Inspiring New Futures

One Is Not Enough: Why Creative People Need Multiple Outlets - Design - GOOD : I can still remember the satisfaction I took from dragging a crayon against a particularly toothy piece of paper in a coloring book when I was very young. Unlike the cliché, I was trying to stay in the lines, but even then, it was the creation process that gave me the most pleasure, not the results. A year or so later, I began to draw freehand, and from that point on no blank page, post-it note, page margin, envelope, or napkin was safe. Needless to say, that compulsion was what led me to become a graphic designer. Some people specialize in ideas, constantly scheming, iterating, finessing. I prefer doing. I don't know what makes me want to make, but often the impulse strikes without warning. If I don't satiate it immediately, it becomes a dull ache that lingers all day.

Global Initiative Seeks to Transform Schools By Teaching Empathy - Education - GOOD : Strong academic skills aren't enough to guarantee success for 21st-century students. Now, one group is looking to broaden what our children are taught. Ashoka Changemakers, a nonprofit that provides tools and resources to help people improve their communities, is looking for entries for " Activating Empathy, " a competition seeking to spotlight and support smart ideas, programs, and learning models that build students' abilities to collaborate and communicate effectively, resolve conflicts, and respect multiple perspectives.

Can a National Student-Led Movement Catalyze Education Reform? - Education - GOOD : Can a student-led movement get young people to become vocal agitators for education reform? That’s the goal of  EdMonth , a national student-led movement and discussion that seeks to catalyze college-age students and get them to drive the discussion on improving both K-12 schools and higher education in America.

allAfrica.com: Africa: Wikipedia to Be Free On Mobiles in Africa, Middle East : Nairobi — Millions of people in Africa and the Middle East will be able to benefit from free, unlimited access to the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia through their mobile phone, starting later this year. The scheme targets the region's 70 million customers of the mobile network provider Orange, who will be given free access to Wikipedia on their internet-enabled 'smart' phones. The deal struck between Orange and the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organisation that operates Wikipedia, will allow Orange customers to read and download information from Wikipedia without the usual data usage charges. "Price is a strong barrier to people accessing the Internet, particularly in Africa," said Vanessa Clarke, spokesperson for Orange

'Hunger Games' Becomes Part Of School Curriculum As Students Go On Movie Field Trip : NEW YORK — For some school kids around the country, the odds have been ever (and awesomely!) in their favor as they've scored the ultimate field trip – an outing to "The Hunger Games." "All of my friends who don't go to my school are all really jealous," said 15-year-old David Schwartz. He was among about 500 ninth-grade English students from New Rochelle High School in suburban New York City who were taken to the movie on opening day last Friday.

Two hours' homework a night linked to better school results | Education | The Guardian : Spending more than two hours a night doing homework is linked to achieving better results in English, maths and science, according to a major study which has tracked the progress of 3,000 children over the past 15 years. Spending any time doing homework showed benefits, but the effects were greater for students who put in two to three hours a night, according to  the study  published by the Department for Education. The finding on homework runs counter to  previous research  which shows a "relatively modest" link between homework and achievement at secondary school.

A Surge in Learning the Language of the Internet - NYTimes.com : Richard Perry/The New York Times Zach Sims, left, and Ryan Bubinski started a business called Codecademy to teach people computer code. Parlez-vous Python? What about Rails or JavaScript? Foreign languages tend to wax and wane in popularity, but the language du jour is computer code. The market for night classes and online instruction in programming and Web construction, as well as for iPhone  apps that teach, is booming. Those jumping on board say they are preparing for a future in which the Internet is the foundation for entertainment, education and nearly everything else. Knowing how the digital pieces fit together, they say, will be crucial to ensuring that they are not left in the dark ages.

