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"The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest public school district in the USA, has approved a plan that will provide every K-12 student and teacher in Los Angeles with an iPad by Fall 2014. With over 650,000 students and almost 26,000 teachers, this initiative represents a huge and risky $500 million investment. With all that technology flooding into the public school system, to what degree will LAUSD's ambitious new plan change the quality of education offered to public school students in the city of Los Angeles?"

"FYI: Apple officially released iOS7, the latest operating system for the iPhone and iPad, on September 18. Almost simultaneously, Stanford began offering a course teaching students how to design apps in the new environment. Although the course is still in progress, the initial video lectures are now available online, you guessed it, on iTunesU. This course, along with other top-flight coding courses, appears in the Computer Science section of our big collection of 775 Free Online Courses, where you'll also find courses on Philosophy, History, Physics and other topics."

"Never been part of an online professional community or network? Already part of a community or network, but want to be more connected? The CEM Starter Kit can help you on both fronts. Written by The Connected Educator author Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Powerful Learning Practice in collaboration with the Connected Educators initiative, and loaded with helpful links and embedded videos, the kit takes a 31 days approach for this special month, giving you one simple way to get more connected every day. Please feel free to pass it along to any friend or colleague you think could benefit from getting more connected!"

"So your district or school is planning or in the process of implementing some sort of 1:1 device initiative. Seeing as these are all the rage, seems like it's a given that your deployment will be a smashing success, right? Here's the truth…. …it will fail. It may not be monumental failure, but parts of your deployment will not work. Whether it be the MDM that manages them or the rising stack of parent concerns, you will be faced with a choice as a district: retreat or carry on. In the wake of the LAUSD story and the recent Ft. Bend ISD news here in Texas about 're-evaluating' their deployments, I thought it'd be a good time to reflect on why some deployments work and some don't work. I'll let you know that our deployment was far from flawless, as I've listed here, but we had tools in place to overcome issues before they became an "Implementation Killer"."

October is Connected Educators Month. Here's a description: Connected Educators is an initiative of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education and is conducted by the American Institutes for Research in collaboration with several partner organizations and a technical working group. Numerous other organizations and individuals have contributed to its success as organizers and participating organizations in Connected Educator Month. Connected Educators pursues this mission through seeking to understand and promote educators learning and collaborating through online communities of practice and social networks.

"In the Spring of 2013, my school district committed to issuing an iPad to every classroom teacher. The purposes for this initiative were to give teachers an additional tool for teaching and learning and to familiarize teachers with mobile devices in anticipation of more iPads being purchased for classroom use and a grades 6-12 BYOD program coming in the next school year."

"Educators in the Jefferson County Public Schools have made it their mission to teach children to be not only skilled thinkers but also successful human beings and citizens of the world. CARE for Kids, the Louisville, Kentucky, district's program for social and emotional learning (SEL), is less than two years old but is already showing signs of success. (Watch the Edutopia.org video A Districtwide Initiative to CARE for Kids.) "

Every year the New Media Consortium (NMC), in partnership with the Educause Learning Initiative, release a series of reports for different education sectors on key trends, significant challenges and important developments recognized in the fields of education. "The eleventh edition will describe annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, a more than decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education. Six emerging technologies will be identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and significant challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning.""

" Knowledge in Action Research Helping to Make the Case for Rigorous Project-based Learning One of the Foundation's current initiatives is a research program, called Knowledge in Action, designed and managed by a collaborative group of learning scientists, curriculum experts, teacher leaders, and Foundation staff. The research team is applying a rigorous PBL approach to college-preparatory courses, so that students can participate in authentic tasks that provide an experiential platform for learning that prepares them for college and careers."

"As our 1:1 initiative moves forward, I see that there are three kinds of teachers that are part of the process: 1. The teachers who are ready for change (!!) 2. The teachers who are willing to change 3. The teachers who just want to get by I wish someone would have told me about this! But, I'm glad I had the chance to be a teacher before becoming an Instructional Technologist. That background has led me to approach the teachers as students first & teachers second. I pondered and pondered how 1:1 should be implemented (after I had also read some literature on it). I came up with the idea that because I target three different groups of teachers, my sessions need to be differentiated to meet their needs."

