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"PAT is a free, open source, collection of maps developed by Ian Macky. The collection includes maps of every country in the world. Regional maps were recently added to the collection. You can download any and all of these detailed maps for free. "

"Menomonee Falls - Once every few weeks this past school year, kindergarten teacher Tiffany Fadin corralled her squirmy young charges at Valley View Elementary to get feedback about their recent math lessons. "What specific things did we do in this unit that helped you learn?" she asked recently. "What things did not help you learn?" Behind Fadin, data points flashed on a board, showing how many more students could add and subtract within five digits than in weeks prior. The exercise was deliberate, underscoring a major shift in Menomonee Falls that's training everyone to use data to make decisions, from teachers and custodians to kindergartners. The strategies employed over the past four years have attracted national - even international - attention to Menomonee Falls, including visitors from Sweden and researchers from the Carnegie Foundation. Other districts around the state and other educational institutions, such as the State University of New York, are taking notes. Armed with promising new outcome data, Menomonee Falls Superintendent Pat Greco said she believes what they're doing is working, and that the district is the case study for how K-12 systems can increase achievement and efficiency. And they're doing it by employing methods rooted not in education, but in the manufacturing and health care industries. "Teachers were reticent about posting student performance data. They were reticent to invite feedback from students," said Greco, who began engaging a small core of staff in the work in 2011. "Now, student performance is the highest it's ever been," Greco said."

Backchanneling in Middle School Social Studies\nOne of the eighth grade social studies teachers at my middle school decided to try and engage his students even more during a classroom video by incorporating the backchanneling tool, TodaysMeet. \n\n * What is backchanneling? \n * Teacher: Pat Gerding [Twitter: gerdingp] [Website: http://www.minot.k12.nd.us/P.Gerding]\n

"My children are in a French Immersion school, which means eighty-some-percent of the day they are taught in French. My own French is not exactly stellar. I mean I have the basic "I learned this in grade school because I am Canadian" level of French, which my kids, who are in 1st and 4th grade, are already surpassing. Yesterday I was doing the dishes with my seven year old, Gigi, and she was excitedly telling me about watching Paw Patrol at school en francais. We were drying dishes, and she was dancing and jumping up and down with excitement as she told me about La Pat' Patrouille. She also told me they watched Sid the Science Kid for science class today, and yes, of course, it was in French."