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"While some educators see cell phones and digital devices as distractions and sources of attention deficit, others say these are wonderful, undervalued teaching tools. Do we need to suppress the use of cell phones in classrooms or bring today's teachers up to speed on how to teach with this new tool?"

"Writing is a scary task for students because it is partly a single-minded activity that calls for a lot of serious thinking and partly due to the overarching focus that has being placed on teaching writing as product and not process. Donald Murray, a writing theorist of grand calbire, is unequivocal on this, in his Write to Learn , Murray emphasizes the importance of teaching writing as a process. For him the problem with teachers of writing is that they are trained as teachers by studying a product and when they are teaching writing to their students, they basically focus their attention on what students have produced and not what they might have done."

"o you are a music teacher and you want to have access to some productive apps to help you teach music using your iPad. Well you have landed in the right place, Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has just finished curating a list of some of the best music teaching and learning apps. We have checked several resources and included only what we think has some educational value, we know there are several other music apps scattered all over iTunes market but it is really hard to find those ones that can be recommended for teachers and students. Check out the list below and if you have other resources or you know of other educational music apps , please share them with us in the comment below."

"The apps recognized as Best Apps for Teaching & Learning are of exceptional value to inquiry-based teaching and learning as embodied in the AASL's Standards for the 21st-Century Learner. The apps foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration and are user friendly to encourage a community of learners to explore and discover." American Library Association

"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."

"Even after teaching for a decade, Pamela Baack found herself battling the calendar as she tried to keep her students on track. She's the first to admit it wasn't easy to change the way she had been teaching for a decade. "We were always on someone else's pace, not our kids' pace," says Baack, who teaches at the Bella Romero Academy of Applied Technology, a K-8 public school in Greeley, Colorado. Most lessons were taught to the entire class, requiring Baack to constantly search for opportunities to help the students who struggled. "It was hard to differentiate, because it was hard to find the time to go back," she says. Today, students in Baack's third-grade classroom work through addition, multiplication, and division activities at their own pace. Some progress through lessons quickly, while others get the opportunities they need to relearn and practice key concepts until they are ready to move forward. Importantly, Baack says, even the students who struggle the most are at grade level. "They're still doing what every else is doing, but at a different pace," she says. "They're exposed to grade-level standards and content and will be able to move up." "

"My first year of teaching was a blur. At the time, it didn't feel like a blur. It felt a joyous, adrenaline-fueled rush or lessons, meetings, and new relationships. But in hindsight, it was definitely a blur. And now, years later, I can see a few simple tweaks would've gone a long way."

"One of the most iconic freedom fighter has just left us a couple of days ago leaving behind him a huge legacy for next generations to learn from. Nelson Mandella's life was a genuine fight for human rights and justice and it was thanks to his civil activism that apartheid was abolished in South Africa. The fight for freedom cost Nelson so dearly, 27 years of his life was spent in prison. The lessons we can draw from Nelson's eventful life experiences are inestimable and here are some of the teaching resources I have curated fro you to help yu teach your students about this legendary man."

"I didn't know they could think!" an excited high school principal blurted out. The principal was reacting to what he had just witnessed: his 9th grade students engaging in their first-ever Socratic Seminar, facilitated by my colleague and wife Denise a few years ago in a Louisiana district. It was a poignant moment (even though the students might have taken offense), since their chatter and body language made clear that they, too, were pleased with what they had done.

"Last year at this time, I was trying not to think about kindergarteners. I was still teaching ninth grade English and had just accepted a job teaching technology to K-5. I was excited about the challenge, and I knew that I'd bitten off more than I could chew. Developing the tech curriculum challenged me to teach programming or at least computational thinking at each elementary grade level. Our school is mid-pivot in technology -- we're in our second year of a middle school 1:2 iPad program, our first year of having a cart of iPads available for elementary, and our last year of two PC labs for the students to use (next year we'll have only one lab). Knowing this, I wanted to design a program that mostly used tablet-based tools."

