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A common challenge for students and teachers is how to develop a great idea for a piece of writing. Too often students struggle with the process of finding inspiration for their writing. They have a vague idea for the story they hope to tell, but all too quickly it transforms into a list of events with little or no detail. The goal here is to provide our students with a process to use during the planning process. The hope is that by identifying the type of thinking required during the early phases of ideation and to focus their attention on details, that the stories our students subsequently compose will be more enjoyable to read. Hopefully, this process helps.

"I am a big fan of music in the history classroom and I have created a number of Spotify Playlists for this purpose. Often this is merely to help create a calm and purposeful working atmosphere, when a bit of Chopin or Debussy sets the tone perfectly. Occasionally it's even possible to have calming instrumental music directly related to the topic in question: for example, Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor, which was inspired by the composer watching British troop ships heading off to France in 1914. However, some songs are better used to stoke up some energy during lessons, whilst the very best of all are historical sources in themselves, combining musical feeling with powerful lyrical content. What follows is a list of songs I regularly use in class, organised in broadly chronological order in terms of the topics they relate to, with a brief explanation of how you could make use of them with your own students. What follows is a list of 25 principal songs, but with links to others on similar themes or by similar artists, bringing the total up to over 50. If you have any other suggestions, please contact me (@russeltarr / @activehistory on Twitter) and I'd be delighted to add them to the list (as long as it isn't "We didn't start the fire" by Billy Joel. Which I admit is superb, but we all know this one, surely?)."

"A newly announced Ontario government program aims to do just that - soon making financial literacy education a reality for high-school students. The mandatory Grade 10 career studies course will be composed of four modules: financial literacy, entrepreneurship skills, digital literacy and career/life planning."

"Digital storytelling is one of the potent educational activities to spark students creative writing and engage reluctant writers. It allows students to have their own voice, communicate their thoughts and experiment with a variety of semiotic modes including text, images, audio and video. In today's post we have handpicked for you five great iPad apps geared towards unleashing the writing gene within students. Students can use them to compose their stories and presentations and share them with others via email or social media. Check them out and share with us your feedback. Enjoy"

" This Copyright Decision Tool was developed by the Copyright Consortium of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) . The CMEC Copyright Consortium is composed of the ministers of education of the provinces and territories, with the exception of Quebec. (For further background on copyright and education, you can visit the CMEC Web pages on copyright. ) This Copyright Decision Tool is a supplement to the Fair Dealing Guidelines , created to help teachers determine whether their use of a copyright-protected work is fair dealing. The tool helps teachers assess whether fair dealing permits them to use a copyright-protected work for students without permission or payment of copyright royalties. Fair dealing is only one of several users' rights provided to educational users in the Copyright Act. For a description of other educational users' rights, see Copyright Matters! Every school board or school district should have a staff member who is familiar with copyright law. For more information, contact the ministry or department of Education Copyright Officer for your province or territory, listed here. CMEC wishes to acknowledge that the Copyright Decision Tool is liberally adapted, with permission, from the University of Ottawa's Fair Dealing Decision Tree ."

"Today at the OTA / EncycloMedia 2016 Conference in Oklahoma City, keynote speaker Shannon M. Miller (@shannonmmiller) shared a wealth of apps, websites, and project ideas in her breakout session, "Igniting Innovation and Creativity in Our Makerspaces With Digital Tools and Apps." One of the apps she shared is "MusiQuest - Music & Beat Maker." The same Denver-based app developer, Edify Technology (@EdifyTechnology) has also published the amazing musical creation app, "Sketch-a-Song Kids." The tagline of this second app is, "Compose in Color." Both of these are FREE and amazing! My wife, Shelly (@sfryer) has been playing with Sketch-a-Song tonight on her iPad, and it's remarkable! Here are a couple tutorial videos which introduce some of the basic elements of both apps."