Neuroscience and the Bilingual Brain | Edutopia : A selective attentive focus and the ability to block out distraction are seminal executive functions that are minimally developed in youngsters. These functions gradually become stronger throughout the years of prefrontal cortex maturation, which last into the twenties. It is with regard to these executive functions that research about the "bilingual brain" is particularly exciting. The research refers to children raised with a language at home that differs from the dominant language outside the home, such as in school. Compared to monolinguals, the bilingual children develop greater attention focus, distraction resistance, decision-making judgment and responsiveness to feedback. The correlated  fMRI  scans of these children reveal more activity in the prefrontal cortex networks that control these executive functions.

LEGO picks six Wake County schools for new education program | News | eClassroom News : If having fun is the key to promoting learning, then learning is being promoted in abundance at Combs Elementary School in Raleigh, N.C. For the past five years, students at Combs have used LEGO’s signature bricks to stretch their creativity and imagination to build what they’ve been talking about in their classes. Now, five other schools will have the same opportunity as part of a new partnership announced March 21 between the Wake County school system and LEGO.

Why we need to bring creativity and technology back together across the curriculum | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional : Why we need to bring creativity and technology back together across the curriculum A professional den-maker on how she helps teachers transform their classrooms into thrilling learning environments An inspiring learning space created at Croxteth Primary School in Liverpool. Photograph: 4Dcreative Last year  Eric Schmidt , chairman of Google challenged the British education system. He said he was flabbergasted to learn that computer science isn't taught as standard in UK schools. "Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it's made. That is just throwing away your great computer heritage.

How to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative in class | Teacher Network Blog | guardian.co.uk : Can we learn about positive classroom behaviour from Uncle Sam? Today's blogger says yes As a relatively young teacher, managing negative behaviour was one of the problems I really struggled with. It turns out I wasn't alone. Just a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the highest number of state school teachers since the 1990s took early retirement last year, citing indiscipline as one of the main reasons – indiscipline really just being a manifestation of what happens when character strengths and learning habits are not developed sufficiently.

YouTube Finds a Way Off Schools’ Banned List - NYTimes.com : Educators are giving YouTube — long dismissed as a storehouse of whimsical, time-wasting and occasionally distasteful videos — another look. As Google, YouTube’s parent company, fine-tunes a portal that lets schools limit students’ access to selected content, the video-sharing Web site is gaining popularity as a trove of free educational materials.

Singapore's 21st-Century Teaching Strategies (Education Everywhere Series) | Edutopia : Singapore's 21st-Century Teaching Strategies (Education Everywhere Series) By cultivating strong school leadership, committing to ongoing professional development, and exploring innovative models like its tech-infused Future Schools, Singapore has become one of the top-scoring countries on the PISA tests. For more articles and videos about classrooms around the world, visit our  global learning resource page countries on the PISA tests. For more articles and videos about classrooms around the world, visit our  global learning resource page .

Re-imagining Leadership – Jamaica | daily edventures Canute Thompson believes that the state of education will advance only when we redefine what leadership means – Leadership Re-Imagination, he calls it.

Gareth Ritter featured on the BBC News School Report | daily edventures Gareth Ritter , Partners in Learning Teacher Award Winner 2011, was featured today on the BBC’s “News School Report” for his innovative use of technology in his music classes.

The Cross-Curricular Power of Computer Science – USA | daily edventures Doug Bergman, a first-place winner in the 2011  Partners in Learning  Global Forum, believes that the study of computer science is as integral to basic education as reading and math. 

Open to Change – Portugal | daily edventures Rui Lima believes in change. He’s been fortunate to witness change at his own school – from a traditional pedagogy to an innovative, open environment where kids are constantly challenged to explore their creativity. 

Why I Love Infographics. | Edudemic Back in 2010,  Jeff Dunn wrote an article about how infographics can accelerate learning .  Their popularity has not lessened since then; in fact, I think their popularity has only grown, if this Pinterest page is any indication.

10 Must-See Stories About Going Back To School | Edudemic For so many students, education is a  dream deferred that once put off never comes back around. But for the lucky few, going  back to school  is an incredible journey of determination and hard work.

