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"With the Common Core adoption in the United States, teaching vocabulary is no longer strictly the domain of the English-Language Arts classroom. While Robert Marzano has been promoting the instruction of academic vocabulary for years-and many school literacy plans have included reading and writing across the content areas for years-it is now a matter of standard and law. Which makes it kind of a big deal."

"As both hardware and software design improve, the possibility of mobile learning is increasingly accessible. Video is undoubtedly at the core of a modern mobile learning experience. (As opposed to, say, an early 20th century "mobile" experience that was likely hands-on, place-based, and experiential.) To actually be useful beyond the cool-video-as-a-writing-prompt-every-once-in-a-while stage is going to require smarter tools. Teachers need to be able to capture, upload, download, edit, slow down, speed up, annotate, curate, share, and otherwise "own" video content so that is fully merges with everything else. With that in mind, below are 25 of the best resources for teaching with YouTube. Some are web-based, some are apps, and others are guides or tips. Let us know in the comments what your favorites are that we might've missed!"

"My students come from a small, rural community and lack a broad understanding of the larger world around them. This inspired me to seek out a game, or online environment, that could provide more expansive experiences for them-a place that would allow them to explore, on their own or with others, and where I could embed history content for them to discover. On Twitter I came across an exploratory discussion of Minecraft's potential for school use. I dove in and began a journey that ultimately changed my perception of teaching and how I interact with my students. Minecraft is easy to use and implement in a classroom. It promotes student independence and creativity, but it is also an immensely collaborative tool that I have witnessed being integrated across all grade levels and content areas. Students can apply their understanding in truly unique and often unanticipated ways. Previously, my kids struggled with writing. Today, they are more creative and confident writers. Instead of getting 125 essays written in the exact same style with the same details, I now get unique historical narratives, rich with sensory experiences and observations made with their own eyes."

"While teachers may always be the best line of defense for students falling behind, busy schedules don't always permit the special attention and feedback that students need. That's where artificial intelligence-powered teaching assistants might come in handy. "These intelligent tools can adapt pacing based on the student's ability … and provide targeted, corrective feedback in case the student makes mistakes, so that the student can learn from them," states an eSchool News report released earlier this year. "These tools also gather actionable insights and information about a student's progress and report the data back to the teacher." Understandably, there is still some hesitation at the idea of using this technology, as education professionals fear the day robots will replace teachers. However, as Thomas Arnett, a writer at the Christensen Institute, explains in his report, Teaching in the Machine Age, these advances are not meant to replace teachers but help them bring students to new heights. "Innovations that commoditize some elements of teacher expertise also supply the tools to raise the effectiveness of both non-experts and expert teachers to new heights and to adapt to the new priorities of a 21st-century workforce and education system," writes Arnett. Schools have already begun to adopt machine learning initiatives to help teachers and students fill learning gaps, and the results have been received well so far."

"20 years of computers as a publishing tool has not necessarily improved the standard of students' writing skills."

Tony Stead is an Australian educator who has taught in elementary schools and lectured at the University of Melbourne. He is the past president of the Melbourne Chapter of the Australian Reading Association and the author of many publications. His latest include Is That a Fact?: Teaching Nonfiction Writing and the video series Time For Nonfiction. which highlights his recent work with several teachers at the Manhattan New School.

"Learning to read can be difficult. And teaching a group of students to read and write can be a daunting task - especially taking into consideration that each student may learn differently, and at a very different pace. Some students may have trouble matching sounds with letters and words, some with writing mechanics, others may have trouble concentrating in a traditional classroom setting. Having a few extra tools in the arsenal to have students using either in class or out of class can help to bring everyone up to speed or help any student to get a bit ahead."

Welcome to the 21st Century! Can You Digg It? While the goals have more or less stayed the same, the methods and technologies used for the Three R's, Reading, Writing & Research, have started to shift. The workshop/s associated with this website continue to give the website developers, the workshop facilitators, and the workshop participants the opportunities to explore how to best facilitate teaching research and writing in the 21st century. Assumptions and Philosophies Rhetorically Situated Research Projects Scaffolded Research Projects Creative Research Presentations Technologies

"Samantha John didn't learn programming until she was nearly done with college. Her Hopscotch iPad app teaches the next generation of kids how to write code as soon as they can read."

"Many teachers have added 'digital literacy' as number four on the list of literacies their students should have (or be working towards, in most cases). Reading, writing, and math are now followed by digital literacy. Obviously, depending on the grade level you teach, your students will have different abilities in each of the four areas, so your expectations and your teaching approach may differ quite noticeably from your colleagues. But the nagging question still remains for many teachers - what exactly is digital literacy?"

