack of interest in reading and places the blame squarely on smartphones. My kids are still young, but I'm always thinking of how to instill in them a passion for books, so I read on...on my smartphone."

"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

"This is great news for parents and kids who are reeling from the news of school closures due to the Coronavirus. Joe Wicks, famous as The Body Coach, has said he will become 'the nation's P.E. teacher' by giving daily online P.E. classes for kids! Starting from Monday he will be holding kids' workout classes on his You Tube channel, and he will be doing them every weekday at 9am during the school closures. The workouts are designed to be kid friendly, will last half an hour, and won't need much space so they can be done indoors if you're self-isolating."

"'It's boring', he groaned, glancing sideways beseechingly. 'Do I have to do it. Why do I need to learn to code?'  Part of the year 6 gifted and talented class, this student punched keys, slammed the laptop shut, yanked it open again. his friend offered to help. Desolately he turned back to the coding lessons. I continue cruising the classroom stepping over lanky legs harbouring slumped socks, dodging flailing arms. 'It's really easy - it's like the games we play. I'm trying to trip it up,' one boy tells me as I watch the psychedelic coloured spinning shape. It reminds me of a rapidly created multi-coloured elastic band ball. He's chuckling with glee. I am amazed. This was my first coding class as a supply teacher."

"Excerpted from Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies For Joyful Classrooms (c) 2017 by Timothy D. Walker. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton.  Schedule brain breaks Like a zombie, Sami*-one of my fifth graders-lumbered over to me and hissed, "I think I'm going to explode! I'm not used to this schedule." And I believed him. An angry red rash was starting to form on his forehead. Yikes, I thought, what a way to begin my first year of teaching in Finland. It was only the third day of school, and I was already pushing a student to the breaking point. When I took him aside, I quickly discovered why he was so upset. Throughout this first week of school, I had gotten creative with my fifth grade timetable. If you recall, students in Finland normally take a fifteen-minute break for every forty-five minutes of instruction. During a typical break, the children head outside to play and socialize with friends. I didn't see the point of these frequent pit stops. As a teacher in the United States, I'd usually spent consecutive hours with my students in the classroom. And I was trying to replicate this model in Finland. The Finnish way seemed soft, and I was convinced that kids learned better with longer stretches of instructional time. So I decided to hold my students back from their regularly scheduled break and teach two forty-five-minute lessons in a row, followed by a double break of thirty minutes. Now I knew why the red dots had appeared on Sami's forehead."

"We've all heard the stereotypes. Symptoms of learning disabilities and attention disorders are often dismissed as laziness, too much energy, a result of bad parenting - or worse, that it's all in the head. There are even those who think it's completely and utterly made up. But one Swedish filmmaker is shining a light on these often-misunderstood conditions. His moving four-minute silent film, "Bokstavsbarn" (or "Falling Letters"), gives viewers a glimpse into the life of a kid that struggles with attention issues."

"Inspired to turn useful tips, tricks, and ideas into infographics, #NYCSchoolsTech specialist, Joe Santiago created his first infographic. The focus is on how teachers who want to update their practice can use technology when doing formative assessments."

"From packing peanuts to disposable coffee cups, each year the US alone produces some two billion pounds of Styrofoam - none of which can be recycled. Frustrated by this waste of resources and landfill space, Ashton Cofer and his science fair teammates developed a heating treatment to break down used Styrofoam into something useful. Check out their original design, which won both the FIRST LEGO League Global Innovation Award and the Scientific American Innovator Award from Google Science Fair."

"When Orville Wright, of the Wright brothers fame, was told by a friend that he and his brother would always be an example of how far someone can go in life with no special advantages, he emphatically responded, "to say we had no special advantages … the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.""

"In addition to doing away with homework, Maier will encourage parents to spend quality time with their kids each evening, reading to them for at least 20 minutes. While there is no solid evidence that homework is beneficial for academic success in younger kids, there is plenty of evidence that reading is. Maier cited the work of Richard Allington as support for her decision. Allington is a professor of education at the University of Tennessee, and has dedicated his career on studying early literacy."

"Games can be a great tool for teaching students about complex topics like digital citizenship, politics and even science. With about 47 percent of kids aged 4 to 13 playing digital games every day, game-based learning is poised to further engage children in the classroom. One classroom in Tampa, Fla., has discovered that digital games can help some children with mathematics. Gregory Smith, a fifth-grade teacher in Hillsborough County, tells Education Week that after incorporating math-strategy games - think word problems with corresponding interactive elements - his students' math-skills scores went from an average of 49 percent to 83 percent. The students themselves also reported more enjoyment from math."

