Well said

Why Programming Teaches So Much More Than Technical Skills | MindShift

Well said AND student driven.

Scratch on an iPad

Scratchin n Puffin | Math Revolution

This opens up lots of possibilities.

Schools as makerspaces?

MAKE | Is it a Hackerspace, Makerspace, TechShop, or FabLab?

This article made me think of something I have been churning about for a long time - schools as maker spaces.

I mean this in two ways.

The first is that I think that making if all kinds - arts, crafts, robotics, etextiles, welding, etc., should absoltely be in schools.

I also mean it in the sense of schools as places where people make deep understanding for themselves.

In a very real and practical way, I believe the two are intimately connected, and that these connections are essential to actual education reform.

Something Great

What My Connected Students Taught Me about Motivation

[Expletive Deleted] Ed-Tech #Edinnovation

This is an amazing piece by the prolific edtech blogger Audrey Watters. She does an amazing job talking about the past-lessness (my word) that goes with so much writing and (non-)research about educational technology.
I will make this required reading in my Emerging Technologies course.

[Expletive Deleted] Ed-Tech #Edinnovation: "Because there are other stories about the past and the future of education — ones where building human capacity trumps adding tablet capacity; ones where agency matter more than algorithms; ones where innovation comes from students, from professors, from librarians, from researchers; ones where new ideas are not driven by commercialism but by care; stories and initiatives that are local and will not scale but need not scale; and yes, stories and expertise that are Canadian."

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Paint or Paint App? Value of Creating Digital Vs. Traditional Art | MindShift

Paint or Paint App? Value of Creating Digital Vs. Traditional Art | MindShift:
This is a really interesting article. One quote really stood out for me:

(Says one teacher,) “Not all young students are interested in utilizing technology to make their art,” she said. “There can be much resistance in my classroom when we work on an art project that is going to be produced using Photoshop. I explain to my students that these are just alternative tools, and like any other tool, you can create something digitally that would be impossible to create by hand. Conversely, you can create something by hand that you cannot replicate digitally.”

It made me think of other areas (like writing) where we may insist on using technology (keyboarding instead of hand writing), without perhaps providing and choice or thinking through what we get and lose by these choices.
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