Well, yesterday was Digital Learning Day. By all accounts, it was a busy day across the country. Lots of conversation and high-profile events and demonstrations of students doing cool stuff with technology…

Should every school day be Digital Learning Day? Nope. We still need down time from these electronic and virtual spaces of ours, times when we experience the joy of human connection, nature, solitude, reflection (and all of those other things that people say I should be experiencing!). But, nonetheless, we definitely need ‘more digital, more often’ in most of our primarily-analog schools, so it was good to have a nationwide day that reminds us of the power of digital learning.

Here are a few things that caught my eye from the unrelenting stream of educational technology news yesterday:

1. Instructure Canvas is now available to P-12 educators. If you’re interested in a better learning management system, you definitely should check out what Canvas has to offer. Canvas is free for individual teachers and professors. Set up a Canvas account and start playing around with it for a course; you’ll quickly see why its social media integration and other features blow the doors off of Blackboard or Moodle. Here are some other materials to get you started: overview video, Park City case study, Rockingham case study, teacher data sheet, administrator data sheet.
2. The online Student Opinion section from The New York Times is full of fascinating commentary and insights from youth. Hear from students 13 and older about learning, teaching, technology, and other issues. Similarly, also see the StudentsSpeak section of the MacArthur Foundation’s Spotlight web site. There is great material at both locations to mine for instruction and conversation purposes.
3. Speaking of student voice, check out Using media to (re)claim the hood: Essential questions and powerful English pedagogy. Then see I love my city: Youth as community problem solvers and creators in 21st century classrooms. After that, be sure to investigate the other amazing resources and ideas for teaching writing in a digital, hyperconnected world at the National Writing Project’s Digital Is web site. And then, before you collapse from exhaustion from all of this awesomeness, go visit Youth Voices. There, those will keep you busy for a while!
4. Apparently some students got to testify before the Ohio House of Representatives about digital learning. I love to see tweets like this one or this one. In contrast, I’m not so enthused about tweets like this one (from a district in Alabama).
5. The current issue of AASA’s School Administrator magazine focuses on P-12 laptop initiatives, particularly issues related to learning, teaching, affordability, and planning. Districts profiled include Mooresville (NC), Pascack Valley (NJ), and a host of others, including Van Meter (IA), Owensboro (KY), and Piedmont City (AL).
6. Other things that I found yesterday included a great story on students with autism spectrum disorder using Google SketchUp, information about teaching digital literacy through game design, the Oakridge Elementary (VA) blog featuring book reviews written by elementary students, and news about the plan by MIT and Lego to bring robotics and coding to young children.

And, of course, we here at CASTLE were busy too. We launched our new online School Technology Leadership graduate certificate, Master’s, and Ph.D. programs. We also gave our 1-to-1 Schools blog a visual makeover and opened registration for the 3rd annual Iowa 1:1 Institute, an event that focuses on high-quality learning and teaching in P-12 laptop programs. Last year we had over 1,300 participants for the Institute. Maybe this year you’ll join us on April 11!