Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

An online music maker. Choose the note on the keyboard and then draw the melody on the screen.

"An interesting 3D design platform with challenges to aid learning and a variety of options. Free version has limited shapes library."

"Design a personalised Christmas card online and download to send to friends and family."

"A superb GIF maker from Google which captures short animations using your camera on your Android or iOS device."

This handy tool lets you turn PDF's into cool flippable online magazines. You can create all kinds of student projects with this tool.

A.I. Duet is a great Artificial Intelligence computer piano keyboard that responds to sequences input through your computer keyboard. Developed using Google's Magenta project, the algorithm uses a neural network to learn how to respond through to the key strokes. Simply use a keyboard, use your computer keys, or even plug in a MIDI keyboard. A.I. Duet is built by Yotam Mann with friends on the Magenta and Creative Lab teams at Google.

Excellent article overviewing why makerspaces are popular with quotes from Sylvia Martinez and Pam Moran.

Dartmouth College has some videos and resources relating to makerspaces and libraries.

John J. Burke has assembled a tremendous list of Makerspace resources. If you're getting into the Maker movement, there are great things here.

This Educause white paper is a useful write up that you can circulate among your staff. Every school should have a makerspace. Classrooms can each have them. Some are even designating parts of the library as a Makerspace. Great resource to share.

Excellent research study of 200,000 people on work and jobs. Leaders and policy makers will want to read this.

Awesome content idea generator to help you craft blog post titles that will attract attention.

This important excerpt of a larger book hits on the quality of teachers and the success of children in low-income schools. If you want a better school, spend money on staff development and helping your teachers become more proficient. This article is full of research and important topics of conversation among teachers and policy makers. via: http://www.stanford.edu/~ldh/publications/LDH-Post-Inequality.pdf

NYT article on coding movement, focusing on Mill Valley, CA. Coding should be taught in all 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.

Welcome to your new Google smarthome - not smartphone - smarthome. They've bought a smart thermostat maker - I can imagine all kinds of cool things with Google Glasses, Droids, and other Google integrations with this. This interesting article covers many of the things Google has gone into besides their traditional search box/ advertising model and it tells you about the future of our world as a major giant positions for the Internet of Things which moves far beyond our screens into the air we breathe. This will impact our schools beyond what we understand as our surroundings become smarter and able to be controlled remotely in ways we can't really understand today. These are trends I'll be discussing in my Intro to Computer Science classes. "Google Inc announced plans to acquire smart thermostat maker Nest Labs Inc for US$3.2bil (RM10.54bil), signalling the Internet company's intention to expand into a broader array of devices and bringing valuable hardware design expertise in-house. "

A wonderful web toy where you can design your own funky festive tunes by clicking on the robots. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Winter+%26+Christmas

Tinkering works. Read Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager's book "Invent to Learn" which talks about tinkering and how to use Maker Spaces to promote it to learn more. Great points from Lifehacker: "Research in the science of learning shows that hands-on building projects help young people conceptualize ideas and understand issues in greater depth. In an experiment described in the International Journal of Engineering Education in 2009, for example, one group of eighth-graders was taught about water resources in the traditional way: classroom lectures, handouts and worksheets. Meanwhile, a group of their classmates explored the same subject by designing and constructing a water purification device. The students in the second group learned the material better: they knew more about the importance of clean drinking water and how it is produced, and they engaged in deeper and more complex thinking in response to open-ended questions on water resources and water quality... it involves a loose process of trying things out, seeing what happens, reflecting and evaluating, and trying again."

Haiku Deck is one of my all time favorite quick presentation makers when I just have to share something meaningful with my class and only have a few moments to pull it together. (For example, if I realize that students don't know something valuable, etc.) One of the best things about Haiku Deck is its incredible search feature for Creative Commons and automatic citation. If you're 1:1 ipad, this free app is a must have. They are beta testing and online version that should be available soon. Great tool.