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"I just noticed that it has been a year since my last list of iPad apps for teaching music. Several new interesting music apps have seen the light since then and therefore I decided to create another more comprehensive list of some of the best iPad apps for teaching music to give music teachers more options to choose from."

"So yesterday as I was scanning the #NJED hash tag on TweetDeck I came across this intriguing image shared by Mike Marotta. It really puts into perspective why we make many of the decisions that we do at New Milford High School as to why we decided to implement a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiative and don't mandate the use of one specific tool to support learning."

"Below is a list I have been working on for awhile now. the list features some very useful Math websites specifically handpicked for teachers to use with their students. The initial list I compiled contained over 40 websites but as I reviewed it deeper I decided to take some out and keep the rest here. I invite you to have a loom and share with your colleagues. "

"Let's get one thing straight here. I love my morning cup of joe. I'm not alone in saying my day doesn't start without it. Sixty percent of American coffee drinkers claim they need coffee to start their day. But when I came across an infographic by Ryoko Iwata, a Japanese coffee-lover with a blog titled "I Love Coffee" who followed research on the 24-hour circadian clock gathered by Steven Miller, a PhD candidate at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesada, I decided to change my ways. The infographic shows the early morning hours are the worst time to drink coffee."

"Last month, someone who works at a school in Milan, Italy contacted me. She wondered if I would be interested in connecting with a first grade classroom at her school to do something similar. Since the time change between our locations does not allow for synchronous conversation, we decided to play the game on Twitter using the hashtag #guessmynumber."

"In our last unit most of the inquiry was guided. In our new unit we decided that we would give more freedom to students earlier in the unit. This is an environmental unit. It's new for us this year, although we had a similar one about Climate Change last year. We had a new compelling question, "How long could we live without bees." We asked students what they thought about this question. We used Padlets. This is my class's Padlet. (It's a great way to gather short thoughts and ideas.) "

""In Google we trust." That may very well be the motto of today's young online users, a demographic group often dubbed the "digital natives" due their apparent tech-savvy. Having been born into a world where personal computers were not a revolution, but merely existed alongside air conditioning, microwaves and other appliances, there has been (a perhaps misguided) perception that the young are more digitally in-tune with the ways of the Web than others. That may not be true, as it turns out. A new study coming out of Northwestern University, discovered that college students have a decided lack of Web savvy, especially when it comes to search engines and the ability to determine the credibility of search results. Apparently, the students favor search engine rankings above all other factors. The only thing that matters is that something is the top search result, not that it's legit. "

"I've taught about Google Drive/Docs many times in person and virtually. Many teachers have decided to completely move all of their files to the cloud to store them and edit them via Google Drive. The idea of having access to your stuff from any device connected to the web is really appealing; coupled with the collaboration features that Docs offers."

"Arguably one of the more difficult aspects in teaching for understanding is to decide when to teach the desired understanding! In other words, to put it as an essential pedagogical question: When should you state the Understanding and when should you engineer students to come up with it "by design"? Whether we consider the famous example of Socrates in his Dialogues or some of the best teachers we have ever had as students, many of them had the ability to help us "discover" the understanding on the basis of their clever design groundwork, their probing, and their facilitation of discussion."

"In a way, the current education system is already set up like a game-just not a very well designed one. Students earn points (grades), gain levels (grades), and in a way, have leaderboards. There are class valedictorians and students are essentially ranked based on their grades when colleges are deciding who to accept. Currently, the typical grading system in schools has students starting off with a 100 average, which slowly (or quickly, depending on the student's performance) gets lower and lower as the student receives anything less than a 100 on any assignments, tests, etc."

"Thanks to code.org's "Hour of Code," millions of students will get their first taste of computer programming this week, Dec. 9-13, designated as Computer Science Education Week. If schools do decide to go beyond the one hour and take the next step to add coding as a part of school curriculum, what will this look like? Getting kids excited about coding is the easy part. What about the stuff that administrators and educators must worry about - funding, teacher development, curriculum, connection to standards? And, where do you fit this "coding class" in a school day?"

"Project-based learning is not 'doing projects'. PBL is student-driven and specifically open to interpretation to ensure students learn through carrying out a project and not doing a project pre-designed by the teacher. They are driven to answer a 'big' question and carry out their inquiry and design in teams. They are also under pressure to present their results to a third party of some kind. The students decide on how to achieve the goals and are not carrying out teacher-designed tasks."

"PBL or Project Based Learning is a method of teaching that has been around for a long time that is getting more and more attention due to all the tools technology leads itself to. Basically, PBL allows for teachers to "ask" a question that allows students to solve in a variety of a ways using many different analytical methods. Since, Project Based Learning incorporates a lot of different techniques and tools to use I've decided to create a list of resources rather then just one of sites or apps."

"For years, it has been no secret that many students who start post-secondary education programs drop out early. To address this issue, many schools and institutions decide to redesign their courses with the hope that students might gain a greater feeling of success, continue with their chosen program and graduate. When considering courses for redesign, many questions are asked but the most important is this: "What data should be considered to ensure our course redesign efforts are successful?" Data metrics like grades, attendance or participation rates are obvious considerations. These can be reliable metrics in driving decision-making. However, I recommend also considering student feedback, faculty load, student experience, and assessment performance as additional data points which can better inform decisions that directly impact the course redesign process."

"In today's post I sharing with you a list of some of the best apps you should definitely try with your students. This list contains only apps I have not included in similar previous lists. Also, because of the increasing number of requests I get from you concerning Android apps , I decided to include links to the Android versions of those apps that are available in Google Play."

"Two 5-year-old boys, one with autism, were having some friendly playtime when they had a communication breakdown. One boy didn't respond to the other and walked away. The ignored kid got frustrated and pushed over a small staircase, causing the first boy to fall. Their speech therapist, Jordan Sadler, decided to address the issue by recreating it in an iPad app called Puppet Pals. She restaged the scenario as a movie, even taking photos of the room for the background and of the kids for the characters. Using the app to show an instant replay of the scuffle, Sadler and the kids identified what went wrong and then recreated the scene, this time making better decisions. Creating custom stories to help kids learn communication skills or understand complex situations is just one of the ways parents, therapists and educators have taken advantage of tablets to work with kids with autism."

"I won't convince you that you need a PLN. You have to decide that for yourself."

"You've seen them appear in some of our earlier posts on freebies. But today we decided to put all the eBooks together (and many more!) in a single, mega post for you. These will keep you busy for a really long time. Go ahead, download them! Print them if you want to, or save them on your smartphone to read them on the go. "

"Popularized by Angela Lee Duckworth's excellent TED Talk in April 2013, "Grit" has become a red-hot buzzword in education today. However, is this a legitimate concept that teachers should start integrating into their educational zeitgeist or just another passing trend? The research in favor of grit as a predictor of success is compelling, suggesting that this is a much-awaited key measuring stick that works on both students and teachers. Read on to learn more about this trending topic and decide for yourself whether grit is something that should play into your teaching techniques."

"The function of this image is to act as a kind of brainstorm-to help you get your own creative juices going to decide what's most important when designing an authentic project-based learning unit-audiences, technology, habits, purposes, and so on."