"Composing a story from scratch comes naturally to some people. For the rest of us creating a story from scratch can be a struggle. Over the years I've found that using pictures helps a lot of students get started on crafting stories. In some cases I've had students create collages to represent elements of a story. In other cases I've had them choose five pictures and write two hundred words about each. Being asked to write two hundred words about five pictures feels a lot less daunting than being asked to write one thousand words in one shot. The PDF embedded below (click here if you can't see the embedded document) outlines how to use ten of my favorite free tools to create image-based stories. "

"Digital environments mediate the navigation, length, and complexity of texts, requiring composers to adapt to audience, tone, and purpose in ways that previous generations were never required. Digital environments have disrupted the writing process as we once knew it due to an interwoven combination of traditional narrative sequencing, hyperlinks to other digital sources, infusions of multimedia texts like videos and podcasts, and interactive response fields. A new Digital Writing Process SOARS!"

"The students in Molly James's kindergarten classroom were tasked with creating a mathematical art gallery. They had each drawn a number and then searched for two types objects they could use to compose a visual number sentence - such as two rulers plus three scissors to equal five objects. After photographing and mounting their pictures on the wall in numerical order, the students sat on the floor with their sketchbooks and began to draw and talk. "I had expected them to learn something about number composition," James said, "but I didn't expect the remarkable observations they began to have about the photographs." For example, when one girl looked at a picture of two red scissors and three blue scissors (2+3=5), she noticed that the direction of the handles gave rise to a new number sentence: 4 scissors pointing left + 1 scissor pointing right = 5 scissors. James, who recently published a paper about creativity in the classroom, said moments like these remind her that "creativity is not fluff or an add-on, but is instead an essential part of what it means to be a mathematician."  In fact, she believes creativity is the key to helping her students become confident and skilled mathematical thinkers."

"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."

"Excitement about 3D printing has steadily accelerated over the past decade - but this excitement has largely outpaced innovation and development in the field. As a researcher in 3D printing technologies, I've built 3D printers using all of the major technologies, as well as more experimental ones. What I've learned is that many of these technologies are composed of very well-understood materials, software problems and mechanical systems - things that engineers have been doing for decades. This, then, begs the question: Why isn't 3D printing better? Why are failure rates so high and why is reproducibility so difficult? It's clear that it's not due to working with exotic materials or advanced motion control. What's actually holding back innovation is how we think about those technologies: as separate pieces, rather than as elements of a system. "

"Soundplant turns your computer keyboard into a versatile, low latency sound trigger and playable instrument. Via drag-and-drop, easily assign sound files of any format and length onto 72 keyboard keys, creating custom soundboards that put hours of instantly-playing audio at your fingertips with no extra hardware needed. Soundplant is used for live music and sound effects, as a drum pad, as a unique electronic instrument, as an educational aid, and just for fun - in radio, television, theater, podcasting, presentations, studios, classrooms, arenas, clubs, museums, and churches - by DJs, musicians, engineers, sound designers, composers, teachers, magicians, puppeteers, comedians, public speakers, gamers, and more."

"Quietly and almost covertly, Apple's iPad has become a common tool in every realm of professional design. Fashion designers sketch on it, designers collect and curate ideas using it, digital artists paint with it in stunning realism, and architects even prepare 3D models before going to production all from the 9.7″ screen. The device is a near ubiquitous sight inside studios, design shops, and most noticeably at trade shows, an ideal compromise when the pocketability of the smartphone is too little and a laptop is just too large. For a demographic regularly relying upon composing, showing, and sharing projects, the iPad is Goldilocks perfect. Here are several of our favorite iPad apps for creatives with content creation and collaboration in mind."

"For the past couple of weeks, I have been preparing to teach a summer school/camp on maker education (see http://www.makereducation.com/summer-camp-schedule.html). As part of my preparation, I decided compose a list of promises to my learners as a maker educator."

"5 Steps to Writing A Poem is a visual created by  Cambridge University and outlines the 5 major stages to composing a poem. In fact, the steps mentioned here are generic and can be used for writing any other genre, of course with a bit of tweaking. As a teacher you might want to share this work with your students and guide them through the different stages they need to follow to produce a good piece of prose or poetry."

"Apps are big business, and they're one of the main reasons for the success of iOS. Android may shift more units than Apple's mobile platform, but the App Store still tends to get the lion's share of the best apps, from high-end audio tools through to cutting-edge education offerings. But what can you get if you're not willing to spend anything at all? Surprisingly, quite a lot; as our selection shows, fantastic free iPhone and iPad apps are available for all manner of tasks, from sprucing up photos and composing music through to keeping fit and exploring the world."