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One of our main goals at Powerful Learning Practice is to turn educators into 21st Century educators. That is, teach them how to use social media and other powerful Web 2.0 tools to transform their classrooms into learning environments that are ready for today's iGeneration students. One of the most common questions we get is, "But where do we find the time to use all this new technology?" To answer that question, we developed this infographic - A Day in the Life of a Connected Educator to show that using social media in your classroom and in your life can be integrated, easy, and fun.

Stop apologizing for your online life, it is real life.

"Oxford's renowned biologist Richard Dawkins puts the history of life on earth in perspective, using simply a piano. This short video is a great jumping off point for this brilliant lecture Dawkins gave back in 1991. It's called "Waking Up in the Universe, Growing Up in the Universe," and the 57-minute video pulls you deeper into some big questions. What's the origin of life? Where do we fall in the scheme of life on planet Earth? What's our role in the larger universe? And how lucky are we to have the brains and tools to understand the awesome wonders that surround us? "

If we are feeling distracted, we should pay attention to that distraction.  It may be telling us that there is something better elsewhere, something more deserving of our attention.  Or it may be telling us we are on the wrong path, just when we thought we were zooming in to that perfect conclusion of a paragraph or a project.   Or it may be telling us we need better tools, that the set-up we have is not fully appreciating the particularities and peccadilloes of our own work life and demands.  Or it may be telling us that we need better partners, or a better method, someone or something to help us over the hurdle.  Or it may just be telling us we are working too hard and we need to put down what we are doing and go outside for a walk, or stop for a cup of tea, or go for a run, or maybe just check out Facebook for a while.  Distraction is our friend because it reminds us that we are fully human, not just workers, and that our lives are complex and, trying to shut out the complexity, may in fact turn out to be the least productive way to lead a life.

The United Nations declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. It is a celebration of life on earth and of the value of biodiversity for our lives. The world is invited to take action in 2010 to safeguard the variety of life on earth: biodiversity

A free online university course, but some of the readings might be useful to teachers in primary/secondary  - DESCRIPTION: "This is a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty, and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. The questions we will take up include: Is extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Why do some countries grow fast and others fall further behind? Does growth help the poor? Are famines unavoidable? How can we end child labor-or should we? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is micro finance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Has globalization been good to the poor? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene?"

a good example of prime numbers in nature -- and why they are important, e.g., for a kind of cicada which has a 13-year cycle... "Because 13 and 17 are both indivisible this gives the cicadas an evolutionary advantage as primes are helpful in avoiding other animals with periodic behaviour. Suppose for example that a predator appears every six years in the forest. Then a cicada with an eight or nine-year life cycle will coincide with the predator much more often than a cicada with a seven-year prime life cycle. These insects are tapping into the code of mathematics for their survival. The cicadas unwittingly discovered the primes using evolutionary tactics but humans have understood that these numbers not just the key to survival but are the very building blocks of the code of mathematics."

iPads helping or hindering infants? http://t.co/hkiCAD9y via @canberratimes #mobilelead Dr Kaufman said the study, which had so far tested 46 children aged four to six, involved examining the attention and problem-solving capabilities of children after using an iPad compared to using real toys. For example, as part of the study, children are being asked to solve a problem using a physical wooden model. They are also asked to solve the same problem using an iPad app. After they have played, they are given a test to assess their attention. Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/digital-life/tablets/ipads-helping-or-hindering-infants-20120809-23xc9.html#ixzz2HdGhnTld

A video for kids discussing life on earth looked at in numbers, e.g., how many of each species, the heaviest biomass by species, by individual organism, etc. A new series.

