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"Adam Savage is no stranger to mixing science with whimsy. With his hit show Mythbusters, he and partner Jamie Hyneman have tackled everything from shark attacks to death rays. Of course, that show can't film all the time. To fill the other hours in the day, Savage runs a web series called Inside Adam Savage's Cave, where he does experiments, shows off oddities, and generally makes merriment. In today's episode, Savage has invited animator Marty Cooper into his cave to talk about traditional hand-drawn animation and augmented reality cartoons. The best part? All of the animation is made with an iPhone. Using the app StopMotion Recorder, a series of by-hand drawings made on transparencies, and a little bit of time, Savage and Cooper are able to create a few glorious stop-motion cartoons that delightfully float in the real world."

"One of the strategies that I use when creating lesson plans is to reflect on the previous lesson. Part of that reflection includes feedback from students. This can be done by simply asking students to raise their hands in response to a "did you get it?" type of question, but I like to have better record of responses than just a hand count. Here are some tools that can be used for collecting exit information from students."

"If your students are like mine, at one point or another you've asked for volunteers and not had any students raise their hands. In that situation using a random name selection tool is an easy way to choose students to call on. And for those times when all of your students raise their hands for something fun like being the line leaders, the a random name selector is a convenient tool to have at your disposal too. Here are three good random name selection tools."

"Something that bothers me so much is when I read articles that talk about how libraries are becoming makerspaces.  Our makerspace is one component of the participatory culture that runs through our space.  Anyone who knows my story knows that my point of entry into the Maker Movement was through literacy, so for me, literacy and making have always gone hand in hand.   When I began as the Library Media Specialist at New Milford High School, I walked into a library that was similar to many school libraries in older schools.  It was very traditional looking, with tall stacks and lots and lots of books that students simply did not check out, nor have an interest in.  The collection was out of date and had not been weeded in decades.  One of the tasks for me was to weed the books.  During that weeding process, I decided that traditional nonfiction that made it through the weeding process would be sent to classrooms to build up their classroom research libraries.  I decided to keep any memoirs or narrative nonfiction that we had in our collection, since those were the kinds of books I discovered so many of our students did enjoy reading and would check out.  Amongst the vast fiction collection, we did find a few gems, but mostly we either discarded books that were no longer relevant to our students, gave them to classrooms who wanted them, or to individual students who showed an interest.  In the end, I was able to preserve just a few shelves of books.  As a result, I was tasked with rebuilding our collection."

The Bebras cards are designed to enable pupils to develop their computational thinking skills, whilst at the same time providing an introduction to more advanced computing concepts. Computational Thinking Each card is aligned to one of the following computational thinking concepts, which are indicated in the top right-hand corner of each card.  Patterns  Algorithms  Logic  Abstraction Task Difficulty The difficulty of the task on each card is indicated by the icon in the bottom right-hand corner.  = Easy  = Medium  = Hard Answers and Other Materials Answers to tasks, ideas for teaching and national curriculum links can be found at: www.bebras.uk Tip: pupils will need an exercise book or a piece of paper in order to record their answers to each activity

"Learning to code without a computer may seem illogical, but it makes perfect sense.  Unplugging the computer and teaching coding through more familiar mediums such as hands-on activities, can make the subject less intimidating and more interactive. In the grand scheme of things, the basic principles of coding teach metacognition, problem-solving, and abstract thinking.  These are valuable skills to have even if a career in computer programming isn't in the immediate future.  We've compiled a list of our favorite hands-on coding activities from our Pinterest Board, Coding Unplugged, so you can have fun coding in a variety of ways!"

The Bebras cards are designed to enable pupils to develop their computational thinking skills, whilst at the same time providing an introduction to more advanced computing concepts. Computational Thinking Each card is aligned to one of the following computational thinking concepts, which are indicated in the top right-hand corner of each card.  Patterns  Algorithms  Logic  Abstraction Task Difficulty The difficulty of the task on each card is indicated by the icon in the bottom right-hand corner.  = Easy  = Medium  = Hard Answers and Other Materials Answers to tasks, ideas for teaching and national curriculum links can be found at: www.bebras.uk Tip: pupils will need an exercise book or a piece of paper in order to record their answers to each activity

"Contrary to what you might think and hear, apps and screens aren't the best tools for kids to learn STEM concepts, even coding. Why? Innovation, pattern recognition, exploration, experimentation and creation underlie STEM principles. Kids need to manipulate tangible things. It's how they learn. While there are some great apps that supplement STEM learning, the best STEM activities for kids are blended ones -- the ones that require hands-on exploration, screens optional. Those that do require screens, like ones with coding apps, should augment the experience, not be the sole focus. Many of these toys and kits are designed for classroom use but are perfectly adaptable and suitable for home use, too, as my two kids, ages five and seven, will shout from the rooftops (supervised, don't worry). Check out these awesome blended learning STEM kits and toys. They'll have your little inventors ready to apply for their first patent in no time."

"If I touch a hot stove and burn my hand, I immediately learn that touching a hot stove results in a burned hand. My brain makes the connection almost simultaneously. There's little need for reflection because the "hot stove=burn" connection is one that my mind makes almost immediately. Similarly, suppose I'm driving in bad weather and going WAY TOO FAST for the conditions. If my car spins out and I find myself stuck in a ditch, I've learned a lesson about driving in bad weather. Again, the connection is almost instantaneous. Academic learning however is seldom that obvious."

