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"Even though it's October it still feels very much like the beginning of the year. One of the first thoughts that many teachers have about their students is "they look so little!" It's true. Those tall confident students that left us have gone on to be "little" to next year's teacher and we have our own new crop of "little" people to educate. This becomes even more pronounced in a technology classroom. Everything takes longer, typing, starting, opening, finding, searching. Whatever it is they need time to figure it out. Patience is key. So what can we do?"

"There is an ever growing number of teachers and students using iPads for creation projects. Little by little, people are understanding that the iPad is not just a consumption device for reading emails, watching YouTube and checking FaceBook and Twitter. The iPad is a powerful creation device. But an issue arose during the year at my school: How does one share large student videos and other projects with parents? Read ahead to find out."

"Even the maximum volume on the iPad can sometimes seem a little quiet, which has prompted many of us to perform thet tried-and-true 'cup your hand over the speaker' trick that gets us a little more sound -which works really well for a quick video clip but isn't terribly practical or comfortable for more than a few seconds."

"NOVA Elements is a free app from PBS all about the periodic table, its unique set of properties, and how elements combine to make things you use every day. That coffee you're drinking? Yeah, it's made up of elements. You're ingesting tiny little molecules every time you take a sip, and they're interacting with other tiny little molecules in your stomach. Science is amazing! "

"The key to learning to code is learning to think like a computer--which is a hard thing to do. "It requires structured thinking, ability to abstract details away, and there's little margin for error--one little typo and your program might do something entirely different from what you wanted," says game developer Rui Viana. "

"Look at this letter: "O". Closely. Does it look like a perfect curve? A little jagged? A little bit scraggly around the edges? You might as well enjoy these boxy jig jags while you can because the rumors are true: Apple's about to unveil its iPad 3 "Retina" display and banish the pixel forever!"

It began with a styrofoam coffee cup; you could call it the first koostik. I was curious to see if fitting a little megaphone to the bottom of my iPhone would passively amplify the volume of the external speaker. It did, but it wasn't much to look at. For a year after that first experiment, I made dozens of prototypes in wood in my home workshop. With each new piece I was getting a little closer to the goal of a balance between aesthetics and functionality.

Most would agree that "A picture is worth a thousand words." Perhaps strangely, allow me to make the case that sometimes there is also value in distilling those thousand words into a scant few. This little post is a bit of practical sharing meant to point to two things: a cute little iOS application, and a few quick examples of its practical use. Oh, and really, I wouldn't be doing it here if it wasn't worth at least a handful of words as well.

A student just turned me onto this. It's a nice little ppt/keynote inspired online application. It also has a corresponding iPad app

"When students start taking photos and video on a variety of iPads, iPods and iPhones for a collaborative project, it can be a little hairy trying to pull all of that media into one place. Last year while struggling to share photos through a variety of apps that just never seemed to work well enough, I discovered that I could use the camera connector kit to connect one iPad to another to share photos and even large video files"

"We play with a lot of stands. They are tripods, suction cups, big power stations, little pieces of wood with a cut out… we are talking there are a LOT of different stand ideas. When a new idea comes along, we all like to bang on it for a while. The latest falls in the 'why didn't we think of that' category. "

"There are some great apps available for little ones who are learning their alphabet or are actually learning to read and write. Here are a couple that might work in your classroom."

" For those who are looking to get a little more out of iCloud, here's a handy workaround I discovered today that allows you to upload any file to iCloud, much like you would with Dropbox. It's not perfect, but it works, and for many it'll be a helpful addition to iCloud."

"Tom Barrett tweeted a question today asking how to share your entire iPad app collection with someone. After a little research, I came up with a post on this page and followed the directions. Here is the first of the 12-page app list on my iPad."

"Some paper is hard to give up. Little notepads and sticky notes keep coming back even when a iPad is available. One area that has a strong 'love of paper' is flip notecards for learning. While there is many options in the electronic world for better learning methods, the action of flipping a card over for an answer is familiar and thus hard to give up."

"If you want to make pictures and words that the rest of the world can recognize as such, you need a little help. Luckily, iPad accessory makers also ignored Jobs' complaints and set out to fill the world with wonderful iPad pens. Here are the best you can buy."

"With a killer beat in place, it's time to add the second (mostly unsung) hero of modern music: the bass. Whether your tastes run to big, fat and bottom heavy or to quick, snappy and distorted, GarageBand has you covered. With GarageBand for iPad, you can create bass tracks that sound incredibly good with very little knowledge or expertise. Let's take a look at the simplest way to do just that: Smart Bass."

"The foundation of any good rock, dance, or pop song is the beat. Creating a drum track that stands out will take your music from "meh" to "wow." With GarageBand for iPad, you can now create drum tracks that sound incredibly good with very little knowledge or expertise."