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Some of my students are signing up to join the Quest2matter as part of their passion projects. Here's a link to the website and the signup. If your child wants to make a difference in the world, you may want to mention this as something they want to do. Very exciting. "The Quest2Matter is a five-week, student-focused initiative that seeks to inspire students to tackle problems that break their heart. This is an unprecedented opportunity to unlock the potential of students to think entrepreneurially and innovatively and use modern tools to solve problems that break their heart. To learn more about the Quest2Matter, read this post. We are looking to recruit 225 students, and teachers to help facilitate them for our DREAM TEAM! They will be helping us launch the Quest2Matter and its parent movement, Choose2Matter. See the general information and qualifications below, followed by the specific duties of each team. At the very bottom of this post, you'll find a link to the sign-up form."

Doug Johnson is a great read for his blunt, in your face honesty and his point about how technology companies are trying to differentiate is a great one. I think, however, we should extend this to schools as well. If your school is great, say why, but dissing the competition is no way to compete. If you think your school has no competition, think again. So, read this in light of the arriving and coming competition on the edulandscape and have an honest take on how you should "sell" the virtues of your school. If you can't talk about how great your school is and have to resort to how bad the other one is, prepare for a day when you'll shutter the windows and wonder how they're going to keep the bugs out of your empty building. Wake up and smell the wires burning their way into your student's computers and tablets, great teachers are just a click away and we've all got to learn how to blend and trend our courses, teaching, and to bridge our classrooms to add real value as teachers. It isn't hard as you think but if you just sit and teach like you've always taught, you're setting yourself up for some unpleasant days. You can't do everything but you can do something to improve yourself. Next practices are an important part of your best practice. Always innovate and never settle. Standards are only the beginning, you must have purpose if you're going to be a great teacher. Doug says: "But what I do know that when competitors trash each other, I tend to tune out. And I flat out hate it when I know they are lying - and I will NOT buy from a liar. A salesman recently promoted his video storage service by stating "unlike YouTube, we don't own your movies." That's just not true. (YouTube doesn't own your movies, GoogleApps doesn't own your Docs, CIPA, FERPA, etc. do not ban social media.)"

1 Voice 2 Choice 3 Time for Reflection 4 Opportunity for Innovation 5 Critical thinkers 6 Problem solvers/finders 7 Self assessment 8 Connected Learning

There are many who don't understand this one point. I used to have someone who required me to have beautiful lesson plans. They were detailed. I spent more than an hour a day on them. So much time so that sometimes I felt unprepared when the kids actually walked in the door. When those detailed plans were removed and I was allowed to focus on the content created for the students to use and then keep a grid (I keep links, etc. to what I'm doing) - THAT Was when real innovation happened in my classroom. Things like wikis, blogs, etc. happened after those super-restrictive requirements were taken off my shoulders. I had the wrong audience when I had those detailed lesson plans - my audience was the principal at the time. Now, I still have plans but I keep it in a grid in a book and then keep copies of what I use with students in dropbox and other places. I do far more now than then because my focus is the students. Lesson plans aren't bad. However, if you spend your time making the LESSON PLAN itself pretty and perfect then likely you're not spending your actual time PLANNING, printing, collecting, and creating what you'll be doing with your students. Also, when you do things like #geniushour and 20% time projects, you no longer have a lesson plan but a project plan which is an entirely different thing altogether. Don't fault teachers for this.  Teaching is the hardest job everybody thinks they can do and few really can.

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.

An amazing science site with a large number of magnificent animations and graphics to help you explain science principles. Content suitable for older students. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Science

mission is to educate students in the sciences by building content-rich immersive teaching tools designed around discovery-based learning that are accessible to educators and learners at school, at home and in the general public. Spongelab Interactive builds their own products and offers custom production services for the global education community. Their unique approach around integrating educational design with advance web & gaming technology is planting the seeds for continued innovation of advanced communication and education products.

"Every day people around the globe are absorbed in exciting new forms of learning, and yet traditional schools and university systems are still struggling to leverage the many opportunities for innovation in this area. Recently frog has been researching how learning models are evolving--and how they can be improved--via the influence of mobile technologies. We've found that the education industry needs new models and fresh frameworks to avoid losing touch with the radically evolving needs of its many current and potential new constituencies. "

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."

A new study shows most professors are afraid of elearning and the growth of online courses. I predict that in 4-5 years the same will be true of traditional classroom teachers. The fact is that we all must be innovative and learn to teach in blended and online environments. Change creates victims and victors - with great change comes great opportunity. The one thing I can promise is if you do nothing and ignore it, you'll not be on the winning side. Learn. Connect. The Flat Classroom is a fact and it is here -- we're doing it in k12 and it is about to grow exponentially. After schools flip they're going to flatten. One leads to the other.

EdReach provides a platform for passionate, outspoken educators- aiming to strengthen their voices by highlighting innovation in the field of education, through reporting critical educational news, providing commentary, and offering criticism of the educational issues of the day.

Some great ideas for using different google applications to collaborate with others across the globe.

Daniel Pink's 16 counterintuitive thoughts about motivation, innovation

Videos, Common Core Resources And Lesson Plans For Teachers:  "Teaching Channel is a video showcase -- on the Internet and TV -- of innovative and effective teaching practices in America's schools."

February 11, the Special Interest Group for Mobile Learning #sigml will be hosting tweetchats during the day about a variety of topics. Sylvia Martinez and I will be talking about the maker movement at 5 pm that day. Sylvia is coauthor of the amazing book "Invent2Learn" -- a must read for those interested in the maker movement. There are many others including Scott Merrick, Susan Wells and more who are sharing that day.

Innovative floating school designed and created in Nigeria

Nominate someone you know NOW. What a great way to share up and coming education technology leaders: "Do you know educators who are passionate about using technology to transform teaching and learning; who can inspire their colleagues to embrace new tools; and who are curious by nature and always looking for how the next innovation can be applied to education? If so, please submit their names by Wednesday, December 18th for consideration as part of the National School Boards Association's "20 to Watch" recognition program. The 2013-14 "20" will be honored in Washington, D.C. during CoSN's Annual Conference, March 19th, 2014 (www.cosn.org) and recognized during the Technology Leadership Network Luncheon at the NSBA Annual Conference in New Orleans, April 6, 2014. Questions? Please email Ann Flynn."

Yes! Applause to the always innovative, always helpful National Writing Project for joining in the Hour of Code celebrations coming up. Have you signed up your school? Are you ready to participate? If you want to use writing as it relates to Computer Science, realize that this is important to all of us. "The National Writing Project is joining Code.org to support the Hour of Code . The largest initiative of its kind, the Hour of Code is a campaign to recruit 10 million students to try computer science for one hour during Computer Science Education Week (December 9-15). Join the National Writing Project, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and over 100 other individuals and organizations to make history. Start planning the Hour of Code for your classroom (or school) at http://hourofcode.com/ ."

Another MOOC for English Language teaching. "After its enormously successful first massive open online course (MOOC) for English language teaching (ELT) entitled ELT Techniques: Vocabulary, WizIQ has announced that it will host the second in the series, ELT Techniques: Listening and Pronunciation. Created and overseen by Jason R Levine (also known as Fluency MC), the MOOC will begin on November 18, 2013 and feature numerous leaders and innovators in the field, including Sean Banville, Jennifer Lebedev, Paul Maglione, Chuck Sandy, Rachel Smith and Shelley Terell."