"A survey of teachers who instruct American middle and high school students finds that digital technologies are impacting student writing in myriad ways and there are significant advantages from tech-based learning. Some 78% of the 2,462 advanced placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project say digital tools such as the internet, social media, and cell phones "encourage student creativity and personal expression." In addition: 96% agree digital technologies "allow students to share their work with a wider and more varied audience" 79% agree that these tools "encourage greater collaboration among students" According to teachers, students' exposure to a broader audience for their work and more feedback from peers encourages greater student investment in what they write and in the writing process as a whole. At the same time, these teachers give their students modest marks when it comes to writing and highlight some areas needing attention. Asked to assess their students' performance on nine specific writing skills, teachers tended to rate their students "good" or "fair" as opposed to "excellent" or "very good." Students received the best ratings on their ability to "effectively organize and structure writing assignments" and their ability to "understand and consider multiple viewpoints on a particular topic or issue." Teachers gave students the lowest ratings when it comes to "navigating issues of fair use and copyright in composition" and "reading and digesting long or complicated texts.""

The Tree of Life Web Project is a collection of information about biodiversity compiled collaboratively by hundreds of expert and amateur contributors. Its goal is to contain a page with pictures, text, and other information for every species and for each

Ah, modern life. The way we live now is intrinsically tied to increasingly pervasive technology, our relationship to which could be permanently set to "it's complicated." French graphic designer Jean Jullien presented his own playful take on our ever-evolving connection to gadgets, gizmos, and yes, human interaction for Allo?, currently on display at London's Kemistry Gallery.

Gwyneth Jones makes these comic tutorials using Comic Life & iPhoto. Covers lots of literacy/digital literacy topics.  

"Children have infinite potential. Play is a natural vehicle for learning. Joy is most often found in simple things. Give children the space to create and the time to grow. Curiosity, imagination and creativity are timeless tools. Asking children questions is more powerful than telling them things. All children have basic needs, such as love and belongingness. Never underestimate the power of one caring adult in a child's life. Persistence, persistence, persistence pays off. Expect the unexpected. We need to strive to make learning transformational. There is a child in all of us."

Great idea for replacing worksheets in a life cycle unit in G1

Coaching is a highly sophisticated form of reflective practice. When done well, it can transform a person's professional, and often personal, life, and provides many benefits to the employer in sustaining high performance and morale. The question is, however, whether it's the coaching itself that produces the results, or if it's down to an enlightened management team, which believes in people's development and so encourages coaching, which in turn produces results. When coaching is done badly, though, it has the power to decimate a person's sense of professional worth for years into the future and to incur substantial cost while returning no benefits, or worse, significant professional damage. Leadership can become cynical about the coaching process.  Money is wasted.  Time and attention are frittered away.  Ineffective coaching is counterproductive and should be stopped as soon as it is recognized.

If we value coaching, and we do, the question then becomes: "what are the elements of effective coaching that we can train, support, measure, and improve" - especially those that have the highest leverage for shifting those being coached perspectives and practices. The more I come to understand the power of coaching the more I appreciate that the best leaders see their primary role within an organisation as an influencer and coaching as the structure behind the myriad of interactions. I think an enlightened management team would not only be encouraging coaches but utilizing coaching strategies themselves on a regular basis.

"Social trends analyst Paul Flatters argues that childhood today is better than ever before, and he explains why wrongly thinking the reverse is bad for us as individuals and as a society. Paul deconstructs several examples of recent media coverage, and explains why charities and academics have a vested interest in exaggerating the negative. He also seeks to dispel the inevitable gloom of early January by pointing out the many ways in which research suggests life is certainly no worse, and much better, for children and families than it has ever been before. "

"Do NOT allow the iPads to live in mobile carts - when I see an iPad in a cart, I see money being burned. The carts should be where the iPads sleep when school is closed. This is where they re-charge. But there should be a school-wide routine that as soon as kids enter a room with an iPad cart, they each walk up to the cart and get their assigned iPad. They should keep that iPad on their desk until the end of the day and return it to the cart as they walk out of the classroom. iPads should be as essential to a student desk as pencils were 20 years ago. Teachers (and kids) will be much more likely to pick up and use the devices if they're right there, as opposed to having to plan to take them out and use them for "tech time" and then put them away. Think about how you use mobile tech in your everyday life - you pull your phone out of your pocket to look up information when it's relevant, rather than waiting until your "computer time" later in the week. Students should be able to do the same."

Nice idea for Life Skills/ PSE