""You may think you are prepared for a post-truth world, in which political appeals to emotion count for more than statements of verifiable fact," writes Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for The Washington Post. "But now it's time to cross another bridge-into a world without facts. Or, more precisely, where facts do not matter a whit." ADVERTISEMENT Because I teach American history, government, and journalism in high school, Sullivan's words hit close to home. I spoke with my students about Mary Beth Hertz's Edutopia post "Battling Fake News in the Classroom," and I sensed that many of my students, while skilled at what Hertz fittingly calls "crap detection," were still deeply troubled by what they characterized as a growing public aversion to the truth. When politicians and thought leaders can't or won't agree on a basic set of facts, how can we motivate students for the noble pursuit of truth and help them see why it still matters?  "

Lessonwriter creates lesson plans and instructional materials for teaching English language skills from any reading passage How it works- Copy & paste any text you choose into LessonWriter; LessonWriter analyzes text for vocabulary, grammar and usage, pronunciation, and word roots and stems; Then, LessonWriter writes a lesson plan and a lesson that teaches the skills you chose in the context of the passage - automatically.

"Giving feedback is a huge part of teaching. Whether you're teaching 8 year olds or university students, math or english, you give feedback on your students' work almost constantly. The questions may be multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer, or long essay format. You may be assessing students on their writing ability, cultural literacy, math, chemistry, foreign language, or some combination of the above. The feedback may be a part of a grade, or it may come at an earlier point in the process. Regardless of what you're offering feedback on, the goals of feedback are for the student to learn more, more efficiently, more effectively, and to better understand the material at hand."

"The rush to grit is pretty intense, but so is the push-back. I've been writing about grit in articles and a book (Fostering Grit) and giving lots of presentations on the subject. I've spoken to schools and parents; presented at conferences; and have been a guest on NPR. Universally, grit is embraced. Everyone sees the merit in teaching our kids to accept challenges, step out of their comfort zones, and know how to respond to failure. So far, so good. Grit is hanging in and never giving up, but it's more than that. Grit is being comfortable when you are outside of your comfort zone, and it's forging ahead when you hit the wall because you know that you'll get up and continue moving forward. Grit is a life skill! But sometimes teachers are uncomfortable with the notion of fostering or teaching for grit. They're uneasy with the role they must play and I get that. We went into education because we wanted to help students: we like it when they succeed and it gratifies us when our class is filled with smiles. When our kids do well, it tells us we've done a good job!"

"A student writes a program. What are you going to assess it on? There are at least 16 criteria you could take into account. Not all of these will be apposite - it depends on what you're teaching and who you're teaching. Also, I've framed the list below in teacher language; it's up to you to adapt it into language that is more appropriate for your students."

"There's been a lot of discussion recently on what schools should be teaching kids. Just this month, the United Kingdom announced the addition of cybersecurity to its curriculum in response to a lack of education in the field and the rising industry skills gap. I believe U.S. schools have been hesitant and even neglectful when it comes to how they discuss social media with students, and it's time for this to change. Social media is a very real and ongoing aspect of our everyday lives: It no longer makes sense that, in 2014, several states still teach cursive writing when many students can text much faster on their smart devices. We need to be educating students on applicable skills for the world that they will interact with, and that means providing them with an understanding of how social media can affect their future. The gaping generational chasm between teachers who grew up before smartphones existed and students who were raised on them has resulted in a trial-and-error model of internet education and exploration, which could potentially wreak havoc on a student's future. The internet is written in pen, not pencil."

"What strategy can double student learning gains? According to 250 empirical studies, the answer is formative assessment, defined by Bill Younglove as "the frequent, interactive checking of student progress and understanding in order to identify learning needs and adjust teaching appropriately." Unlike summative assessment, which evaluates student learning according to a benchmark, formative assessment monitors student understanding so that kids are always aware of their academic strengths and learning gaps. Meanwhile, teachers can improve the effectiveness of their instruction, re-teaching if necessary. "When the cook tastes the soup," writes Robert E. Stake, "that's formative; when the guests taste the soup, that's summative." Formative assessment can be administered as an exam. But if the assessment is not a traditional quiz, it falls within the category of alternative assessment. Alternative formative assessment (AFA) strategies can be as simple (and important) as checking the oil in your car -- hence the name "dipsticks." They're especially effective when students are given tactical feedback, immediately followed by time to practice the skill. My favorite techniques are those with simple directions, like The 60 Second Paper, which asks students to describe the most important thing they learned and identify any areas of confusion in under a minute. You can find another 53 ways to check for understanding toward the end of this post, also available as a downloadable document."

"Leka DeGroot can relate to teachers who would like to bring coding to their classrooms but just can't fathom fitting it in. "Teachers often tell me, 'It sounds great but I don't have time, or I don't have the skills,' but you don't have to be a computer scientist to teach coding," assures DeGroot, a first grade teacher at Spirit Lake Elementary in Spirit Lake, Iowa. Just a few years ago DeGroot explored coding for the first time through Hour of Code. Today, she's a trainer for Code.org. She's driven by a desire to introduce students to computational thinking and integrating coding into the curriculum. "The basic concepts of listening to each other, communicating and collaborating, these are not just for computer science. We want every student to have those skills," DeGroot says. Even the youngest students benefit from the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills that coding provides. Not only do kids learn from it, they love it! Recently, for example, collaborated with a teacher in Wisconsin to have students write loop code dances for each other and then held a Google Hangout dance party. "