"Nik Peachey continues his digital teaching series by exploring how QR codes can be used to create mobile worksheets. He provides simple steps to help you create them, plus a fun lesson activity download too! "

RT @CambridgeUPELT: How can you use QR codes to create mobile worksheets? @NikPeachey shares his tips and a fun lesson activity too! https… RT @CambridgeUPELT: Save time printing and making photocopies by using QR codes instead! @NikPeachey explains how: https://t.co/md4yNUHsz7

"Last year, I went to Nigeria with Mark Zuckerberg. One of the first stops on the trip was a program that taught kids how to code. When Zuckerberg entered the room, many of the young students had a hard time pulling themselves away from their projects, even to gawk at one of the world's richest men. Facebook's founder instead came to them. "What are you making?" he'd ask. And they would proudly say, "A game!" or whatever it was, and begin showing him how it works. Zuckerberg would stop them. "Show me the code!" he'd say, because, well, he's Zuckerberg, and any occasion is ripe for an ad hoc programming review. And that's when the kid would click on a menu that toggled from the game to the LEGO-like building blocks of a Scratch program. This happened several times, with kids ranging from ages 8 to 15. In every instance, the maker of a cool project could clearly show this famous visitor how he or she had methodically implemented a plan. Zuckerberg was clearly impressed. As we headed up the stairs to leave the building, Zuckerberg called out to me, "Scratch! Have you heard of this?" Oh, yes I had. Though it was not yet released to the world when Zuckerberg left Harvard to launch his quirky little startup, Scratch (developed just a couple of T stops away) is quickly becoming the world's most popular computer language for kids taking their first bite of programming. Last year, over 120 million people came to its site, and many of them built and shared projects, at a rate of a million a month. "It's the gateway drug for Silicon Valley engineering," says Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, a Scratch supporter."

"8-year-old Kaori Misue was born without fingers. Usually, creating specialized prosthetics costs upwards of $15,000. However, thanks to a 21-year-old inventor, Misue received a prosthetic hand which has changed her life. Gino Tubaro is offering kids born without limbs the chance to receive a cheap 3D printed prosthetic. Misue's mother, Karina Misue, adds: "It was magical… The confidence it gives kids is tremendous. They're using it with pride." Tubaro's 3D printed prosthetic designs are part of the "Alternative Limbs Project", which began in his home of Argentina. The prints come in a range of designs, offering users the chance to decide what they need the prosthetic for most, whether it's playing an instrument or ping-pong. The prosthetics for kids can even be superhero themed (and shoot rubber bands)."

"Starting the year off with ideas on the best ways to use technology to support learning, Larry Ferlazzo collected an invaluable list of criteria last year from educators, to which he added more resources in his recent blog post for EdWeek.Other posts in the series include Using Ed Tech to Create Deep and Meaningful Experiences and Effective Ways of Using Tech in the Classroom. Here is MindShift's contribution to the collection of ideas."

"his article is about finding the best 3D printing software for every stage of your workflow. Which 3D printing software is best for preparing 3D models to print? How about designing 3D models from scratch? What if you're an absolute beginner? Have no fear, we've answered all of these questions, together with information on proficiency levels and where they can be downloaded. And the best thing is that all of them are either totally or free for students, educators and open source projects."

"Peter Farrell spent more than a decade teaching math and computer science. Somewhere along the way, he began using Python to create programming challenges to pair with his lessons. But what started as a way to reinforce math concepts gradually developed into something else - a gateway to a more practical approach to math education. Peter saw how coding projects allowed students to shift from passively learning concepts to actively working, reasoning, and playing with them. In other words, code helped them to go from learning about math to actually doing math. As he says "Why should the science, art, and home-ec students have all the fun? It's about time we heard students saying Look what I made in math class!""

"Consider the following scenarios: Laurie's school is trying to individualize students' learning experiences. As a 9th grade social studies teacher, Laurie is expected to use her school's learning management system to provide texts at multiple reading levels for her units so every student can read at their level. In one corner of an elementary school library are tables with lots of "gadgets" and a sign reading "Welcome to Our Makerspace!" Fazil, a 3rd grade teacher, is curious about this area and how it can be used to support his curricular goals. Guidance counselor Shonna is concerned that Maria, a 10th grader, is using Instagram in ways that might be damaging to her in the future. But Shonna doesn't feel she has the knowledge or experience to guide Maria in using social networking tools. In these instances, a school librarian would likely have the expertise to help a teacher use technology more advantageously. As expectations for classroom teachers to use-and understand-technology tools grow, the need for assistance in using these tools effectively is growing as well. Teachers don't always realize that one powerful source of such assistance is a school-based librarian. So, as a technology director who often sees good librarian-teacher collaboration, I want to highlight how powerful that assistance can be."

"The best-selling author of What School Could Be shares his thoughts on what needs to come next in American education."