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Swift Playgrounds, an innovative new iPad app from Apple that makes learning to code easy and fun for everyone, is now available on the App Store. With Swift Playgrounds, real coding concepts are brought to life with an interactive interface that allows students and beginners to explore working with Swift, the easy-to-learn programming language from Apple used by professional developers to create world-class apps.

Interesting article in Journal of Higher Ed with Many Great Points "The real obstacle in education remains student motivation. Especially in an age of informational abundance, getting access to knowledge isn't the bottleneck, mustering the will to master it is. And there, for good or ill, the main carrot of a college education is the certified degree and transcript, and the main stick is social pressure. Most students are seeking credentials that graduate schools and employers will take seriously and an environment in which they're prodded to do the work. But neither of these things is cheaply available online. Arizona State University's recent partnership with edX to offer MOOCs is an attempt to do this, but if its student assessments fall short (or aren't tied to verified identities), other universities and employers won't accept them. And if the program doesn't establish genuine rapport with students, then it won't have the standing to issue credible nudges. (Automated text-message reminders to study will quickly become so much spam.) For technological amplification to lower the costs of higher education, it has to build on student motivation, and that motivation is tied not to content availability but to credentialing and social encouragement. The Law of Amplification's least appreciated consequence, however, is that technology on its own amplifies underlying socioeconomic inequalities.

Make maths worksheets with this tool from microsoft. Just write one example question and the program will generate more questions of the same type and even provide an answer sheet. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

Languages are important. We teach them to children. But we ignore computer programming languages - perhaps some of the most important fluencies anyone can acquire. Instead, we black box them and hope they MIGHT look at doing this in college, when in fact, many of the best jobs and opportunities lie in languages: both "foreign" languages and computer languages. Thought provoking blog post about a conversation: "Many interesting and stimulating things were said, but one I remember was from Peter Pham over dinner. It was a simple line, "why do we teach languages in junior high and high school but not a computer language?" that had profound meaning to me."

This SAT prep program is free and has more than 60 lessons in math, reading, and writing. It also includes a score projector. This is something parents CAN have their children do to prepare for the test (unless you want to get my FAVORITE book for this -- SAT prep for dummies .) 

Interesting, a biology lesson using a style from "the Apprentice" to provide peer feedback in the area of forensic entomology. Themed lessons like this add interest, especially if it is a program that kids watch.

Bumper sticker noticed on the back of a van: It will be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to run a bake sale to buy a bomber. Now, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against the Air Force, and bombers, when used against the right people, can right some of the world's wrongs. But the point of the bumper sticker is still cogent. Why do schools have to struggle to fund their programs while millions are doled out to other causes?

Resources for developing classroom and school wide anti bully programs and promote upstander behavior.

Finland is an innovator in education and now they're doing it again. Schools need a facelift. If you're building a new school - rethink school. I'd look at the designs. Also, Ewan McIntosh wrote a great "7 spaces of schools" that is in the "Choice" chapter for those of you have bought my book Flattening Classroom, Engaging Minds - he talked about this on a boat in South Africa with me 2 years a go and is an expert to follow in the area of school design. "Finnish students consistently have placed among the top countries on the Program for International Student Assessment, which gauges 15-year-old students' ability to understand and transfer concepts in reading, mathematics, and science. For example, in the most recent mathematics assessment, in 2009, Finnish students scored 54 points higher than their American peers on a scale of zero to 1,000. Pasi Sahlberg, the director general of the Center for International Mobility and Cooperation at Finland's education ministry, attributes the nation's academic achievement to a three-fold approach: quality of the academic curriculum, equity in educational access, "and the third one is the environment. How the environment and design of the school is supporting students' learning. When we combine these three things we can say something about the overall goodness of the school system."

Wonderopolis, a program brought to life by the National Center for Family Literacy, engages and inspires families in the pursuit of education and learning together. We help families create a new force - transforming the parent/child relationship into an engine for progress and upward mobility.

I have to admit that I've become a huge Acrobat Pro fan. We use it in my classroom to print, annotate, and do all kinds of things. I look forward to learning about how to use this program to convert everything into year end portfolio dvds with movies, text, etc. 

Today is the debut of the Adobe digital school collection. Adobe TV has a ton of videos and resources to help you teach the adobe programs. I am teaching photoshop this week. These are some great resources if you do anything with adobe.

Adobe has their new Digital School Collection which really makes some very powerful tools affordable to schools. (Goes live December 1st) - here are some great tutorials and presentations on the TES website about photoshop and graphic design. Sometimes for these tough programs it helps to use things that other teachers have already used.

new, free website from Pearson Foundation to support the free entrepreneurship education program from the US. "Connect is your online resource for entrepreneurship education, a fast-growing approach that helps young people place their educational goals in the context of real-world success. Entrepreneurship education helps students learn by exploring the principles of business development and creating functioning, profitable enterprises.

Siemens Stem applications due by February 9th. Here is the overview of how things will be this year. They will have a program at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and also at the Pacific Northwest national Laboratory. 50 middle and high school educators are invited to apply. do you teach Science, Technology, Math, or Engineering. Apply.

FRee paint software that is much more powerful than the native paint program. The students love this open source software.

On your own for professional development? Earn a certificate of completion by taking the Library'of Congress's self-paced interactive modules. Each multimedia-rich program delivers approximately one hour of staff development.

If reflective practice is not encouraged within one's teacher education program or school work environment, then it becomes that educator's responsibility (verging on an ethical responsibility) to do so on his or her own.

If you want to help tomorrow be better than today, put financial literacy into your school's program. In fact, I would venture to say that your community will reap the benefits in the years to come as students learn how to manage their money and balance their checkbook. I teach accounting and wish that every student knew how to balance a checkbook. They also need to know the difference between secured and unsecured debt. Spend less than you make, period. "You may not realize it, but these three events are part-and an excellent illustration-of the global financial literacy crisis, one of the overriding problems of the modern financial world."