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"To help teachers do PBL well, we created a comprehensive, research-based model for PBL - a "gold standard" to help teachers, schools, and organizations to measure, calibrate, and improve their practice. This term is used in many industries and fields to indicate the highest quality process or product. Our conception of Gold Standard PBL has three parts: 1) Student Learning Goals (in the center of the diagram below) 2) Essential Project Design Elements (shown in the red sections of the diagram), and 3) Project Based Teaching Practices (which we explain elsewhere)."

"What is the best approach teachers can take towards homework? I think the guest responses today, along with numerous reader comments, provide a great perspective on the topic. If you'd like to read more research and discover additional ideas, you might want to explore my collection at The Best Resources For Learning About Homework Issues. Todays guests are educator/authors Dr. Cathy Vatterott and Bryan Harris. Reader suggestions follow their contributions."

"On the morning of December 19, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright achieved one of mankind's greatest feats: the first controlled flight. This revolutionized the way the world operated. Countries reacted, hiring engineers to replicate what the Wright brothers had accomplished while also trying to buy rights to the flying machine. Changes were made for the better of civilization reforming not only warfare but also the transportation of people, money, mail, and goods."

"Sprinkled throughout the newly reauthorized version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are references to an instructional strategy that supporters think has enormous potential for reaching learners with diverse needs. The next thing to do, those proponents say, is getting more educators to understand just what it means. Called universal design for learning, or UDL for short, the strategy encompasses a wide set of teaching techniques, allowing multiple ways for teachers to present information and for students to engage in lessons and demonstrate what they know.

"These days I'm a STEM curriculum writer and advocate, but I'll confess that each year when Middle Level Education Month rolls around, I feel an extra longing to be back in a science classroom with young adolescents elbowing their way through the door, eager to learn "stuff." It's a place where I spent 16 wonderful years of my professional life."

"Can creativity be taught? Absolutely. The real question is: "How do we teach it?" In school, instead of crossing subjects and classes, we teach them in a very rigid manner. Very rarely do you witness math and science teachers or English and history teachers collaborating with each other. Sticking in your silo, shell, and expertise is comfortable. Well, it's time to crack that shell. It's time to abolish silos and subjects. Joichi Ito, director of the M.I.T. Media Lab, told me that rather than interdisciplinary education, which merges two or more disciplines, we need anti-disciplinary education, a term coined by Sandy Pentland, head of the lab's Human Dynamics group."

"A free new social networking platform aims to encourage elementary school children to read more books. BiblioNasium is a pilot virtual reading village for children aged 6-12 and their friends, parents, and teachers. The site enables young readers to catalogue, share, and exchange their book recommendations. It also offers reading-level-appropriate book recommendations using the Lexile Framework for Reading."

"Grit" is certainly an education buzz word at the moment, and this series will feature many guest contributors commenting on they think it means. Today's post features responses from Kristine Mraz, Christine Hertz, Ebony O. McGee, Ron Berger, Thomas Hoerr and Dave Stuart Jr. In addition, you can listen to a ten-minute conversation I had with Kristine, Christine and Ebony on my BAM! Radio Show. You can find also see a list of, and links to, previous shows."

"s a boy, I loved taking things apart. Clocks, radios, my mother's kitchen appliances. Luckily for her, I was fairly adept at reassembly. I wanted to discover how things worked, what made them tick (and not just the clocks). But at school, the closest I came to engineering was art lessons and woodworking class. "

"Description: 8 and 9 year olds from a primary school in Sunderland, England organised, ran and spoke at TEDxKids@Sunderland "

"Many teachers and administrators -- not to mention the general public -- might have the wrong impression of PBL. Maybe they have stereotypical views of what a "project" is, or they've seen poor examples of it in the past. Or they can't imagine how it could fit in today's landscape of standards and testing ("Oh yeah, we did that in the 90's, but things were different then.") "

"The rapid adoption of devices in the classroom has fundamentally changed the way we can create video. Every part of the creation process -- writing, recording, editing, and distributing -- is possible on the devices that can fit in our pocket. Vision is the most dominant of the five senses. Research shows that concepts are better remembered if they are taught visually. This is called the pictorial superiority effect, and it's why video is such a powerful learning tool. A video is created three times: when you write it, when you shoot it, and when you edit it. "

In the age of information, factual answers are easy to find. Want to know who signed the Declaration of Independence? Google it. Curious about the plot of Nathaniel Hawthorne's famous novel, "The Scarlet Letter"? A quick Internet search will easily jog your memory. But while computers are great at spitting out answers, they aren't very good at asking questions. But luckily, that's where humans can excel.

"So I make the following argument with a great deal of trepidation: What if watching videos is good for kids? What if it is so good that it should be part of the regular school day? I'm not talking about the latest Pixar movie (although Inside Out certainly could be a great resource for social and emotional learning). I'm talking about explicitly educational videos that teach content to kids in an engaging and memorable way."