Education Week: E-Schools Put Specific Measures for Success in Place The devil is in the details when evaluating the educational effectiveness of virtual schools

Splashtop Releases Whiteboard App for Android Tablets -- THE Journal Splashtop , a California-based software company founded in 1996, has released an application that gives functionality similar to that of an interactive whiteboard to Android-based tablet computers.

SAGE Day School Adopts Cloud-Based Virtual Desktops -- THE Journal New Jersey-based  SAGE Day Schools  has adopted virtual desktops across three campus locations in an effort to move to a completely cloud-based system.

Turning Foundation Selects Classroom Improvement Grant Recipients -- THE Journal The Turning Foundation , the nonprofit arm of Turning Technologies , has named 10 teachers who were selected to receive Winter 2012 Classroom Improvement Grants, which will provide each of their classrooms with new technology and digital materials worth approximately $3,600.

Quick Look: Do E-Books Make It Harder to Remember What You Just Read? | MindShift Interesting news, given the growth of the digital textbook movement. From a recent study’s author: “What we found was that people on paper started to ‘know’ the material more quickly over the passage of time. 

Beyond the PTA, How to Raise Funds for Your Classroom | MindShift Few schools and teachers have access to all the funds they need or want to outfit their classroom. According to  a PBS survey last year , only one in five teachers say they have the updated technology they need.

Quick Look: Pocket-Based Learning My Cellphone Classroom | MindShift Hard for adults to imagine, but in this case, a teacher says, “I find that many of my students feel more comfortable writing on their devices rather than using paper and a pen. 

Give Students the Opportunity to Take the Lead — Whole Child Education At the Institute for Global Ethics, we call it  Ethical Fitness : an approach and process to help young people and adults internalize ethical values and frameworks for critical thinking about ethics.

Google Docs Get Interactive With Google+ Hangouts Integration @PSFK It has been announced this week that  Google+  Hangouts now includes Google Docs integration for the whole community as it’s been added to the core experience for all users.

How Do We Educate The Workforce Of The Future? @PSFK PSFK interviewed the founders of  E[nstitute] , a start-up redefining higher education through a two-year, apprenticeship-based, higher education model where students learn by doing. 

Tech Transformation: IT for EAL and Learning Support Although most of my time is spent with homeroom teachers in the primary school, I try to give support to specialists too.  Recently I've led a couple of staff meetings where we have shown the German, PE and Music teachers different Web 2.0 tools that they may find useful to use with their students.

Tech Transformation: Reading, Writing and Crunching the Numbers Over the past few weeks we have been quad-blogging with our Grade 4 students as we are taking part in action research about the impact blogging can have on student writing. 

Tech Transformation: Hacker - good or bad? Today I saw a post about a new simple wiki service called Hackpad on Richard Byrne's blog Free Technology for Teachers. 

Tech Transformation: Using Toca Boca iPad apps with Pre-K students For the past couple of weeks I've tried out a number of different Toca Boca apps with our Pre-Kindergarten students and I've found all of them to be good for students to use in pairs or in small groups.

The Educational Cartoon Everyone Should Be Talking About | Edudemic Have you always wanted to visit a fictional coastal town, populated by rain boots? OK, me neither until now, but the animated children’s series  Rainboot Cove  definitely makes me wish I could spend some time there!

TED Ed – Sharing the Spark of Curiosity | Online Universities As educators we are all familiar with the TED talks . These highly enlightening videos appear on the TED site and are immediately viewed and shared by tens of thousands of people around the world.

It's iPad Eve...Jason Perlow weighs in with me on the iPad in ed | ZDNet Summary: Jason Perlow joined Kay Alexander and me on last week’s review:ed episode to talk about the iPad (and other tablets) in education.

