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hHelping students learn how to learn: That's what most educators strive for, and that's the goal of inquiry learning. That skill transfers to other academic subject areas and even to the workplace where employers have consistently said that they want creative, innovative and adaptive thinkers. Inquiry learning is an integrated approach that includes kinds of learning: content, literacy, information literacy, learning how to learn, and social or collaborative skills. Students think about the choices they make throughout the process and the way they feel as they learn. Those observations are as important as the content they learn or the projects they create.

Awesome source of edtech news and articles curated for us by Tina Barseghian

Empathy & Cultural Humility - great skills for our students to develop.

"One such intervention: "We have to expand our notion of what productivity means," said Lehrer. "Right now we are grooming our kids to think in a very particular way, which assumes that the right way to be thinking is to be attentive, to stare straight ahead-which is why we diagnose 20 percent of kids in many classrooms as having attention deficit disorders, when the research is actually more complicated.""

Ten Surprising Truths about Video Games and Learning What we'd assumed about the importance of brain functions - following rules and logic and calculating - are no longer relevant. There's been a revolution in the learning sciences and the new theories say that human beings learn from experiences - that our brains can store every experience we've had, and that's what informs our learning process. Following that logic, he says, the best kind of learning comes as a result of well-designed experiences. Gee, who spoke at the Learning and the Brain Conference last week, used this theory to launch into research-validated reasons why video games are good for learning. Here are 10 truths, according to Gee."

Girls and Games: What's the Attraction? Games are increasingly recognized by educators as a way to get kids excited about learning. While the stereotype of a "gamer" may evoke the image of a high school boy holed up in a dark room playing on a console, in reality 62 percent of gamers play with other people either in person or online, and 47 percent of all gamers are girls. Game developers and academics who have been studying the elements that go into making games more attractive to girls found that those very same qualities are also important components of learning. For instance, girls are more drawn to games that require problem solving in context, that are collaborative (played through social media) and that produce what's perceived to be a social good. They also like games that simulate the real word and are particularly drawn to "transmedia" content that draws on characters from books, movies, or toys.

Gates & McArthur foundation looking to sponsor a version of Sim City for Educational use. 

"GlassLab is working with commercial game companies, assessment experts, and those versed in digital classrooms to build SimCityEDU, a downloadable game designed for sixth graders. Scheduled to be be released in the fall of 2013, it builds on SimCity's city management theme, but provides specific challenges to players in the subject of STEM. "The big pain point we've heard from teachers is that they cannot entertain their kids to the level that they are being entertained outside of the classroom," said Jessica Lindl, general manager of GlassLab. "They want to be able to create meaningful learning experiences and they just can't compete with the digital tools their kids are accessing all the time.""

"one of the most important skills a parent can foster in children is resilience, which he says can be fostered through creativity. Ginsburg relies on the "Seven C's of Resilience" as a road map for helping students to find their inner grit. "

"How can we best prepare children and adolescents to thrive in the 21st century? This question is at the heart of what every educator attempts to do on a daily basis. Apart from imparting content of knowledge and facts, however, it's becoming clear that the "noncognitive competencies" known as grit, perseverance, and tenacity are just as important, if not more so, in preparing kids to be self-sufficient and successful."

"For teachers, in designing learning experiences for students that are embedded with technology, the wording and focus of the question are paramount.  The question needs to be deeper than simply "Should or shouldn't we use the iPad with this project." The question needs to be open ended, elastic and invite multiple interpretations. Learning outcomes based on the question need to be defined and articulated,  and experiences to achieve those outcomes need to be created with student engagement in mind. Engagement alone is not enough. But engagement matched with outcomes around a carefully worded question propels student learning."

StudyBlue recently surveyed 500 students about what study habits got them through finals. The picture of the modern student that emerged from student responses highlights the importance of digital devices, especially mobile technology.

Via @MindShiftKQED: Harvard Wants to Know: How Does the Act of Making Shape Kids' Brains http://t.co/OHOH2iW0

pointers about what to teach students to improve their internet search skills

Google Books can help with this. What's needed is the information that appears in a citation: the author, place, and date of publication. Luckily, traditional print materials (in the form of books) often include the kind of citation information you might need and Google Books allow you to search the full text of books.

Somewhere between kids' intuitive social savvy and their online behavior lies an opportunity for both parents and educators to teach responsible digital citizenship, and there are plenty of organizations dedicated to this task alone. Define the Line, a project of McGill University in Canada, was recently awarded a digital citizenship grant by Facebook to help further its work in creating materials to open dialogue about finding the line where joking crosses into negative or criminal behavior. The site includes videos and scenarios designed to enhance discussion of real-world digital topics. Common Sense Media recently launched a free digital citizenship curriculum categorized by age. The curriculum includes both paper-based and digital activities and teaches online safety and Internet research skills in combination with ethics.

"The problem now is resisting the notion that technology is the answer to everything - it's clearly not," Robinson said. "But what part of the equation does technology best speak to?"

recommendations for deploying iPads in Schools.