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"Do your students struggle to come up with topics to write about in their stories? The collection below features some awesome iPad apps that can provide your students with ideas and story starters to get them writing."

"How many schools and how many classrooms allow student choice? And, in adult-centered spaces, how often do young people have the opportunity to make important decisions? Our mainstream educational machine is fueled by the idea that adults know best-that adults must impart their knowledge to prepare students for a demanding world. Our responsibility as teachers is to teach students for their own good…a "good" that more and more of us are having difficulty understanding. We teach students addition and multiplication facts because some day they will need to calculate very quickly…a tip at a restaurant or a bill at the grocery store in case their smartphone runs out of batteries. We teach them to write a five paragraph essay on the theme of a book because they will need those writing skills when…writing an argument to dispute a lawsuit. We teach them how to conjugate "to be" in Spanish because it might save their life…at a fruit stand in South America. While we are preparing them for possible situations, should these situations define the entirety of the direction of their education? I propose that we introduce some choice and some unknown into the situation of school. What if we allow students to make choices about what they learn, how they learn, and when they learn? In a way, 1:1 iPad programs are sparking choice whether we're OK with it or not."

"My all time education hero, Sir Ken Robinson has been discussing the lack of creativity and that standardized does not fit all students. We were remiss back in 2012 when we did not mention him in our blog Apps to Foster More Creativity in the Classroom!  We made up for it by writing about him numerous times since, and in 2014 I had the honor of seeing, hearing and writing about him Live from ASCD 2014. He has been writing and speaking about the sad state of the fact that we are still running our schools under the Industrial Age, and our students have been educated on the standard of routine testing, using the multiple choice test model. With all the opting out going on in 2015 I would think that by know some of the administrators and government leaders would have come across his wonderful TED Talks and realized he has it all completely right. When I read this Commentary Q & A from Education Week - Sir Ken Robinson, I wanted to once again give him a shout out as he urges us all to start thinking of the future of our children's children."

Writing handouts from The Writing Center

Interactive writing help with examples for how to write the most common text types - narratives, descriptions, reviews, reports, procedures, recounts, explanations, expositions, point of view, discussions, debates, letters, emails, news, invitations with free downloads of proformas for off-line use. Write online.

"So are there any apps that help students do this? Here is a list of apps that might. They are not going to write the papers for the students but some of them provide scaffolds, ideas or processes that make them think more clearly about the writing process."

"Read&Write for Google is a Chrome extension that provides comprehensive reading and writing supports for Google Docs and the Web as well as PDFs, ePubs, and KES files stored in Google Drive."

"Digital storytelling is a powerful way to engage students in the writing process. Whether they are telling stories from a summer vacation or writing a persuasive essay on a community issue, technology tools can help motivate reluctant writers. Students can use their writing, audio recordings, video creations, illustrations, and images to create a digital storytelling product that demonstrates their understanding of a concept."

"The judges of the NinjaEssays writing contest are looking for entries on 7 pre-assigned topics associated to education. This is your chance to examine the issues of the contemporary educational system and freely express your opinions and possible solutions."

"Teaching critical thinking and creativity in writing can be a difficult task, but it is crucial in preparing students to meet the standards of the Common Core. Digital storytelling is a highly effective technique for doing so, as it requires a clear organization of thought, discipline, and problem solving skills - all of which can translate directly into more traditional essay writing. What's more, digital storytelling has the added benefit of meeting other Common Core standards relating to proficiency in technical skills. In this article, we'll take a deeper look at why digital storytelling is an effective approach for teaching writing, and how to do it best."

"While the rest of the class was working in a writers workshop, she handed the student an iPad and told him to try and experiment with its speech-to-text feature. With minimal expectations, Redford figured that the newness and the boy's curiosity would at least keep him busy during writing time, which he usually found frustrating. While Redford described the boy as "very bright," he "couldn't even compose a sentence to save his life" because of his dyslexia. Any classroom assignment having to do with writing made him moody. So, as Redford guided the rest of the class through the workshop, the student stepped outside the classroom and spoke his ideas for his writing assignment into the iPad."

"As someone who has been fortunate enough to spend much of her professional career working in elementary schools -- both as an early-childhood (K-3) teacher and university-based teacher educator -- I'm often struck by the difference between how young children and teachers talk about literacy in the earliest years of school. Whether they're drawing pictures and asking you to "read" their latest story or eagerly inviting you to listen to an account of a favorite book, young children enter school enthusiastic about learning to read and write. In a world where they see print all around them -- scrolling on phone screens, in the books that they love, on the billboards they ponder -- learning to read and write makes a young child feel independent and capable. Yet early-childhood teachers point to the pressures associated with the Common Core State Standards and the accompanying standardized testing culture as deeply affecting classrooms, often characterized by a heightened focus on teaching young children to read and write as early as possible."

"Start the NEW YEAR the right way! For January we have one inspiring quote for you for every day of the month! Every morning, write down the positive quote of the day on a piece of paper, put it in your wallet so you can look at it a few times during the day. Write it on a post-it and hang it on your fridge or your computer. Take a picture and save it has your phone or computer background for the day! Make it your motto of the day! Share it! Every morning write down the quote of the day and make sure to hand that note to someone else on that day to spread more positive vibes and energies to those around you as well!"

"Recently I had the distinct privilege of working with Julie Freed, Grant Wood's Assistive Technology guru, to present a number of iPad apps that can be used to help improve the reading and/or writing skills of students in special education. Interested? Here are some of the apps we talked about, along with the reasons why we picked them."

"Coding is the ability to write step by step instructions (programs) for a computer to understand to complete a task. The Hour of Code website has tons of ready to go online activities that get students to write code that results in a number of cool outcomes, such as making a monster dance, creating avatars, remixing music or making a game. When students complete these easy tutorials they learn these important skills- logic, problem solving, fitting puzzle pieces together, selection, instructional writing, editing, revision, and creation. Below are some great websites to find engaging coding projects that take an hour or less. Most require no registration! Just provide students with a quick introduction to the task on the projector and the link for them to get started. I would highly recommend doing the activity first. In the next post I will introduce you to unplugged activities, which get students to focus on specific coding skills you will notice in these activities, which include working with puzzles, providing good instructions, problem solving and algorithms."