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"Stories bring us together, encourage us to understand and empathize, and help us to communicate. Long before paper and books were common and affordable, information passed from generation to generation through this oral tradition of storytelling. Consider Digital Storytelling as the 21st Century version of the age-old art of storytelling with a twist: digital tools now make it possible for anyone to create a story and share it with the world."

"Social reading is revolutionizing the way anyone reads. While most participate in social media, such as Facebook or Twitter in their personal lives, social media in the form of social reading is expanding into the classroom, making reading more enjoyable and exciting for all readers young and old. The basis of social reading is simple, through the use of apps and devices reading goes beyond the actual words on the page and opens up a myriad of options for readers to share their thoughts, favorite quotes, and overall opinions of the things they have read. Social reading apps allow readers to connect and share, much like a book group, all through the use of technology. These 5 social reading apps make communicating about books and literature very simple and enjoyable all from the comforts of a tablet or smartphone."

"Earlier this year, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York, visitors paraded through the fifth floor to see a retrospective dedicated to the abstract expressionist Frank Stella. Although many of the works on display were four or five decades old, in some ways the show felt tailor-made for the Instagram age: a riot of vibrant colors and textures, 20-foot-long reliefs, and sculptures as jagged and dynamic as 3-D graffiti. Visitors one busy Saturday afternoon stopped in front of artworks, lined up shots on their phones, snapped a few photos, and then moved on to the next piece. Some paused briefly to consider a particular painting; more stared down at their screens, furiously filtering. Few noticed an elderly gentleman sitting on a bench in one of the smaller rooms, watching the crowd engage with his work. The only visitor in the gallery not clutching a phone was Stella himself. Museum directors are grappling with how technology has changed the ways people engage with exhibits. But instead of fighting it, some institutions are using technology to convince the public that, far from becoming obsolete, museums are more vital than ever before. Here's what those efforts look like."

"Luckily, I realized (sooner rather than later) that I was part of their reading problem, not the change in their reading lives I hoped to be. This aha! moment led me to dig deep, talk to my boys about their reading experiences and help them unpack what was really going on underneath the surface. My ultimate goal was to figure out what was blocking boys from reading for pleasure and most importantly, how to open them up and let it into their lives. After lots of conversations with 9- to 14-year-old boys, here's what I discovered."

""This is cool." With those three words from my 11-year-old son, I knew Apple had a hit on its hands with Swift Playgrounds, its iPad app for learning the company's Swift programming language. We didn't exactly have to pry him away, but he had reached that just-one-more-level-before-dinner type of self-motivation that warms an educator's heart. The app is free. So when Apple releases Swift Playgrounds on Tuesday in the App Store, I recommend giving it a try. It's geared for middle school kids, but adults can learn too -- it sucked me in. You'll need Apple's new iOS 10 software, also arriving Tuesday. And just so you know, some older iPads like the first-generation iPad Mini can't run it."

"BOSTON - On the cramped urban campus of Boston Latin School, high-school students grow an acre's worth of vegetables in an old shipping container that's been transformed into a computer-controlled hydroponic farm. Using a wall-mounted keyboard or a mobile app, the student farmers can monitor their crops, tweak the climate, make it rain and schedule every ultraviolet sunrise. In a few decades, nine billion people will crowd our planet, and the challenge of sustainably feeding everybody has sparked a boom in high-tech farming that is now budding up in schools. These farms offer hands-on learning about everything from plant physiology to computer science, along with insights into the complexities and controversies of sustainability. The school farms are also incubators, joining a larger online community of farm hackers."

"Worldwide, just 14% of engineers are women. Stanford-educated engineer Debbie Sterling is on a mission to increase that percentage by encouraging girls as young as four years old to start tinkering with toys and building simple machines. Since 2012, her company GoldieBlox (No. 59 on the BI 100: The Creators) has sold more than 1 million sets of narrative-driven construction toys. Getting girls interested in engineering at an early age was an easy sell, Sterling told Business Insider in an interview. Changing attitudes about girls' capabilities in STEM, however, proved much harder."

" According to the latest EQAO report, half of Ontario Grade 6 students don't meet the curriculum standard in math. That's a problem. But it's not the only one. What worries me is that only 13 per cent of students who didn't meet the provincial standard when they were in Grade 3 manage to catch up so they meet the standard for Grade 6. That's the lowest number on that indicator in five years. If you fall behind in math you stay behind. That's why it's important to get it right, not just at some vague moment in the future, but for kids who are in Ontario schools right now. Fortunately, every parent in Ontario is sure they know how to teach math. Many parents want to get rid of "discovery math," broadly defined as "doing it weird." If only that loopy Liberal government would teach math the way we learned it when we were kids, the theory goes, there'd be no problem. Sure, great, except for one thing. Very few parents I've met can perform more than the most rudimentary arithmetic for themselves. If you all learned math so well, why do you inch toward Junior's algebra homework with a cross and a bulb of garlic?"

