Keep It Real - Self-Direction

he Maker Education Initiative's mission is to create more opportunities for all young people to develop confidence, creativity, and interest in science, technology, engineering, math, art, and learning as a whole through making.

Most students need all the help they can get when it comes to planning big projects. Here's a list of apps that can help them stay organized when they're working on group presentations, research papers or other big tasks that might take a little extra energy to keep everything together.

Many teachers have turned to digital portfolios -- or "e-portfolios" -- for their students. These digital portfolios have caused a huge shift in how teachers assign, collect and assess student classwork and projects.

Self-regulation, a well-studied mechanism for motivated and effective learning, seems clearly matched for both the challenges and opportunities provided by digital media.

Day One is designed and focused to encourage you to write more. Using the Menu Bar quick entry, Reminder system, Calendar view and inspirational messages your memories and thoughts will be preserved. iCloud or Dropbox sync allows easy backup and syncing with the Day One iPhone and iPad applications.

On Groupiful you can create groups of up to ten members with whom you share task lists, project files, and calendars. Groupiful contains a messaging system that you can use to exchange notes with and send reminders to group members. Groupiful groups can be private or public. As the creator of a group you can give people permission to post messages for the group or restrict them to only viewing the contents of the task lists and project materials.

Using VoiceThread as a digital portfolio for our Student-Led Conferences this semester

VideoNotes allows you to load any YouTube video on the left side of your screen and on the right side of the screen VideoNotes gives you a notepad to type on. VideoNotes integrates with your Google Drive account. By integrating with Google Drive VideoNotes allows you to share your notes and collaborate on your notes just as you can do with a Google Document. Available as a Chrome app.