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"Back to School Night | Six Tips for Wowing Class Parents Back-to-School Night is often the first time you get to meet your class parents and that night sets the tone for the year ahead. Although it's a QUICK evening, it's a great opportunity to build rapport and invite parents to become a team with you and their children in cultivating a positive and successful learning environment. Make your time together count with these six quick tips: "

"What better way to collect a few handy leads for back-to-school 3D printables for the upcoming school year than polling my favorite 3DP educators! I sent a call out to a few whose work I have shared on the Adafruit blog and elsewhere before and have been receiving back lunchboxes full of ideas to share this week and next week."

"While many of you may be heading for the beach this week, it won't be long before you're ready to start exploring some new tools to help your students be better creators and collaborators when you go back to school in the fall. This week we published a new video on Nicole Dalesio, a fifth-grade teacher who uses all kinds of free technology tools in her class to keep her kids engaged, and it inspired me to go hunt down the best tutorials for all these great, free Web 2.0 tools. Did I mention most of them are free?"

"When I started working on PCs back in the mid-80's, there were thirty-six individual memory chips to be inserted in motherboard sockets. Today's computers don't have half that many individual parts! But the basic tool for troubleshooting PC problems remains unchanged - it's your brain. Swapping parts without thinking about it may work in production environments where there are endless supplies of spare parts lying around, but if you're trying to troubleshoot your home computer or out on a field service job, you won't have that luxury. The majority of computer problems turn out to be software issues, especially malicious software. But intermittent hardware failures can baffle the best technicians, and the only way to work around them is to adopt a systematic approach to troubleshooting rather than shooting from the hip. The approach I teach through my websites and books is to a process of elimination that narrows down the possibilities until the failure can be identified. When you master the basic troubleshooting technique, you'll be able to apply the lesson to technologies and situations not covered here. The flowcharts below are miniatures excerpted from my book "Computer Repair with Diagnostic Flowcharts" which is used by home hobbyists as well as for a course text in technical colleges and a field guide for technicians. "

"ccMixter is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want. Remixers If you're into sampling, remixing and mash-ups grab the sample packs and a cappellas for download and you can upload your version back into ccMixter, for others to enjoy and re-sample. All legal."

"Game-based learning doesn't have to break the bank. That was the key point of my presentation at The Learning Assembly in Melbourne last week. Sure, you can spend an obscene amount of money on gaming technology if you want to, but you don't have to. Take Diner Dash for instance. In this free online game, you play the role of a waitress in a busy restaurant. As the customers arrive you need to seat them, take their order, submit the order to the chef, serve their food, transact their payment, clean their table, and take the dirty dishes back to the kitchen."

Point Counter Point: How to Use (and Avoid Misusing) PowerPoint Great for classes at OCDE. How to use powerpoint correctly. Can be taken back to the classroom.

" What amazed me most about Classtools.net was not the valuable tools provided, but the ability for teachers to easily customize these tools and use them in any subject area. If that is not enough, how about the ability to embed your newly made instructional resource on your own classroom website, wiki, or blog? Any educator will also like the fact that students have no need to log in or sign up for an account… and neither do teachers! Need tutorials… they are provided! Do samples help you understand better… you will find plenty! Is budget a problem… then free should be affordable! Classtools.net is the work of educator, Russel Tarr, Head of History at the International School of Toulouse, France. Upon entering the site, educators will see the listing of tools. Clicking on a tool allows teachers to individualize that specific tool for their own classroom needs. Teachers then have the option of copying a generated link to place on their own web site or of copying a generated code to embed as a tool (widget) on their classroom site. Also, on the front page, are some video links that will provide further information. Two videos that provide excellent information are the 1 Minute Overview and How to Create Games. The Listing Of Over 20 Digital Tools For Your Classroom The tools that you can even customize are included below. Along with this tool listing you will find descriptions of each tool, an overview of and samples of specific tools (if provided), and any related video (if provided). * Arcade Game Generator - Allows teachers to create concept builders, practice exercises, and reviews. Best of all, one set up feeds into five different game possibilities at the same time The teacher can choose which game, or allow students a choice. Make sure you check out all the examples and pre-made games in (overview and samples). Also watch the How to Create Games . * Random Name Picker - Can be used as an activity management tool or skip the names.

"Welcome back! Here's how to use TweetChat:" Allowing you to block un wanted comments

"One of the exciting things that leaps out to me when reading the new Common Core standards for Mathematics is that the spirit of inquiry and curiosity is back, hardwired into a document that will likely form the basis for mathematics teaching and learning for a long time. "

"Project Based Learning's time has come. The experience of thousands of teachers across all grade levels and subject areas, backed by research, confirms that PBL is an effective and enjoyable way to learn and develop deeper learning competencies required for success in college, career and civic life. Why are so many educators across the United States and around the world interested in this teaching method? The answer is a combination of timeless reasons and recent developments."