Luidia finds that tight budgets change, don't eliminate tech implementations | ZDNet Summary:  Luidia, maker of the very cool eBeam interactive whiteboard tool, just released market data that lets us draw some interesting conclusions.

Raise literacy target in primary schools, says Ofsted chief | Education | The Guardian Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, says the current benchmark is too low to ensure later success at GCSE

101 Web 2.0 Teaching Tools Every Teacher Should Know About | Edudemic Are you looking for teaching tools that are actually easy to use and, dare I say it, fun? It’s a perpetual hunt for most teachers and there are simply far too many resources available to go through. 

Lesli Rotenberg: Closing the App Gap A recent  study from Common Sense Media  points out a new and troubling kind of digital divide -- an "app gap" between children from higher-income homes and children from low-income households.

Dan Cardinali: Partnerships Have the Power to Transform Schools On Friday I had the privilege of accompanying a colleague, Laura Magruder, to the Gila River Indian Community, just south of Phoenix.

C. M. Rubin: The Global Search for Education: Is Your Child an Innovator? Welcome to the Innovation Age. Today's world will reward the most innovative young people. World leaders, business executives, educators, and policy makers have joined in the global debate on how we create the next generation of innovators. 

Standardized Test Scores Can Improve When Kids Told They Can Fail, Study Finds Every day for the last four years, Leah Alcala has greeted her Berkeley, California, middle-school students with an exercise she calls "my favorite no."

Study: Young people not so 'green' after all | eSchool News Analysis of survey data over 40 years suggests Millennials are less environmentally conscious and less civic-minded than previous generations

West Virginia schools' high-speed installation going slo-mo | eSchool News “We were given a gift of $126 million, and it would be a tragedy if that money were not spent correctly,” said Michael Green, state board of education member, at a meeting in Charleston.  

Santorum's views on higher education divide readers | eSchool News Some readers blast Santorum’s views on college, while others say they point to a need for other options

High school teacher creates new educational app | eSchool News eNotebook lets students add their own notes to a teacher’s files without having to covert those files to another format

Online Teacher of the Year: Individualized instruction is key | eSchool News Leslie Fetzer says blended learning can help each student reach a ‘light bulb’ moment, because personalization of instruction is easier

Education Week: Feds Aim to Spark Fresh Thinking on Schooling As the private sector works faster and more boldly to churn out next-generation technology and embrace cutting-edge practices, the U.S. Department of Education and its partner federal agencies are ramping up their efforts to bring more spark and innovation into elementary and secondary schools.

Education Week: Oregon Community Schools Model Shows Staying Power As interest in that school model grows, the SUN Community Schools show how it's done

TED-Ed Creates Educational YouTube Video Library - Digital Education - Education Week Just over a year ago, in its continuing mission to share "ideas worth spreading," a TED Conference held in Long Beach, Calif., welcomed Salman Khan as  one of several speakers  during a session on education curated by Bill Gates.  

New Crowdfunding Site Might Just Revolutionize Scientific Research | Edudemic It’s called Petridish and it puts the power in your hands to pick which scientific studies should be funded. It’s like the crowdfunding site Kickstarter but with a scientific twist.

Lecture Fail? Professors Respond to Student Commentaries - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education College professors have weighed in on the Lecture Fail? project. See some of their rebuttals to students immediately below. And look to the bottom of the page to see comments from professors who agreed with students' criticisms of the traditional lecture:

5 Innovative Animation Tools for Teachers | Edudemic Move over, Disney. Step aside, Pixar! It’s now easier than ever for casual users to create fun, engaging animations. With the slew of information available online, even young storytellers can learn the basics of visual storytelling. 

Could Student Loan Debt Soon Be Erased? | Edudemic Pardon the hyperbole, but if you have student loans, it’s worth spending the next 20 seconds reading this because it could literally change your financial life

The Big Problem With iPads In The Classroom | Edudemic Simply put, iPads are amazing devices. The sleek design, simple user interface, and abundance of quality apps make other tablets envious.