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How do we motivate students to embrace challenge? How do we encourage students to rise to challenges of their own? What is the connection between a meaningful, challenging curriculum and lasting achievement? ASCD's newest e-book, Challenging the Whole Child: Reflections on Best Practices in Learning, Teaching, and Leadership, addresses many of these questions and is available for download free of charge starting today and running through August 16, 2009.

"For the past few years, Edudemic has covered the rise of the flipped classroom and its subsequent evolution. Each year, we find that more teachers are testing this new learning strategy and creating new ways to improve current methods. While some teachers are trying it out for the first time this fall, others who used the flipped classroom method in 2013 are making changes to build on their lesson plans for the 2014-15 school year. Read this brief guide to learn why flipped learning is an increasingly popular choice, and review a few steps for teachers wanting to try it ou"

"Online video is taking the world by storm, and today's students are the biggest consumers of online video content - they're the 'Netflix Generation'. These students have grown up in a world where video is available instantly, on-demand, and on any device. Combined with the rise of flipped and blended learning methodologies, it's natural that today's educators are seeking innovative ways to take advantage of video."

"The value of computer programming has been rising exponentially for decades. To the point where now coding has gained traction in mainstream media. TV shows like CBS's The Big Bang Theory or HBO's Silicon Valley are good indicators of computer science careers are taking center stage. The domino effect created by the demand for amazing technology is likewise leading to a demand for skilled workers to engineer and program. Whether training comes through a high school certificate program, or a degree in computer science, the need for project-ready coders is only increasing. The bottom-line: All schools at all levels are kicking coding into overdrive."

"Until recently, the prevailing thought in education was that differentiation according the theory of multiple intelligences was a good thing. Then data started coming out, and the theories Howard Gardner set forth back in 1983 came under fire. Mention multiple intelligence (MI) thinking today, and you're guaranteed to rise the ire of someone on twitter telling you that it's 2014, and the 1980s are gone and there is no data that exists that proves MI does anything but waste time."

"In case you didn't know there are thousands of educators and an array of learning communities over at Google+.  The bottom line is that many people are missing out on some great content, resources, and conversation.  From my point of view educators become quickly attached to one specific social media tool as their go to source for his/her Personal Learning Network (PLN).  Take Twitter for example.  Now anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely love Twitter as a professional learning and networking tool. It has been and will continue to be my number one choice when it comes to learning in the foreseeable future. Twitter has many positive attributes, but also a growing number of negative aspects.  Some examples in my opinion, include an increasing amount of negativity and disrespect, rise in social media cliques, difficulty in following chats, noise, and overbearing opinions.  Even as Twitter still works great for me and others it is not the only player out there.  Nor should it be considered the best learning option for all. At times I just need to get away from the echo chamber to focus more on my learning."

"rt has long been recognized as an important part of a well-rounded education - but when it comes down to setting budget priorities, the arts rarely rise to the top. Many public schools saw their visual, performing and musical arts programs cut completely during the last recession, despite the many studies showing that exposure to the arts can help with academics too. A few schools are taking the research to heart, weaving the arts into everything they do and finding that the approach not only boosts academic achievement but also promotes creativity, self-confidence and school pride."

"This recent example aside, the idea that games can be fun and educational is starting to take hold in the educational community.  That these fun learning games can come in the form of games like Minecraft, rather than "skill and drill" games is icing on the cake for students and teachers.  The number of recent popular press articles heralding a rising trend of digital game use in the classroom has made the team at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center wonder: just how common is this practice?  And further, which teachers are choosing to use digital games in their teaching, what particular goals do they have for that game use, and what kinds of outcomes are they observing among their students? With these questions in mind the Joan Ganz Cooney Center surveyed nearly 700 K-8 teachers about their use of digital games in their teaching (a follow-up to a similar survey we conducted in 2012 with BrainPop). I wanted to share a few of the highlights from our full set of findings."

"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."

"Online abuse directed at teachers by parents has doubled in the last year due to an increase in the use of social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram. In the last year, 40 per cent of teachers said they had been the victims of cyber bullying by parents, compared to 21 per cent a year earlier, a new survey has found. Threats made by parents also rose by 8 per cent from 2014. The increase coincides with the growing popularity of social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, with abuse on both rising 5 per cent from a year earlier. Most remarks are either abusive, sexist, racist or homophobic and are made in relation to a teacher's looks, competence or sexual orientation."

