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One of a number of interesting science activities that could be offered in a makerspace. In this two-part activity, students design and build Rube Goldberg machines. This open-ended challenge employs the engineering design process and may have a pre-determined purpose, such as rolling a marble into a cup from a distance, or let students decide the purposes.

One of a number of interesting activities that could be offered in a makerspace. In this two-part activity, students design and build Rube Goldberg machines. This open-ended challenge employs the engineering design process and may have a pre-determined purpose, such as rolling a marble into a cup from a distance, or let students decide the purposes.

"Using games as a learning tool is not new--research abounds to demonstrate the use of video games enhancing problem-solving skills and creativity. Pioneer educational games, like Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail, have given birth to online, multiuser, digital simulations that would make their forebears blush. Now, in what seems to be a natural evolution, a growing number of schools are taking the concept one step further and asking students to design the games themselves. Game creation as a learning tool is really just a digital-age take on the old learning-by-doing approach to teaching: Students pick up concepts easier and retain more information when they are hands on with their subject matter. In game creation, students are presented with the task of building a digital learning activity that focuses on a particular topic, such as ecology, mathematics, or social studies. Using a framework and the fundamentals of game design, they create a game that demonstrates their knowledge of the topic."

25 - 27 AUGUST 2013: Bialik College, in collaboration with the Harvard School of Education, is delighted to invite you to the 4th Cultures of Thinking Conference. The conference theme is: Telling Our Stories of Learning: Who are our students becoming as thinkers and learners as a result of their time with us? * How we can leverage the cultural forces that exist in our classrooms to constantly create an ever more powerful culture of thinking? * What are we doing as educators to provide rich opportunities for our students to develop as thinkers? * Who are our students becoming as a result of their time spent in this thoughtful learning environment? * Who are we, the teachers, becoming as a result of our time spent in this culture? How has it changed our role as teachers? * How can a culture of thinking be created, nurtured and retained across our classrooms, schools, and nation? The conference will commence with breakfast and a plenary session on the morning of Sunday 25 August. It will continue until Monday afternoon with plenary sessions with the Harvard educators each day and concurrent presentations and workshops with practising educators throughout the conference. Registration includes all plenary and concurrent sessions, breakfast Sunday morning, lunch and refreshment breaks on Sunday and Monday and a social function on Sunday evening. All sessions of the conference will be held at: Bialik College, 429 Auburn Road, East Hawthorn, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

"As a school leader who recently sold my community on the importance of moving to a one-to-one environment where every student has access to a web-based device, I believe strongly that our students will be more literate than students in other schools who do not have access to web-enabled devices. A look at the world outside of our schools and the technological resources being accessed in so many professions that allow people to work "smarter" is a clear indication of the track that our students need to be on in order to be able to function in the "real world." The biggest stumbling block in schools even if we can get the devices is the proficiency level of the adults in the building in utilizing the technology resources effectively. This is not meant to be an indictment of educators, but it is a critical question that we all have to look at, assess, and then move forward. Technological tools/resources can assist educators in some of our biggest undertakings (i.e. common core standards integration, teacher evaluation, providing relevant professional development, etc.). However, because so many educators in schools are not comfortable with the most modern literacy skills we are not able to make better progress."

"A cohort of 33 teacher-librarians is viewed as indispensable to the district's vision of a technology-infused path to improved outcomes for students. After the community passed a $24 million technology levy in 2013, the district began its weLearn 1:1 initiative, which by 2017 will provide all teachers and students in grades 3-12 with an electronic device in a flexible learning environment, and a personalized digital curriculum."

"Pinterest is straightforward and doesn't require a lot of technological experience to get started. Educators should review their school district's policies to make sure they are in compliance before opening a Pinterest account as it is a public site and any ideas that are "pinned" may be re-pinned to another user's site. In order to create a Pinterest group for a course you are teaching, you will need to do the following:"

Peru. masked writers are given a few words and must write a story in a paragraph. Eventual winner is awarded a book contract. Library lunchtime activity

"A search to recover the very first web page has unearthed a relic from 1991. The page turned up after Cern launched a public appeal for files, hardware and software from the web's earliest days. The original page is missing because the web's creators did not preserve the early work they did on what has become a historic document. Unfortunately, other potential finds from the same era on that old computer remain hidden because the password for it has been forgotten."

"Project-based learning (PBL) is a method used to cultivate learning and teach students 21st century skills. The idea is "built upon authentic learning activities that engage student interest and motivation," and "generally reflect the types of learning and work people do in everyday world outside the classroom" (pbl-online.org). During project-based learning, students are approached with a complex question, problem, or challenge, which they respond to through a lengthy process of analysis and reflection. These projects are carefully planned, managed, and evaluated-and in the end students have created a high-quality, meaningful product."

How a Book Tasting Event was used as a way to get students to "sample" a variety of literary genres in order to find their preferred "tastes" in reading.

The SAMR model has been around for a while, but I think it is time for a revisit. Most of us have been working with some element or other of 1 to 1 access, but has our pedagogy - the way we use the technology to teach in our classes - changed or shifted in that time?

In a recent webinar, more than 90% of school leaders responded that they were leading an innovative school as a result of the implementation of technology. At the end of the webinar, when polled again, only one leader claimed to be leading an innovative school. The complete reversal was due to a presentation of the Six Questions that you will read about in this article.   This list of questions was developed to help educators be clear about the unique added value of a digital learning environment.

"As some of you may know I'm studying a Masters in Technology in Learning and have been focusing on Serious Games. I wanted to share my project with the community! I built a Serious Game using a platform called ThinkingWorlds to showcase the pedagogies in games and to investigate how teacher attitudes and perceptions changed before and after playing the game. If you are interested you can play the game itself, PC only I'm afraid. Instructions for playing can be found here: http://portaldust.com/seriousgames/installation/"

If you're new to Cash App, you may be wondering if you can use the app without linking a bank account. The answer is yes! You can set up and use CashApp without a bank account. However, there are some limitations to consider. For example, you can't use features like Cash Out or Direct Deposit without linking a bank account. Here's what you need to know about using CashApp without a bank account. When you first sign up for Cash App, you'll be asked to link a bank account or debit card. If you don't have either of these things, don't worry - you can still use CashApp! Just select the "I don't have a bank account" option when prompted.

FatURL is a handy little tool to use when you need to share a group of links to someone. To share a group of links through FatURL just copy and paste or type URLs into the bundle box. You can add comments to each link. After creating your bundle hit the share button to send it.

"Over the last month I've started using Diigo as my primary tool for bookmarking links. Yesterday, Diigo released a new version of their browser extension. The updated extension includes some features that are quite handy. The most significant of the updates is a streamlined screenshot process. Now you can click the browser extension to take a screenshot of the page that you're viewing. "

"If you're visiting this site, chances are you were a participant in one of my sessions at a Google Summit event. I've included a bunch of resources here for you to follow up or review. There are links, videos and other stuff to help refresh your memory or just to help you go exploring on your own. "

" Real time updating, a powerful search tool, and easily movable columns make it the perfect tool for journalists and producers monitoring a number of different stories across the day.​ TweetDeck works by sorting the' noise' into manageable streams, based around searches, lists and profiles."

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, a good animation is worth ten thousand. After reading book after book about the Pacific War and finding only complicated maps with dotted lines and dashed lines crisscrossing the pages, we decided to depict the key naval and land battles using animation technology."

"In order to make this program grow, students will have to take a role in terms of creating and managing their badges. Of course, we will be there to guide the students, but it will require students to be a little more creative with their time in the library. We feel this will be a positive program to help student learn time management skills, as well as increase their reading throughout the school year."