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AR SPOT is an augmented-reality authoring environment for children. An extension of MIT's Scratch project, this environment allows children to create experiences that mix real and virtual elements. Children can display virtual objects on a real-world scene observed through a video camera, and they can control the virtual world through interactions between physical objects. This project aims to expand the range of creative experiences for young authors, by presenting AR technology in ways appropriate for this audience. In this process, we investigate how young children conceptualize augmented reality experiences, and shape the authoring environment according to this knowledge.

Collaboration Our primary goal at this point is to prove or disprove the effectiveness of puzzles as a learning strategy. If you are a teacher who would like to experiment with these ideas in your classroom please contact us. We'd love to work with you. In fact, regardless of who you are, if these ideas seem promising and you'd like to help or try them out, please contact us. We're very open with our work and are interested in collaborating with anyone we can, within the constraints of our very limited resources. You can reach us at info@puzzleschool.com Our Mission The Puzzle School was started with the mission of creating educational environments that will inspire a greater love of learning. We strongly believe that learning is something people truly love to do when it is presented in a way that gives the learner a sense of progress toward their learning goals. We focus on puzzles as they provide one of the most effective ways of creating a learning environment that is interactive, giving students an immediate sense of progress as they try to "figure out" the material they are learning. The methods we use at The Puzzle School mimic the learning environments that children thrive in while learning how to walk and talk. This model can best be summed up as hypothesis and error driven learning, where students develop a hypothesis toward solving a problem and are able to test that hypothesis using feedback loops, learning from a success or failure as they move closer to a solution. This model has been used successfully in thousands of schools around the world, most notably Montessori Schools. We simply want to highlight this method and make it so that all students have access to environments where they can learn in this way. We believe this will encourage a love of learning in all students.

There is a big difference between having a BYOD policy and a BYOD learning environment. The former lays the foundation for a BYOD learning environment but it by no means guarantees it. In order to shift from a school with a BYOD policy to a school with a BYOD learning environment, mindset shifts need to occur organizationally:

A review of Kahn's programming  tutorials i a "living coding" environment

"We hear about it all the time: Universal access to research, education and culture-all good things, without a doubt-made possible by things like open source software, open educational resources and the like. But what are these various communities and what do they mean? How can we all learn more and get involved? School of Open has rolled the conversation back to square one so that understanding the basics is easy. Through a list of new courses created by users and experts, people can learn more about what "openness" means and how to apply it. There are stand-alone courses on copyright, writing for Wikipedia, the collaborative environment of open science, and the process behind making open video. These free courses start March 18 (sign up by clicking the "start course" button by Sunday, March 17): Copyright 4 Educators (US) Copyright 4 Educators (AUS) Creative Commons for K-12 Educators Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics and Beyond These free courses are open for you to take at any time: Get a CC license. Put it on your website Open Science: An Introduction Open data for GLAMs Intro to Openness in Education A Look at Open Video Contributing to Wikimedia Commons Open Detective "

"It is a short TED Talk video from 2012 by Peter Norvig about his journey of designing and delivering an online course. The aim was to create a learning environment that felt like one on one tuition despite the fact they had over 160 000 enrolments."

"Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience. "

"Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The programming environment runs on the Xbox, allowing rapid design iteration using only a game controller for input."

Also free microsoft programming language for kids. We use Scratch in the LRC from 7th grade on, but need to move it down to 6th. We also want to begin programming clubs for creating games and apps. This might be a good starting point for Primary.

iEARN offers both face-to-face workshops and online professional development courses for educators seeking to integrate online global project work into their classrooms. Since 1988, iEARN has equipped more than 100,000 educators with the technical, collaborative and organizational skills needed to participate fully in a global, collaborative Internet-based learning environment.

PD opportunites with a global education focus

Virtual field trips challenge and expose students to new types of technology. It is a great way to spark their interest and motivate their learning in a specific content area. Virtual field trips can offer students more opportunities because you can take them to places they wouldn't normally be able to go to otherwise - like inside a volcano or ocean floor! In addition, virtual field trips may even boost students' reading comprehension skills and will expose them to different cultures and environments. While virtual field trips offer a great learning opportunity, they can be hard to organize and time consuming. Take advantage of our free virtual field trips and engage your students even more!

So Facebook was basically used to facilitate a discussion group, which can certainly be done with an LMS like Blackboard or Moodle or with various other tools, but the nice thing about Facebook is that many students are already familiar and comfortable with it - it's a "known entity" to them. Another positive thing, which addressed a concern of mine in this environment, was that there was a 'wall' between this academic use and the personal uses students have for the tool - by being in the group you didn't have to friend anyone or expose your personal information.

"GameMaker for Mac, based on the GameMaker 7 framework, offered a drag-and-drop interface for rapid design and iteration of gameplay features, graphics and sound, as well as an integrated development environment (IDE) and a flexible, built-in scripting language (GML, GameMaker Language)."

iPads in Education "News, ideas and more on the use of iPads in the learning environment." Created and curated by John Evans John Evans curates this topic from blogs, tweets, videos and much more

"Technology has changed a great deal in the last 5-6 years and the skills we need have changed along with it. Although no one would use all of these technologies, we should be knowledgeable in what each of them is and how it could be/might be used in a classroom."