"Open any newspaper or turn on any TV and the chances are you will see a negative report on the state of teaching. From heavy workloads to rising stress levels, times are tough. But there's lots to feel positive about too: I love my job. And despite the fact my life should be a recipe for disaster - I have two young children and a husband who is training to be a teacher - it's actually not. I've worked hard to find some sort of work-life balance. It's not been easy and I don't always get things right. "

"A "robot revolution" will transform the global economy over the next 20 years, cutting the costs of doing business but exacerbating social inequality, as machines take over everything from caring for the elderly to flipping burgers, according to a new study."

"The students in Molly James's kindergarten classroom were tasked with creating a mathematical art gallery. They had each drawn a number and then searched for two types objects they could use to compose a visual number sentence - such as two rulers plus three scissors to equal five objects. After photographing and mounting their pictures on the wall in numerical order, the students sat on the floor with their sketchbooks and began to draw and talk. "I had expected them to learn something about number composition," James said, "but I didn't expect the remarkable observations they began to have about the photographs." For example, when one girl looked at a picture of two red scissors and three blue scissors (2+3=5), she noticed that the direction of the handles gave rise to a new number sentence: 4 scissors pointing left + 1 scissor pointing right = 5 scissors. James, who recently published a paper about creativity in the classroom, said moments like these remind her that "creativity is not fluff or an add-on, but is instead an essential part of what it means to be a mathematician."  In fact, she believes creativity is the key to helping her students become confident and skilled mathematical thinkers."

"A new whitepaper from personalized learning nonprofit KnowledgeWorks explores how wearables, augmented reality and virtual reality could play out in education. Take one example shared in the report of a fourth-grader: She's wearing a Hello Kitty "smart sleeve" and toting her tablet in a matching knapsack as she heads into the homework center after school and begins to tackle a writing assignment. After 10 minutes of staring at a blank screen and experiencing a rising heart rate, her wearable triggers a "nudge" from an app that reminds her that it's OK to ask for help. She clicks on an icon and receives a holographic image of her coach in a corner of her device, calmly and clearly offering her immediate help."

"In the last few years, machine learning applications have quietly entered every aspect of life: social media to speech recognition, radiology to retail, warfare to writing articles, coding to customer service, robotics to route optimization. During the 40 year information age, we told computers what to do. With advances in artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning, and faster processing chips we can feed computers giant data sets and they can (in narrow slivers) draw some inferences on their own. As we reported in Ask About AI, the rise of code that learns marks the beginning of a new era of augmented intelligence. It's a great opportunity for us to expand access to a great education and for young people to make a big contribution. Given the importance of relationships in human development, AI will augment rather than replace the work of educators in many ways. We'll all have to get better at collaborating with teams that include smart machines. In other professions, augmentation will lead to automation with the potential for significant dislocation. Amazon's workforce, for example, is about 20% robots."

"In the last decade, rates of anxiety-related disorders in teenagers have steadily risen, particularly in girls. Researchers and psychologists posit several hypotheses about why these rates are on the rise -- from digital hyperconnectivity to heightened external pressures to simply a greater awareness, and therefore diagnosis, of mental health concerns. Whatever the causes, Dr. Lisa Damour has hopeful news for parents and teens: first, some degree of stress and anxiety is not only normal but essential for human growth. And if those levels become untenable, there are tested strategies for reining anxiety back in."

Teachers are a busy lot. We are a profession whose workload seems to be forever on the rise and as much as you do, there is always more to be done, more to be learned, new challenges to be surmounted and exciting new opportunities to be explored. For all of this it is important to make the most efficient use of the tools we have at our disposal. Google Forms can help. 

"The digital revolution, globalisation and demographic changes are transforming labour markets at a time when policy makers are also struggling with persistently slow productivity and wage growth and high levels of income inequality. The new OECD Jobs Strategy provides a comprehensive framework and detailed policy analysis and recommendations to help countries promote not only strong job creation but also foster job quality and inclusiveness as central policy priorities, while emphasising the importance of resilience and adaptability for good economic and labour market performance in a rapidly changing world of work. The key message is that flexibility-enhancing policies in product and labour markets are necessary but not sufficient. Policies and institutions that protect workers, foster inclusiveness and allow workers and firms to make the most of ongoing changes are also needed to promote good and sustainable outcomes. "The OECD's latest Jobs Strategy is a smart and sensible updating and rethinking of how countries should advance the goal of shared prosperity. I hope policymakers around the world not only read it but take its important advice." Jason Furman, Professor Harvard Kennedy School and former Chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers   "Inequality, economic insecurity, economic exclusion, are making the headlines.  Anger is high, populist rhetoric is on the rise.   What can be done?  What strategies to adopt?  These are the challenging questions taken up by the new OECD Jobs Strategy report.  I hope the report triggers the very serious discussions these issues deserve."    Olivier Blanchard, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute, Emeritus Professor at MIT and former Chief Economist of the IMF "