"very year, many of my students seem to have difficulty grasping the idea of perimeter and area. I've found that the best way to help students learn the difference between the two while figuring out how to properly calculate each is to have them engage in several different hands-on activities. This week I'll share with you how I introduce these important measurement concepts separately, then reinforce them with engaging cumulative activities that emphasize both area and perimeter."

"The iKeyboard was another Kickstarter success story at Mocworld / iWorld 2012, garnering over 6 times what the required threshold was for funding. Its mission is to "addresses the one drawback of a tablet computer" which is the inability to touch type on the iPad's virtual keyboard. Again, I'm not a fast typist - I definitely need to work on that to improve my overall productivity when writing. The iKeyboard gives me the opportunity to work on that on what is often my primary writing tool."

""One thing we can bet on is that 'making' engages kids," Dale Dougherty, Maker Media founder told Engadget. Anyone that's ever been to a Maker Faire knows that's a solid wager. Children routinely crowd around booths and attractions at the event peppering proprietors with questions about how their devices work. They drag their parents to the marketplace to buy Arduinos, soldering guns, and DIY kits. Getting littles ones excited about science and crafts is easy when it's right in their faces, but then what? That was the question on Dougherty's mind, "what happens on the Monday following a Faire?" The initial answer to keeping kids interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education) topics was an online summer camp. A virtual meeting place for kids looking to expand their DIY skills and connect with other like-minded makers. Of course, once summer is over, those same kids are left in the lurch. Some schools have implemented a by-the-book rote memorization curriculum with very little hands-on opportunities. So now Maker Camp is leaving its summer roots and going year round with weekly projects."

"Creating is important. In the West, traditional education has concentrated mainly on our heads, on filling them with knowledge. Little time and effort has been put into teaching students to be creative, to think widely (or often, deeply for that matter). In the past few decades, as our societies have advanced technologically, we have somehow arrived at the point where an education that places at least some emphasis on making actual real things with our hands and our minds is seen as second class, as "vocational." This is a mistake."

"ARKive.org is a great resource for videos and images of plants and animals. In the education section of ARKive.org you will find lesson plans organized according to student age. The lesson plans include audio files, slides, and hand-outs to distribute to your students. Most of the lesson plans include hands-on components for students."

"As a former elementary school teacher in a 1:1 iPad classroom, I know how powerful iPads can be as learning tools in the hands of students. This mobile device is so much more than a content consumption tool, because students can use an iPad for hands-on learning. They can move items across the screen, write about a topic, and document their learning using audio and visual tools."

"We have come to a point in the education technology journey where it seems rather dull to still be asking if the iPad is the right device for the classroom. The answer, in case you've missed the last few years of debate is that it is a great option, but this is not universally accepted and never will be. Nonetheless, one of the attributes you'll hear put forward is that it is easy to use because of the intuitive nature of iOS. This is absolutely true; you can put the iPad into the hands of almost any child and within a short period of time they will have mastered it. So does it then follow that you can out the iPad into the hands of teachers and expect the same results? No."

"I love the iPad but I really hate typing on it. Though touch screens are magnificent for some tasks, frankly typing just isn't one of them. Maybe it's my hands and fingers fault or maybe I'm just a grouchy old school tactile typer, but I struggle to get in any kind of real workflow that involves typing more than a sentence or two on touch screens. I'm probably not the only one to feel this way, so here are six helpful tips to improve the typing and writing experience on the iPad:"

"Before the advent of the uber-popular show Mythbusters or the push for more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in schools, parents and their kids were doing at-home science experiments. Now, the trend continues to blossom, although many of the experiments have remained somewhat the same…and always awesomely exciting! If you're a parent and you want to do something with your kid that isn't related to cleaning the toilets or forging through homework, check out these 20 great science projects that you can complete in the confines of your humble abode. Most of them use around-the-home items that you probably have on hand, although some will require a little bit of shopping ahead of time. To help you decide which are best for your children's needs, the 20 have been divided into projects for younger students and projects for older ones."

""If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve," Debbie Millman counseled in one of the best commencement speeches ever given, urging: "Do what you love, and don't stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities…" Far from Pollyanna platitude, this advice actually reflects what modern psychology knows about how belief systems about our own abilities and potential fuel our behavior and predict our success. Much of that understanding stems from the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, synthesized in her remarkably insightful Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (public library) - an inquiry into the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how changing even the simplest of them can have profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives. One of the most basic beliefs we carry about ourselves, Dweck found in her research, has to do with how we view and inhabit what we consider to be our personality. A "fixed mindset" assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens which we can't change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled. A "growth mindset," on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities. Out of these two mindsets, which we manifest from a very early age, springs a great deal of our behavior, our relationship with success and failure in both professional and personal contexts, and ultimately our capacity for happiness."

"If you build it, will they come? That is the question many schools have about finding room on campus for a "makerspace." The just-released 6th annual New Media Consortium Horizon Report K-12 Edition listed makerspaces as an emerging technology in the year-or-less adoption timeframe. "Makerspaces are increasingly being looked to as a method for engaging learners in creative, higher-order problem-solving through hands-on design, construction, and iteration," the report noted. That sounds great, but what is the definition of a makerspace, and how do you launch one? As Dale Dougherty, one of the founders of the maker movement, has said, a makerspace might share aspects of shop class, an art studio, science labs and home economics. It could focus on electronics, robotics, woodworking, sewing, laser cutting, programming or any combination of those."