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This looks like a great, engaging hands-on activity. Sometimes I wish I taught science just so I could do fun things like this.

Latest results released by the National Center for Education Statistics. Massachusetts is #1 in science and math again! Amid growing alarm over the slipping international competitiveness of American students, a report comparing math and science test scores of eighth graders in individual states to those in other countries has found that a majority outperformed the international average.

"Doctopus" is a script that makes it easy for students to submit assignments via Google drive, and it allows you to send them feedback. This looks very useful for what we are trying to do will Google Docs!

Jake, have you tried this out at all yet? It does look like it might be useful. We have been using google docs in 6th and I've done some commenting on student work. So far I've just used the commenting tool right on a google document and it appears to the right of the students work. They can comment back to me, and if it's something to do with editing, I can click "resolved" when the issue has been addressed, and I believe the comment goes away. I'd be curious to see the advantages that using Doctopus may have over just responding right on the google doc? I do agree with the blogger, however, that it's so much easier not having to track and carrying home the papers when you know you can just access everything through google drive. It makes it easier for the students, too, which is especially great for kids with organization and management issues.

Real life skills that I certainly did not learn from school. I think my parents taught me most of them. Others I had to self-teach. The rest I still don't know how to do! Should schools teach these skills? Or should they be parents' responsibility?

The coding caught my eye as we have had a push in the last month or so to expose students to more computer science opportunities. That's a good example of something we should be teaching in school. Teaching any of these concepts in school isn't a bad idea, but what would it replace? Kids could easily practice some of these basic, practical skills within their own families.

Good to know that our business and technology curriculum is relevant. We teach taxes, budgeting, finance, coding, resume building to those who take our electives. I actually had RWPS students come to me this morning asking if it would be viable to teach a business elective on sutainability.

Looking for STEM activities for iPads and other tablets? The Concord Consortium has been converting their activities to HTML5 for physics, chemistry, biology, math and Earth and space science.

Changing teaching practices with mobile devices is hard. Here is a story of how one teacher stepped out of his comfort zone. BTW 2eyes is not a mobile app.

Janet, this is a great reminder of some basic teaching practice that goes a long way, no matter what the technology is - pretty funny!

I read a similar article a few weeks ago that cites Carl Hooker as coining the phrase "two eyes, two feet app" (see http://www.edudemic.com/5-tips-classroom-management-mobile-devices/) and it made me giggle a little. Monitoring student use of mobile devices is not an exact science. Will they text? Check Twitter? Check their make up in the camera app? Sure, at one point or another they likely will, but does that mean they are not using the tool academically? I think teaching students how to manage their attention while we are supervising them is much better than zero tolerance rules that deny them the ability to use the power of the mobile device in the classroom at all. It is just another media literacy lesson.

After learning more about the uses of QR codes in the classroom in ebtl2 class and from reading the blog comments about them on the Ning, I looked for an article that explained more about the educational implications. In this article, written over a year ago, the information may be a little outdated, but it helped clarify the big picture for me. I thought sharing it may help others better understand what a great classroom tool it can be.

Great message, but it's the video here that is a must see - make sure you click link to see one of the most amazing Rube Goldberg machines.

This is great! The Rube Goldberg machine is quite impressive. I think it would be inspiring to show to the 8th graders before their Science Expo Day Rube Goldberg activity. It is nice to see some marketing that provides girls with an alternative to the stereotypical image of playing dress-up with cute pink dolls.

Love this! It is all over and I showed my 9 year old budding scientist and she was mesmerized!

Has anyone seen this new feature of Socrative yet? There are a lot of audio files for History/Social Studies and STEM and many lessons designed for both subjects, which use Socrative to evaluate student learning. What do you think?

Annemarie, There is some great content for STEM classes in this link. I shared the volcano and roach robots with some of the teachers at CMS and will direct them to the entire list. Thanks for sharing this.

Kathy Favazza sent this site out to our staff at Parker. This is the email message: At the PARCC and CCSS trainings that I attended in Chicago I learned of an amazing tool. It's called Newsela. It is a website that takes articles in various topics: War & Peace, Money, Kids, Science and Law and links them to the anchor literacy standards that we all need to address in our subjects. You can set up classes and assign articles for students to read. Some articles have text based follow up questions (those with a small anchor in the top right) that you can assign to students. The coolest feature however is that you can adjust the reading level of the articles!!!!

I've played with this site and it is awesome. You can adjust the reading level of the texts. It has built in assessments like main idea. I highly recommend this resource for grades 4 through middle school.

Training available through Code.Org partnership. Workshop is one day and could be hosted at Reading if enough people are interested. 20 hour curriculum designed to be integrated.

ScratchJr has launched. It is a free iPad app. Five Stars for sure.