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"It's no longer a given that if a child spends twelve years in school, he or she will learn enough to succeed in higher education or a career. To address this issue, some educators are taking bold measures to help students. Traditionally, classes move forward, covering the curriculum according to schedule. Students are taught the same materials at the same pace. If a student fails to learn a skill, he or she accepts that result and moves on to the next topic with the rest of the class."

"Animal dissection is one of the most controversial topics in science education. Scientists, teachers, animal rights activists, and parents and students all have a opinion about whether animal dissection is necessary or even educational. But despite strong arguments on both sides, it remains a core part of many schools' biology curriculum."

"THE July/August issue of The Atlantic trumpets the "14 Biggest Ideas of the Year." Take a deep breath. The ideas include "The Players Own the Game" (No. 12), "Wall Street: Same as it Ever Was" (No. 6), "Nothing Stays Secret" (No. 2), and the very biggest idea of the year, "The Rise of the Middle Class - Just Not Ours," which refers to growing economies in Brazil, Russia, India and China. "

"Whether you're a technophobe or a geeked-out early adopter, there's no denying that the world is run on computers, and the language of computers is code. It seems only natural that there's a wave of interest in the idea of teaching kids to code -- some say it should be a requirement in every school. I think no one would argue that every kid is cut out to be a programmer, but a basic understanding of code couldn't hurt. In fact, this knowledge could give a leg up in an increasingly technology-centric society. Hopefully this playlist of videos will help you learn more about some of the people and organizations who are working to change the opportunities available for kids to learn code."

" have always been infatuated with libraries. As a child, my mom used to take me to the local public library for story time. During high school, I spent hours tucked into stacks, looking for a quiet place to learn. However, in college, I quit the library. Not because of computers, or eBooks, or any sort of technology, but because most of my work required collaborating with peers, and the library was not conducive to that interaction. Even Core, with its big round tables and study rooms, was considered a "quiet space.""

"Explore this educator's guide to open educational resources for information about online repositories, curriculum-sharing websites, sources for lesson plans and activities, and open alternatives to textbooks."

Children in the Mehlville district may have the chance in two years to attend an elementary school with an alternative curriculum - one that uses real-world problems to help students learn and without the restraints grade levels sometimes place on learning. It would be a school that parents would choose, and there would be no admission requirements. If more children apply than there are seats available, the district would hold a lottery. That kind of competition for classroom seats has largely been limited regionally to the city of St. Louis. There, district magnet and choice schools, along with independent charter schools, offer language immersion education and schooling that focuses on science, engineering, technology and math. Mehlville Superintendent Chris Gaines received preliminary approval from the district's School Board last week to move ahead with a "Choice School of Innovation" that would be the only of its kind in St. Louis County.

"With the rise of MOOCs, Edupunks, and other radically transformative notations of school, I hear a lot of talk about building capacities for independent learning in our students. Where will this come from, I ask, if we do not re-awaken the desire and capacity for learning on our own within all of our teachers?"

"The Common Core State Standards recognize that to thrive in the newly wired world, students need to master new ways of reading and writing."

"The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells as illustrated below. "

""Design your own shoe." That's what high school students thought they were signing up to do when they volunteered for an immersive experience in design thinking. Truth be told, the course description was not quite accurate. Shoe design "is really a Trojan horse for solving problems in a new way," acknowledged Chad Faber, director of the Knight Family Scholars Program at Catlin Gabel School, an independent K-12 school in Portland, Oregon. He facilitated the four-day, hands-on learning experience along with Greg Bamford (@gregbamford) from the Leading is Learning collaborative in Seattle. Several more Catlin Gabel staffers took part to learn by doing, building a cohort of teachers with design chops. "

"In the fall of 2006, Clarence R. Edwards Middle School ("the Edwards" as it is known locally within Boston Public Schools) became one of the first schools in the state of Massachusetts to implement the Expanded Learning Time (ELT) Initiative. The reasons why were simple: we were not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and we wanted to make significant academic gains with our students. As it turned out, making our school day longer was one of the best things we could have done to help reform our school model and improve student outcomes. Our statewide exam scores, student enrollment, daily student attendance rate, community and family engagement, and time for team teaching/collaboration all improved as a result of ELT. "

"In the past, I've had the very good fortune to work with both Destination Imagination and Odyssey of the Mind in my classroom. Both of these programs allow kids to explore creativity to the nth degree and offer engaging and learning-filled explorations beyond what is typically offered in school. The guiding philosophies of both programs are: In what ways can we be creative? How creative can we be? We often ask our students to be creative, but how often do we ask them to extend that creativity into previously unexplored territory? How often do we invite them to up the WOW Factor? I often muse about that when I think about Web 2.0 tools that I share in workshops. I'm always trying to brainstorm divergent ways to use these versatile tools at multiple cognitive levels as well as creative extensions beyond what the tool was designed for."

"When asked why he became a scientist, Nobel Laureate Isidor Rabi attributed his success to his mother. Every day, she would ask him the same question about his school day: "Did you ask a good question today?" "Asking good questions - made me become a scientist!" Rabi said."

"More and more people in education agree on the importance of learning stuff other than academics. But no one agrees on what to call that "stuff". There are least seven major overlapping terms in play. New ones are being coined all the time. This bagginess bugs me, as a member of the education media. It bugs researchers and policymakers too. "Basically we're trying to explain student success educationally or in the labor market with skills not directly measured by standardized tests," says Martin West, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "The problem is, you go to meetings and everyone spends the first two hours complaining and arguing about semantics." West studies what he calls "non-cognitive skills." Although he's not completely happy with that term. "

"A while back, I was asked, "What engages students?" Sure, I could respond, sharing anecdotes about what I believed to be engaging, but I thought it would be so much better to lob that question to my own eighth graders. The responses I received from all 220 of them seemed to fall under 10 categories, representing reoccurring themes that appeared again and again. So, from the mouths of babes, here are my students' answers to the question: "What engages students?" "

"Grade Essays Faster - "Impossible!" you say? Look, we can't grade the essays for you, but we can reduce the repetitive, inefficient manual labor involved - and in doing so we open up a new world of invaluable student data. Welcome to the future."

"Can sharing facts you learn in class be as fun as sharing the latest "Call Me Maybe" parody on YouTube? That's what SchoolTube says. The free website claims to be "the nation's largest teacher-moderated K-12 video-sharing website" - think of it as YouTube for the education set. "

"Visual representations of data is extremely valuable for all of us in the education industry; we've got to consume a lot of it to make valuable decisions for our students and schools."

"One of the biggest business battles of our time is between Microsoft and Google. The two have very different business models. Microsoft believes that if they build it, we will come-and buy their product. Google's approach is different: if they build it, we will integrate it into our lives. We use Microsoft products on their terms, but we use Google products-from iGoogle to GoogleDocs-on our terms, to construct whatever we want."