"Below is a wonderful classroom poster I came across in Edutopia's Pinterest board.The poster outlines 5 things students should pay heed to when engaged in writing tasks. You can print and use this poster in your class with your students. It can be used as a self assessment checklist that students draw on when working on their writings. It can also be a good way to initiate discussions around areas that pose real difficulties to students writings."

"If you need to record some simple sound or audio on a Mac, you can do so easily using a bundled app that comes with OS X, without having to download any third party utilities. That app is QuickTime, which may come as a surprise to some users as it's typically thought of as a movie viewing application, but believe it or not it has video, screen, and audio recording capabilities as well, making it surprisingly powerful if you look beyond the initially obvious functionalities."

"Teaching primary and secondary students how to program has become a hot topic lately. Even people like United States President Barack Obama to actress Angela Bassett to music artist Shakira have spoken about the value of computer programming in an initiative called Hour of Code. With good reason too. Technology is a major part of our lives. Knowing how to build new technologies means having the ability to shape its direction. So let's encourage students not just how to program, but how to write programs that can help our world. And to start, technology coordinator Holli Scharinger has curated a set of web, desktop, and mobile apps that students can use to learn computer programming."

"What medium is delivering the best learning experience to your children? Just because a child is engaged on an iPad, are they learning more than they would with a picture book? In this intriguing TEDx talk, author of Screen Time: How Electronic Media Affects Your Young Child and Director of the New America Foundation's Early Education Initiative, Lisa Guernsey, discusses the research she has been involved with, as well as some the practical outcomes of her work exploring learning and screen media."

"In the first week of April, I participated in a Twitter chat for the ASCD Leader to Leader initiative, hashtag #ASCDL2L, on the role of the modern teacher. As the conversation unfolded, it caused me to think more deeply than I have before about what elements teachers might consider on their path to developing a more modern version of their current role."

"The recent 3D printing explosion on the educational market has left many educators wondering how they can afford to integrate this technology into the classroom. Most schools do not have the luxury of purchasing a 3D printer but still want to provide the experience for their students. 3D pens made their debut on Kickstarter this year as an affordable 3D printing option. After the initial investment of the pens, they are an incredibly affordable tool for classrooms. The pens allow students to illustrate - in 3D - concepts in math, history, art, design, and chemistry, giving them a tangible means to explore complex ideas. The pens work as a manual operating 3D printer. Heated filament is extruded through the pen's tip, which quickly cools down to form a stable 3D structure. It actually adopts the same FDM technology which powers mainstream desktop 3D printers. The human ergonomic design allows students to draw an infinite variety of shapes and items, on both the 2D plane and within 3D free space."

"For many years New Milford High School was just like virtually every other public school in this country defined solely by traditional indicators of success such as standardized test scores, graduation rates, and acceptances to four year colleges. These indicators have become so embedded in the minds of those judging our schools and work that we, like everyone else, worked hard to focus only on initiatives that would hopefully produce favorable outcomes in those areas. If we were doing well we continued down the same path allowing the status quo to reign supreme. The mentality of if it ins't broke than why fix it resonated so profoundly with us that we would not have even considered changing our ways. If results were not what our stakeholders wanted this would then trigger meetings leading to the development of action plans to get us back on course. "

"A number of insightful writers have suggested the skills that people need in order to cope with the 21st century. One of my favourites that appears to summarise all of them is from Jackie Gerstein who has put together a neat pictorial of these skills. See also Tony Wanger's work, which Jackie acknowledges. The skills she has identified are: effective oral and written communication; collaboration across networks; agility and adaptability; grit; resilience; empathy and global stewardship; vision; self-regulation; hope and optimism; curiosity and imagination; initiative and entrepreneurialism; and critical thinking and problem solving. Some of the implications of self-determined learning are:"

"Mystery Science is a relatively new service that is offering nice science lessons for elementary school students. The lessons on Mystery Science feature a series of videos and images arranged around a science subject. After each video there are questions that students can answer on their own or work through with your guidance. The lessons don't stop there. After the initial videos and questions you can extend the lessons by leading students in hands-on activities that reinforce the concepts shown in the videos. Mystery Science provides materials lists and detailed directions for each hands-on activity"