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I am looking to get my students involved in using Skype to connect with other schools and people in the United States and around the world. In the process of searching for different programs I came across this article about an Australian school that connected with students at a Ugandan refugee camp. "Here & There is aimed at raising awareness around issues facing refugees among Australian schoolchildren, their parents and the wider population. It is purpose-designed to dovetail with the Australian geography curriculum, ensuring participating children attain maximum educational benefit while undertaking this life-changing opportunity to share their thoughts and experiences with children who have very different lives." I would love to get my students involved in something like this so that they can get a deeper understanding of another culture and make connections. I would be interested to hear if anyone has any experince with something like this and could offer suggestions. Thanks!

Hi Chis, I would love to work on this with you - with the iPads you have it should be easy to do.. Let me know when you are planning on doing it.. ~Meg

I agree that students should know how computers work and that the "Hour of Code" was a good experience for many students, but I think the focus of schools should begin with web literacy, typing, and how to use basic programs such as Word.

If we look at computer programming/coding as a replacement of the skills you mentioned we will not serve the students of today or the future. The skills you mention are valuable in and of themselves but many of these block based coding applications offer a platform for students to express creativity, develop problem solving and collaboration skills, as well as expose kids to an expanding field of study and career.

Why pit those skills against each other? I don't think you can have one without the other.

This is a piggy-back to the video posted earlier that encourages girls to become engineers. We attended this event, which has been run every year for the past 16 years, and we saw about 25 individual "Rube Goldberg" contraptions joined together into one giant chain reaction that went around the perimeter of the MIT gymnasium. Anyone can enter a project, and many kids were there presenting their projects. MIT does events for kids every 2nd Friday as well. Looks like something very interesting to check out; we had a fantastic, weird time!

The "Motherlode" blog in the NY Times always fascinates me and the youth sport culture in suburban communities intrigues me as well. Full disclosure-both of my children have played youth sports! I am so glad that I am not a kid today-between seeing every party and gathering that I am not invited to online to the competitive sports programs that are such a part of our community's culture-I am glad that my childhood was different.

Is it wrong if I agree with all of the points in this article? If you substituted orchestra or chorus or theater for sports in this would this still be an issue?

We have just started teaching informative writing. This guide has great information, some of it grade specific, on why and how to teach this type of writing.

Thanks for sharing this, Jan. I can see how it will be a helpful tool. I like the Thinking Maps that apply to different writing purposes - reminds me a bit of the EmPOWER writing program.

This reminds me how much I respect K-3 and elementary teachers in general. The fundamentals are so important. Thanks for posting this. I'm excited that Common Core emphasizes expository writing. I find it somewhat disingenuous that a lot of high school language arts curriculum is based on analyzing fiction and works of literature, and "proving" theses that are up for interpretation. Expository writing can be so interesting and when inspired by passion for the subject matter, powerful.

Building on the excitement of Hour of Code, the article asks, "will programming raise math scores?" Answering this in the affirmative has actually been an elusive goal, from a research standpoint. (In the 1980s there were all these studies on learning "transfer" -- how ideas learned in one context can transfer to another. Intuitively, this must happen, but it's been so hard to demonstrate with scientific rigor.) This includes a nice interview with Bootstrap founder Emmanuel Schanzer about this, and how Bootstrap may help. There is a 3 day PD planned for Bootstrap in the Greater Boston area for June 25th, 26th, & 27th, 2014. If you are interested in attending please let me know asap. At this moment a fee of $100.00 per attendee will be charged. Pending funding, you may be reimbursed your fee at the workshop.

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