Society confronts educational change in an odd, entirely counter intuitive manner. On one hand we acknowledge that education can and should do a better job of preparing our children for the future while on the other we cling to the models of education that we knew. This led educational writer Will Richardson to state that 'the biggest barrier to rethinking schooling in response to the changing worldscape is our own experience in schools'. Our understandings of what school should be like and our imaginings of what school could be like are so clouded by this experience that even the best evidence for change is overlooked or mistrusted.

"Each year more than 100,000 Americans actively participate in Geography Awareness Week (GeoWeek). Established by presidential proclamation more than 25 years ago, this annual public awareness program organized by National Geographic Education Programs (NGEP) encourages citizens young and old to think and learn about the significance of place and how we affect and are affected by it. Each third week of November, students, families and community members focus on the importance of geography by hosting events; using lessons, games, and challenges in the classroom; and often meeting with policymakers and business leaders as part of that year's activities. Geography Awareness Week is supported by year-long access to materials and resources for teachers, parents, community activists and all geographically minded global citizens."

"With the advertisement of maker-this and maker-that, there are a flood of products claiming to be the "next big thing" you need in your makerspace.  I've tried some things I love, somethings I thought fell short, and I'm constantly on the lookout for new ideas, new gadgets, and new ways to use old things."

"Don't throw your old, white socks away! Upcycle them to create this funny, little Sock Snowman to cheer you up this winter! :)"

"I normally tend to stay away from "stuff" lists when it comes to talking about makerspaces.  I believe that the stuff that goes into a makerspace should be based around the needs of the students and the school, not on a checklist of items to get.  But this list is different.  The holiday season is upon us, and what better gift to give to a young (or not so young) maker than something that encourages creativity? (Well, books, but don't worry, I've got those too). Here's some of my favorite picks for maker themed gifts for the holidays or any day."

"Mention robots to many English teachers and they'll immediately point down the hall to the science classroom or to the makerspace, if they have one. At many schools, if there's a robot at all, it's located in a science or math classroom or is being built by an after-school robotics club. It's not usually a fixture in English classrooms. But as teachers continue to work at finding new entry points to old material for their students, robots are proving to be a great interdisciplinary tool that builds collaboration and literacy skills. "For someone like me who teaches literature by lots of dead white guys, teaching programming adds relevance to my class," said Jessica Herring, a high school English teacher at Benton High School in Arkansas. Herring first experimented using Sphero, essentially a programmable ball, when her American literature class was studying the writing of early settlers. Herring pushed the desks back and drew a maze on the floor with tape representing the journey from Europe to the New World. Her students used class iPads and an introductory manually guided app to steer their Spheros through the maze. Herring, like many English teachers, was skeptical about how the Sphero robot could be a useful teaching tool in her classroom. She thought that type of technology would distract students from the core skills of reading, writing and analyzing literature. But she decided to try it after hearing about the success of another English teacher across the country."

"Imagine you're babysitting two 12-year-olds, one boy and one girl. Which is more likely to be playing video games, and which one is painting a picture? Thanks to gender stereotypes, tech is often seen as boys' domain, while arts and crafts are assumed to be for girls. STEM-the acronym for science, technology, engineering, and math-doesn't exactly conjure visions of toys and games. But a recent survey by Two Bit Circus, a Los Angeles-based engineering entertainment company, shows a significant gender divide between boys' and girls' interest in STEM that experts hope can be closed by child's play: in other words, finding ways to make school more fun and engaging for kids."

"There's an old saying that the things that change your life are the books you read, the places you go, and the people you meet. But I'd like to add a fourth: the challenges you face (and how you face them) will always change your life. If we want our students to respond to challenges with creativity and inventiveness, we must create the conditions in which innovation is not only possible but encouraged. You don't help students learn to invent by giving worksheets or cookie-cutter assignments. In fact, these one-size-fits-all approaches may actually take up the time that could be used for such creativity. ADVERTISEMENT According to the Torrance Test-which measures CQ, or creativity quotient-the United States has been declining in creativity since 1990. There has to be a reason. Perhaps it is because we focus on students' weaknesses instead of their strengths. In many schools, we'll put a math genius who struggles with grammar into extra English classes. Should we not give this math genius access to college-level advanced math work, and figure out the basic English requirements he or she needs for a basic understanding of grammar? Why do we think that all students should be good at everything? We can either be average at everything or exceptional at something. With this in mind, here are some things we need to do to encourage student inventors as we nurture student passions, interests, and strengths."

"s an old-school marble run better than an iPad for teaching young children to code? Why educational toys that focus on the physical world rather than the computer screen are so effective"

"I believe in the importance of participating in ongoing and continuous reflective practice as an educator. This is my reflection on my Cardboard Challenges Maker Education Camp that was taught to twelve 5 to 10 year old learners for five days, 2.5 hours each morning.  My Cardboard Challenges webpage of ideas can be found at http://www.makereducation.com/cardboard-challenge.html. This post is divided into three sections: (1) a rationale for using no tech, minimal cost materials, (2) some of my general observations about how the learners interacted with the materials, the projects, and each other during the camp, and (3) a description of the specific cardboard activities along with my observations how well they worked with the learners."