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What are the mindful habits of successful learners and how can an understanding of these habits help us better achieve our learning goals? This is the question Art Costa Bena Kallick set out to answer with their study of the Habits of Mind. In 'Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind' Costa and Kallick identify sixteen habits which when utilised promote deeper understanding, unlock creativity, encourage reflective thinking and scaffold problem solving for individuals and groups. 

Sydney has become a beacon that brings people together and sparks conversations. Most recently the conversation centred on the topic of girls in tech and what might be done to re-dress the gender balance in STEAM subjects and related career pathways. Sponsored by INTEL this Vivid Ideas event drew a mix of entrepreneurs, educators and tech luminaries to the Museum of Contemporary Art on a Saturday afternoon to share their ideas on what might be done.

The Daily Creative is an exercise in the continual practice of spontaneous creativity through short exercises. Each "assignment" should take no more than 15-20 minutes. There are no registrations, no prizes, just a community of people producing art daily.

These useful tools give students the right tools to narrate, animate, and dictate. The post will explains them to teachers by giving some examples of how to incorporate art and design lesson plans into their existing courses.

The Noun Project is creating clip art icons for every known noun making it a perfect place to look for the images needed for a precise infographic. It can take a lot of time to find a perfect, or a specific kind, of image and the Noun Project is trying to make it just a little bit easier.

We all want to nurture a learning culture in our classroom. One that cultivates skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, synthesis, analysis, critical judgement and interpretation. For this to happen we need to pose learning problems and questions that demand the development of these skills. Well-posed questions can be simple questions but the right questions can drive much more learning and elicit insight that those complex questions that don't ask students to really think. Framing good questions is an art and some suggested questions are discussed here.

In this post there are a range of good formative learning tools, in nine different categories, for use in the classroom. One teaher shares his ideas in this series. "Please keep  in mind they are only tools and are best utilized through the important art of teaching. "

"Science4Us is a standards-based digital science curriculum that teaches science using the 5E inquiry-based instructional model. In addition to over 350 digital games and online activities, there are tons of offline experiments and hands-on projects to keep students engaged and excited about science.  It's a great choice for teachers looking to include cross-curricular activities that connect science instruction to math and language arts. Students will also learn the importance of notetaking and observing, with their very own digital notebook."

"The annual Horizon report, released June 29 by the nonprofit New Media Consortium, examines the trends and technologies that will shape primary and secondary education over the next five years. It references libraries as being at the forefront of maker spaces, which are among 18 major trends that include the rise of STEAM education: the intersection and importance of science, technology, arts, engineering, and math. The Horizon Report broke down challenges to school technology adoption into three categories: "solvable," "difficult," and "wicked," representing a range of difficulty to implement over the next five years. The "solvable" problems reflect what many libraries are already doing, like focusing more on blended learning and STEAM. The "wicked" problems were far more dramatic: shifting toward deeper learning approaches and rethinking the role of school itself."

An increasingly significant aspect of literacy is an awareness of the visual elements that fall beyond the traditional components of written text. Termed 'Visual Literacy' this is the ability to read and create communications that use visual elements. It combines the skills of traditional literacy with knowledge of design, art, graphic arts, media and human perception. It takes literacy further beyond a decoding of text to a decoding of the complete package around the communication.

As of 2010, I teach this

Picocricket is aimed at primary schools, age 8 and up. From the same people who created Scratch. Combining Art & Robotics to spark Creative Thinking. Not free.

A PicoCricket is a tiny computer that can make things spin, light up, and play music. You can plug lights, motors, sensors, and other devices into a PicoCricket, then program them to react, interact, and communicate.

The Comic Book Project is an arts-based literacy and learning initiative hosted by Teachers College, Columbia University with materials published by Dark Horse Comics. The goal of the project is to help children forge an alternative pathway to literacy by writing, designing, and publishing original comic books.

Provides teachers with classroom ideas, printable worksheet pages and interactive student activities across a number of curriculum areas including History, Art and English."