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Computational thinking is a phrase that has received considerable attention over the past several years - but there is little agreement about what computational thinking encompasses, and even less agreement about strategies for assessing the development of computational thinking in young people. We are interested in the ways that design-based learning activities - in particular, programming interactive media - support the development of computational thinking in young people. Over the past several years, we have developed a computational thinking framework that emerged from our studies of the activities of interactive media designers. Our context is Scratch - a programming environment that enables young people to create their own interactive stories, games, and simulations, and then share those creations in an online community with other young programmers from around the world. The first part of the paper describes the key dimensions of our computational thinking framework: computational concepts (the concepts designers engage with as they program, such as iteration, parallelism, etc.), computational practices (the practices designers develop as they engage with the concepts, such as debugging projects or remixing others' work), and computational perspectives (the perspectives designers form about the world around them and about themselves). The second part of the paper describes our evolving approach to assessing these dimensions, including project portfolio analysis, artifact-based interviews, and design scenarios. We end with a set of suggestions for assessing the learning that takes place when young people engage in programming.

Education content from the web served up on a Raspberry Pi to create a local educational internet!

Can download images as fonts and/or copy PNG files. Attribution is straightforward for web presence. 

If you missed Hands on Literacy, here are the slides (and links) from Joyce Valenza, one of the keynote speakers.  Well worth going through her slides. 

"A striking assumption animates arguments on both sides, namely that nonfiction is seldom literary and certainly not literature. Even Mr. Coleman erects his case on largely dispiriting, utilitarian grounds: nonfiction may help you win the corner office but won't necessarily nourish the soul. As an English teacher and writer who traffics in factual prose, I'm with Mr. Coleman. In my experience, students need more exposure to nonfiction, less to help with reading skills, but as a model for their own essays and expository writing, what Mr. Gladwell sought by ingesting "Talk of the Town" stories. I love fiction and poetry as much as the next former English major and often despair over the quality of what passes for "informational texts," few of which amount to narrative much less literary narrative. What schools really need isn't more nonfiction but better nonfiction, especially that which provides good models for student writing. Most students could use greater familiarity with what newspaper, magazine and book editors call "narrative nonfiction": writing that tells a factual story, sometimes even a personal one, but also makes an argument and conveys information in vivid, effective ways."

"What schools really need isn't more nonfiction but better nonfiction, especially that which provides good models for student writing. "  Totally supports my belief that nonfiction longreads are out there on the internet and are not being taken advantage of by teachers -- enough.

"visiting this link"

Greta resource from NASA on water. 

"Don't Bookmark, Curate Online Content"

This would be great to show to kids - the second half - where they explain the different colours and what they represent from a personality/emotions perspective, a marketing perspective, politics and chakras. 

American website with lesson plans for Health and Physical Education K-12,

Welcome to the Research In Action section of PE Central. In this section, we post research articles that we think will be helpful to PE teachers. 

the old Wallwisher is now called Padlet -- crowdsource ideas online - visibly

"When I listen to my colleagues in this connected coaches course, I think one area we have in common is that we see the urgent need for change and we are impatient. I read the article "What can we do about teacher resistance" by Jim Knight. Teachers are unlikely to implement a new practice successfully, if they implement at all, if they have had only workshops without coaching or other forms of follow-up support."

Make Google Search stories

Create your own Google Search Stories

Write up for nice looking apps for creating, reading etc Evernote, Paper, Goodreader, Bamboo Paper Notebook, iA Writer, SimpleMind, EasyBib, iStudiez Pro, Wordflex Touch Dictionary, 

Good to tool to set up a meeting time.

Another good tool to schedule meetings ...