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I have not been happy with the output of my Twitter account. I have come to the conclusion that I am not following enough people, and that some of the people I am following are not right for me. I started to do a search on the internet for Twitter and education and came up with this resource. It includes a long, varied, categorized list of people and organizations to follow in education. The categories include such topics as Special Education, Technology, iPads, Design, General, etc. I have started following several of the people/organizations recommended by this resource and am already getting much more out of Twitter.

Jan, this is really helpful. I've had a similar feeling about my Twitter account. I'll take a look at some of the hashtags in the article you posted and hopefully we'll both get more out of it!

This is an interesting and instructive post about one person's revised workflow as a paperless business and household. Worth a read.

Interesting article on setting guidelines for limiting the amount of time kids spend on a device. Also brings up issue of parents not really knowing how to help their child use the device for educational purposes. My guess is that most parents defer to their children as the experts on their devices and yield to what they want for apps.

For all you mathematically inclined types out there... For all you writers, best one liner - "After watching the video myself, I checked to make sure I still had my wallet and my watch."

Perhaps you've come across Greg at MassCUE presenting on iPads in the classroom, or perhaps you're familiar with his blog "The History 2.0 Classroom" at http://kulowiectech.blogspot.com/. This is a new site of his that is documenting "the process of only using an iOS device for one month." A few posts in, and there are already some great demos for using iPads for classroom work flow.

This was a very interesting article. Greg was able to complete many tasks using his iOS device. I noticed he used quite a few Google tools to complete them. I agree there are some good examples of work flow for iPads here, which I find is always a challenge, but never impossible!

This is a short lesson developed for Pearson to consolidate some clear, useful structures for activating students in the classroom. Some of it is definitely more geared towards Language Arts, but it's worth a look for approaches to take in any class, and is a good reminder of some of those methods we learned back when we were learning to teach.

Amazing 360 degree Aerial Panoramas of places around the world. Take your students on a virtual field trip with these amazing views. Can be viewed in different resolutions and there are settings for mobile devices. There are currently 2000 aerial panoramas on the site with the goal of adding more over the next 2-3 years.

This is a great site for my world geography class! Thanks for sharing.

Love this! Thanks for sharing.

Interesting read on how Kindergarten is the new first grade. I know that in my 18 years teaching that I have seen this shift. Things that I used in my first grade classroom are now being used in Kindergarten.

Thanks for sharing Kerry! I was actually just having this conversation with a colleague at lunch today following our curriculum and instruction meeting. We were reviewing the DIBBLES scores and discussing the kids that were in the yellow and discussing how we can get these "struggling" students to green. The piece that was not noted or discussed was that most of these kids were in the red at the beginning of the year. Of course we need to talk about how to continue to support all students, but I feel like we are focusing only on getting them to the green and not taking the time to recognize how successful and how much progress they have made this far. Some of these kids knew 4 letters and no sounds at the beginning of the year and now can name all the letters and their sounds, but are having trouble with newly introduced skills like blending and segmenting words. That is a lot of progress in just one area, never mind their progress in other areas. I don't know that I have personally progressed that much in any are of my life in the last year, never mind the last five months. On the other hand there are definitely kids in my class that are ready to or are reading and need to be pushed and challenged. My concern isn't that the standards are unrealistic, it's that it is unrealistic of us to expect that all kids will meet them at the same time and if they don't meet them in our set time frame we consider them to be a struggling student. As a result we push them harder and make them do more work with a skill that they might just not be ready for.

Thought this was a great lead in to vacation. I have visited the one in Austin, TX when I lived in Dallas, but I have not been to any others.

It seems as if Ohio has come up with a creative solution to snow days, or as they call them, "Calamity Days." It seems like something we could do very easily to preserve the school calendar.

It seems like the Flipped Classroom model could be very beneficial for something like this. Teachers could post lessons and and an assignment for students to complete at home. The obvious challenge would be accessibility, especially when child care arrangements are made.

New Hampshire uses blizzard bags. SNHU is also using a flipped model when their classes are cancelled. They post assignments to Blackboard for students to watch, etc. and complete classwork as well.

I loved this commentary posted on Education Week. It talks about the importance of giving students unstructured time on a regular basis, and expanding recess or time for physical activity. As the author states, "Kids are built to move. Having more time for unstructured outdoor play is like handing them a reset button." This author also spent six weeks in Finland studying their education system. They seem to be achieving greater success with less class time, and more built in natural breaks. This is worth reading.

I wish we had more down time and outside time as well during the day. We barely get it all in as it is with one recess, but maybe going outside or having downtime will help them retain more day to day.

I'm so glad you posted this article, Julie. I think it is so important to continue examining not just what we teach, but how we teach it. My son shifted this January to the Waldorf school in Lexington, in part because he is a very physical learner, who is interested in the arts, music, and practical arts, but also because he was just sitting too much of the day, focusing almost exclusively on reading and math skills. In his new school, they practice counting and multiplication tables while jumping rope on teams, for example. It's not recess, but it is physical activity, it's fun, and it really reinforces and connects the math skill they are working on. I hear many examples like this from him each week, and it has really inspired me to try to incorporate similar approaches, even (or maybe especially?) with my 9th graders.

Great article with wonderful ideas for teaching students how to read expository text.

The text feature walk is a great strategy for teaching how photos, graphs, maps, and charts contribute to the understanding of the text. It is also a great way to predict main idea prior to reading. Very helpful. Thanks Kerry.

A great visual on multiple intelligences through the use of iPad apps. The apps are categorized for an easy way to find what matches a particular intelligence.

