21st Century Learning and Teaching

Microsoft has unveiled its latest research project today, Project Zanzibar. It’s a smart mat that’s designed to blend the digital and physical worlds by sensing touch, gestures, and objects. A team of researchers, with a love of toys, created the project at Microsoft’s research labs in the UK. The mat folds and combines sensing, near field communication (NFC), and multi-touch to imagine a future where you could place objects on this smart mat and play games.

Microsoft’s video (above) demonstrates a number of different games that track the position, movement, and orientation of objects — all thanks to NFC stickers. The smart mat, that reminds me of the Surface Music Cover, can even detect inputs like button presses, and works with existing devices via Bluetooth. While the software maker demonstrates basic games for learning, programming, and augmented reality, this looks like the perfect hardware to combine the company’s Minecraft game with real-world Lego blocks. Objects can be easily tagged with NFC stickers, so you could stack them and have the mat translate that physical object into Minecraft.

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https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=makered

Microsoft offers STEM resources to help educators engage students with project-based lessons that compliment current STEM curriculum. A small incubation team inside of Microsoft focuses on developing next generation hardware, software, and services for K-12 education. Our goal is to support teachers in building inquiry and project-based activities that embed computational and design thinking into existing middle school curriculum.

We want to democratize STEM for 21st century learners and demonstrate how all schools can provide affordable opportunities to bring science in the classroom.

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https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Coding

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=makerspace

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Mixed+Reality

Microsoft MakeCode is a free, open-source Block and JavaScript learn-to-code editor that promotes a more inclusive approach to computing education.

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https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Coding

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=makerspace

Early Friday morning the world experienced the year’s latest cyberattack. Starting first in the United Kingdom and Spain, the malicious “WannaCrypt” software quickly spread globally, blocking customers from their data unless they paid a ransom using Bitcoin. The WannaCrypt exploits used in the attack were drawn from the exploits stolen from the National Security Agency, or NSA, in the United States. That theft was publicly reported earlier this year. 

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https://gustmees.wordpress.com/?s=cybersecurity

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/?s=5+minutes

Create apps everywhere — on all your devices! Keyboard optional. Share your programs with other people. Download the free app for Windows Phone, try the Web App in your browser!

Want to teach students how to make amazing things and to have a real impact on their world? You can! The Creative Coding Through Games And Apps (CCGA) curriculum provides everything you need to deliver the course, including teacher prep materials, lesson plans, presentations, student assignments, homework, projects, and tests.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Apps

http://www.scoop.it/t/apps-for-any-use-mostly-for-education-and-free

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/coding-a-new-trend-in-education-and-a-big-responsibility/