"3 Reasons Why Faculty Meetings Are a Waste of Time By Peter DeWitt on April 10, 2015 6:50 AM Faculty Meeting.png Many school leaders walk into a faculty meeting with a single idea of how they want to move forward and walk out with the same idea. That's telling... John Hattie talks a great deal about the Politics of Distraction, which means we focus on adult issues, and not enough time...if ever...on learning. That is happening around the U.S. for sure. Recently the Assembly of NY State only furthered those distractions, which you can read about here, which means that school leaders and teachers have to work harder to maintain a focus on learning. Quite frankly, well before mandates and accountability, school leaders focused on the politics of distraction and not on learning. Compliance is not new in schools. Faculty meetings were seen as a venue to get through and something that teachers were contractually obligated to attend. During these days of endless measures of compliance, principals can do a great deal to make sure they don't model the same harmful messages to staff that politicians are sending to teachers. Jim Knight calls that "Freedom within form." In Talk Like Ted, Carmine Gallo quotes Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo) when he writes, "Creativity is often misunderstood. People often think of it in terms of artistic work - unbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect. If you look deeper, however, you'll find that some of the most inspiring art forms - haikus, sonatas, religious paintings- are fraught with constraints. (p. 190)" Clearly, constraints have a wide definition. There is a clear difference between the constraints of compliance and the stupidity of the legislation just passed by the assembly in NY. As we move forward, principals still are charged...or at least should be...with the job of making sure they offer part...inspiration, part...teacher voice...and a great deal of focus on learning. There is never a more important tim

"Having used coding for this school year, it seems like there are so many teachable moments to use with my class that I did not know existed.  I want to outline three accidental discoveries while I was teaching geometry."

"Several teachers now have already stated using the flipped classroom model in their teaching and some are still thinking about how to do it. If you are one of those who are keen on applying this learning/teaching strategy with your students then this resourceful section will provide you with all the materials, tips, ideas, and tools to flip your classroom. A flipped classroom is a model in which the ordinary teaching activities which are done in class like lecturing or demonstrations are recorded in videos and podcasts for students to access at home. The in-class time is used instead for deeper class discussions, students projects, one-one-one interventions, peer collaboration, and many more."

"Problem based learning ( PBL) is a teaching strategy that involves the minimum amount of direct and formal instruction characteristic of lecture based teaching.  In a PBL model, students are provided with complex problems to work on and during the process they get to learn the lesson content and theoretical knowledge underlying the problem. In other words, unlike traditional content-based teaching where the primacy is put on the delivery of content and the imparting of knowledge to students, PBL foregrounds problem-based activities as a way to stimulate students cognitive skills and engage them in hands-on learning."

"Hearing a child say they spent their school day playing with Lego may not go down well with parents. But these little bricks could become a fixture in maths lessons thanks to a new programme devised by the toy company. Primary schools have long used Lego informally to teach. However, this month Lego Education is launching a new programme, MoreToMaths, a global scheme especially designed to help teachers tackle key stage 1 maths on the national curriculum using the toys. The MoreToMaths kit, including lesson plans and teaching guides, costs £750 for a class of 30. While some may be sceptical about Lego's move into education - and the price that may deter state schools - many teachers have already found cost-effective ways to use Lego in lessons. We gathered these fun ideas from our teaching community."

"This is my 20th year in education but my second year back in the classroom, teaching STEM full-time to 610 4th and 5th graders at Independence Elementary in Yukon, Oklahoma. Our STEM program is very unique, since it's in the "specials "rotation for all students that also includes PE, Music and Art. This is the 4th year of the STEM program in Yukon Public Schools. As we're about to wind down our school year, I thought it would be good to reflect and share about the reasons I love teaching elementary STEM in YPS. If you want to learn more, come to STEMseeds PD Camp June 2-4, 2015!"

"According to Code.org, 90 percent of U.S. schools are not teaching any computer science. Eyebrows were raised in 2013 as the U.K. passed a plan to educate every child how to code. In 2014, Barack Obama made history as the first U.S. president to program a computer. Yet critics claim that often only the more affluent schools offer computer science courses, thus denying minorities potential to learn the skills required by the 1.4 million new jobs that will be created during the next ten years. In my opinion, parents of every student in every school at every level should demand that all students be taught how to code. They don't need this skill because they'll all go into it as a career -- that isn't realistic -- but because it impacts every career in the 21st century world. Any country recognizing that will benefit in the long term. Here's how you can start. With the following resources, you can teach programming with every student and every age."

Welcome to the Teaching the Civil War with Technology website. Here you will find curriculum integration strategies and ideas for incorporating technology into the teaching of the American Civil War. Click on one of the images below to view our blog or wiki.

What would your classroom be like without your students cracking open their oversized textbooks everyday? Probably a lot more interesting, especially for the kiddies. There are so many other resources out there for teachers to use, online and off, that teaching without textbooks is becoming more and more acceptable. If you don't believe us, scroll down this list of over 100 different resources - including websites, iPod lectures and field trips - that will encourage you to toss out your textbooks.