This is a thought-provoking article about the effects that our kids may be experiencing from use of handheld devices when very young. It's a question that I've had for a while about relative benefits of technology for very young kids. What do people think?

This could be an interesting debate topic. While I don't necessarily agree with some of the points made in the article, I do sometimes wonder how much overuse of technology is contribute to higher rates of ADHD or ADD. I don't have any hard and fast evidence, but based on what I see in the classroom, it seems difficult for students to "slow down" and focus on any activity for long periods of time. They so used to jumping from one thing to another, or texting on their phone while talking to a friend, that they're never really present in the moment, or focused solely on what's in front of them. I also notice it with myself. Having an ipad or cell phone or laptop at a meeting, it's hard to always stay focused on what's going on, especially when work emails are coming in that seem to need your immediate attention. It's definitely hard to shut off or disconnect. However, I also remember someone sharing in class thoughts from Tony Wagner's book that screen time in school where kids are working collaboratively on a project, or experiencing things that they can only experience with technology, is vastly different from playing video games, or watching TV/movies in a more isolated setting. Technology can be instrumental in learning, and I don't see how it wouldn't remain part of instruction in elementary schools. Maybe the debate is more in the quality of how it's used? Good food for thought; thanks for sharing!

I agree that this is a great topic to debate. As with with most things there are positives and negatives that both make sense. I agree with Julie that maybe the question should focus on the quality and quantity of how these devices are used with children under 12.

This powerful spoken word video was one of Edutopia's "8 EduWins of 2013." As an educator, it made me think about the messages that I give to my students on a daily basis, and how important it is that we don't just fall into the trap of the way things have always been done. Students today need to see the relevance of their learning; they want to know how and when they will apply skills and information. Worth watching.

I found this video along with another Spoken Word video "Why I Hate School But Love Education," extremely powerful and captivating. The message is exactly what we are talking about in class and trying to change in our classrooms. The whole presentation of the video was motivating as well. I really enjoyed listening to him speak and agreed with his points. His presentation in the first video is what made click on the others. Both videos are definitely worth watching.

Nothing earth shattering in this article, but a good reminder to think outside the box when it comes to asking students to demonstrate understanding of what they're reading. I love the movie trailer idea, and the kids have shown they can do some amazing things with iMovie. I'm also interested in exploring some of the apps that the author says would allow students to put characters into new settings - it may be a neat way for them to demonstrate deep understanding of character's personality and motives.

Julie, I agree that these projects are interesting and also that kids like doing them. But...always...I wonder... do they really get kids more interested in reading or do they really just help kids get through the monotony of assessing reading? I think the latter goal is a worthy one and I do feel that kids get something out of these projects.researching, writing and collaborating. Even when I was a student, I used to wonder about these questions. Outside my school life, my reading was so rich and varied. English classrooms to me seemed places devoid of books and the discussion of books that took place in my home. So I don't think think this is a new question, but I like to think of the primacy of helping kids finding books they love as well as giving them a place to discuss them.

Great article about ways to help children calm themselves. It is about children who have experienced some sort of trauma, but it also goes into how some practical strategies can help any child with calming.

Kerry, thanks for posting this article - some of the suggestions are really helpful! They sound a lot like the techniques I learned from reading How to Talk so Your Kids Will Listen, and Listen so They Will Talk, and Siblings Without Rivalry. Sometimes calmly naming and validating a child's feelings without judgement can really diffuse a charged situation.

Thought provoking article that stresses even more that developmentally Kindergarteners are not ready for the curriculum that they face.

Kerry, thanks for sharing this. This article was well worth reading. It makes me sad to think of what we are continuing to do to young kids, and scared for their future. Just thinking back to when I was in kindergarten, I remember lots of time to explore and play in different stations, including building and dress up stations. We did plenty of learning through play, and still all learned to read and make it through school. I'm in the middle school and don't always know exactly what's going on in the lower elementary schools, but it does seem like things are continually being pushed to younger and younger ages. The math that the sixth graders are doing now is similar to what I did in 8th grade algebra. Many of them are not developmentally ready for it, and then feel like failures if they can't get it. At an even younger level, I'm seeing it with my nephew who's 3 1/2 and in preschool. His teacher told my sister-in-law that he's behind because he can't write his name yet. Now she's concerned about it of course, but I'm thinking that's a little premature. And the last thing he needs at this age is someone trying to force him to write his name - he'll already be on a track to hating school..... I'm going to share this article with her. Also, when they talked about learning to read, I loved the quote about kids who learned to read later showed better understanding because they had had time to develop more language at an earlier age.Thanks for sharing.

Another great post - I agree with so much of what this article states, and I hear so many other educators and parents expressing concern about the trend that has been developing in all elementary grades, but especially kindergarten. The question is, if we all agree that it's not working, how do we change it?

Truthful, yet tactful we are with our report card comments. Here is a thought provoking article that describes what we are really trying to say in those comments or during conferences.

Here's a short article from NPR on a bookless public library opening in Texas. I think as we see more of this, it brings up mixed feelings and conversation. I'm wondering if this is where all libraries are headed eventually? I'm a person who has an e-reader (Nook) and loves using it, but I still like to read from an actual book from time to time. I'm wondering if the younger generations will feel the same, or if they won't know any different? To me, there's something comfortable and warm about a room, or a building, with lots of books in it. I can't picture classrooms, especially those of young children without books on the shelves, or teachers reading to kids on the rug. I wonder what other people think. Technology has definitely changed our lives and is taking us to new places all the time, but could the changes be too much, too fast?