Screencasting is getting a lot of attention as a tool for teachers when using the flipped classroom model. Certainly, screencasts are a great tool for teachers to create presentations for their students to view at home. But I think that screencasting is most powerful when it is used as a student creation tool. Screencasts take a typical presentation a step further by requiring higher order thinking skills; not only do students create the presentation, but they also have to explain their thinking.

There are many excellent screencasting applications available, including Show Me, Educreations and Explain Everything. The students in my eighth grade English Language Arts classes recently used Explain Everything on iPads to create grammar screencasts. It was great to see the students engaged and having fun while learning

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In 2012, most of the pedagogical and technological community were taken by storm from a report by One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) that laptops dropped off in rural Ethiopia had been learned from in ways the contributors never imagined.

Not only did the children who received the laptops, many of whom were pre-literate and had no prior exposure to digital technology, make use of the programs the developers uploaded, they began to hack the Android-based operating system that the laptops used, reenabling the webcam and modifying the laptop desktops—an application that was previously blocked by the developers working on the specialized laptops.

This anecdote is one of many that indicates that children and technology do, indeed, play well together. I would

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As a language teacher I find mobile phones are a great resource as a dictionary, a unique way to do homework and, for many of my students, an alternative way to take notes. I’ve been using them in my class for a while now and their presence is actually hardly noticed – so seamlessly is it a part of what we do. In working them into my class I’ve learned some things about how to introduce them that may help you if you just starting to allow them.

Out on The Desk

The first few weeks of my class always starts with the call to “take out your phones – upside down on your desk”. So stunned are most students

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We all want to be creative. We want to inspire creativity in our students. We want to teach material in creative ways that get students engaged and excited (without reinventing the wheel, of course!). But sometimes, creative just isn’t happening. When you can’t think of anything new, or anything that you deem ‘creative’ or ‘more interesting’ than the basics, it can be frustrating. I so often hear the advice to ‘just let it happen’. Which is, of course, even more frustrating! It isn’t always just that easy!

The handy infographic below details some simple ideas to stimulate creativity. It encourages you to do them every day. I see the idea of the graphic as sort of a mindset refresh – train yourself to be creative, and be

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