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This blogpost discusses the aims of the 21st Century Fluency Project This resource is the collaborative effort of a group of experienced educators and entrepreneurs who have united to share their experience and ideas, and create a project geared toward making learning relevant to life in our new digital age. Our purpose is to develop exceptional resources to assist in transforming learning to be relevant to life in the 21st Century. At the core of this project are our Curriculum Integration Kits - engaging, challenge based learning modules designed to cultivate the essential 21st Century Fluencies within the context of the required curriculum.

Blueback is a beautiful metaphor for life and particularly of the life we live in schools. When looked at close up, with an eye on the details, the experience of school is one of passing and recurring cycles. When looked at from a distance, with an eye on the whole, there are elements of constancy, the throughlines which bring meaning to our experience and which have as their consequence the residuals of education. 

At the heart of all that we do as teachers lies the act of learning. Our hope is that our actions inspire our students to engage in a process that results in their acquisition of new knowledge, mastery of new skills and the development of capacities and dispositions which will prepare them for life beyond our classrooms. Increasingly our focus is on developing the skills and dispositions our students require to become life-long learners. We recognise that in a rapidly changing world, the capacity to take charge of your personal learning journey, to become self-navigating learners is essential. 

"We are currently deep in the middle of exam season here in the UK, but the end is in sight. But what do you and your pupils do with this strange time after exams when so much of your time effort (blood and sweat). Do you revel in the limbo and become demob happy, or full throttle to the end of the year? In this session of #UKEdChat we discuss your plans and opinions to 'life after exams'."

"Despite our best efforts, teachers inevitability bring school work home with them at least occasionally, which can impact on family life and make a mockery of our work/life balance. Yet, are there advantages to completing school work at home, as well as the obvious disadvantages? Once we decide to complete work at home, are we doing so most effectively and in an appropriate environment, or are we trying to juggle marking spelling books while binge-watching a box-set?"

Too often, our students don't get the chance to think beyond the narrow constraints of a curriculum. The focus can be purely on developing the pupils to pass their exams, and not to creatively think how they can overcome challenges that they may soon be faced with. Teaching creative thinking is now, more than ever, crucial to prepare young people for future jobs, societal changes, and life situations which we cannot predict accurately. One thing is for sure, being able to creatively think is a life skill that will support them through the uncertain future ahead, and allowing space and time to develop this capability is essential, with schools well-placed to encourage growth.

"This study suggests textbook publishers can improve student understanding of key concepts by revisiting the design of these life cycle diagrams. Furthermore, our findings suggest there may be value in studying the design elements in other life science diagrams to see if we can make them more effective teaching tools."

"Some thoughts on teachers, students and the Future of Education. The book kid me is holding in the video is The Way Things Work. If there's a bookish child in your life, you should get them a copy"

Video of Rebecca Skloot regarding "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"

Solutions to many of life's problems including homework and time management.

Broad resource for answer to basic family life education from National Instiuted of Healrh (NIH)

As much as possible my wife and I try  and engage our children in as many different activities as we can; whether it be rock pooling on South Wales beaches in the rain, feeding the animals at a local farm or watching the fantastic Balloon display at Bristol Balloon Fiesta...

Social Media, Social Life: How Teens View Their Digital Lives, from Common Sense Media's Program for the Study of Children and Media, surveyed more than 1,000 13- to 17-year olds to uncover the latest insights on teens' use of media and technology and how they perceive it affects their relationships and feelings about themselves.

Anki is a program which makes remembering things easy. Because it is a lot more efficient than traditional study methods, you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn. Anyone who needs to remember things in their daily life can benefit from Anki. Since it is content-agnostic and supports images, audio, videos and scientific markup (via LaTeX), the possibilities are endless. For example: learning a language studying for medical and law exams memorizing people's names and faces brushing up on geography mastering long poems even practicing guitar chords!

Questions have been raised about the social impact of widespread use of social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter. Do these technologies isolate people and truncate their relationships? Or are there benefits associated with being connected to others in this way? The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project decided to examine social networking sites in a survey that explored people's overall social networks and how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, and community and political engagement. The findings presented here paint a rich and complex picture of the role that digital technology plays in people's social worlds. Wherever possible, we seek to disentangle whether people's varying social behaviors and attitudes are related to the different ways they use social networking sites, or to other relevant demographic characteristics, such as age, gender and social class.

A powerful anecdote which speaks to the value of our current silly test-based education trajectory