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Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I'd spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That's rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I'm always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

Great wiki featuring loads of free technology tools that offer opportunities for struggling learners that promote academic successU though Universal Design for Learning

There are three main educational goals for the game: * Teach players about how everyday residents of New Orleans acted heroically to help each other. This is a celebration of New Orleans residents and their culture. * Emphasize what are perhaps the two most important priorities in any disaster: communication and use of local resources, needs, and knowledge. The relief effort in Hurricane Katrina was severely hampered by the poor communication between government agencies and through most media outlets. Top down disaster management also led responders to ignore local resources and knowledge that could have saved many lives. Even in the aftermath, local needs and wishes are largely being ignored during rebuilding. * Draw attention to the continuing struggle in New Orleans as residents fight for housing in 2008. The city was destroyed by negligence, and, unfortunately, it is now being rebuilt without homes for many of its most loyal residents.

"We have all had students who struggle with the skills to organise themselves around homework and assignments. Sometimes they just do not have the tools to learn this skill. "

This wiki is a collection of resources for helping you bring a little more order to the digital side of your life. Technology has helped us in so many ways, but many of us still struggle to keep things in order, and not get overwhelmed with the onslaught of information and connectivity. This page is meant to provide some tips on getting digitally organized, and maybe just a few fun resources thrown in for good measure.

"Many students struggle with the skills of organising homework and studying for exams. There are a number of apps that have been designed specifically for these situation. Some are flashcard apps that work really well for dates and facts, others are apps that attempt to create some organisation around assignments and upcoming examinations. I must admit I tend to lean towards those apps that use a bit of fun to help students learn. So if you have a students needing that bit of extra help what apps could you suggest."

"The word "grit" suggests toughness and determination. The question is how do we get students to value struggle, failure and perseverance in our classrooms? ASCD recently published Thomas Hoerr's short but great book on this subject, Fostering Grit. The subtitle "How do I prepare my students for the real world?" reflects the fact that our students will encounter challenging work and problems to solve. If this is the case, our classrooms should mirror that process and prepare our students to be successful in meeting these challenges. You might consider this a critical 21st century skill, which means that we need to scaffold the related skills we're teaching our students. "

"This fall, the entire British school system will embrace computer science. The UK is the first G8 country to include computer science education in its national curriculum, and the move could serve as a test case for so many other nations across the globe, including the United States. As computing comes to dominate our world, programming skills are more valuable than ever, but even the U.S.-the center of the technology universe-is still struggling to bring coding into the classroom. Part of the problem is that, before students learn how to code, their teachers must learn too. Pulling all that off is a massive endeavor."

"Scaffolding is a critical teaching strategy that can support students struggling with a concept, or those that have mastered it. In short, to "scaffold" something is a metaphor that describes the process of supporting students so that they can achieve learning goals in lieu of content deficiencies. Or, in short, helping students succeed."

"Two years ago I began flipping my writing instruction. I created short videos to replace the "mini-lessons" I had traditionally presented in class. I saw value in allowing students the opportunity to control the pace of their learning. As a teacher, I love having a resource I can point a student to if they are continuing to struggle with the structure of an argument body paragraph or how to write a thesis statement. In the past, I had to repeatedly explain these concepts. Flipping my writing instruction also creates more time in the classroom to actually write."

"A backchannel -- a digital conversation that runs concurrently with a face-to-face activity -- provides students with an outlet to engage in conversation. Every time I think about this tool, I remember my student, Charlie (not his real name). Given his learning challenges, he struggled to keep up during class discussions. Long after his classmates grasped a concept, he would light up in acknowledgement and then become crestfallen as he had no way to share his revelation. Charlie needed an alternative means to participate, and a backchannel would have provided him with that outlet. "

"To meet the challenges of teaching in an increasingly connected world, school leaders, educators and community members could benefit from building a culture of transparency and connectivity, creating a culture of sharing around the successes and struggles of teaching and learning."

"We know that students learn best when content is meaningful and has a direct connection and application to their lives. However, while some maths concepts, such as telling the time or using money, can have immediate relevance, others seem to have very little application to children's daily lives. How often will 11 year old children really need to measure the size of angles, or work with cartesian graphs? I've found that teaching children to code may be part of the answer. This year, I've been teaching students in Years 2-6 to create simple arcade games using Scratch. In order for my students to be successful, they've been required to apply some core mathematical ideas that I've struggled to find a relevant use for in the past."

"Pushing students to go beyond what they think they can do is at the core of good teaching. This Teaching Channel video follows students and educators at Springfield Renaissance School, part of the Expeditionary Learning network. Students at the school understand that struggling with a particular task is part of learning. Teachers have high expectations of students, expect a positive classroom culture and are willing to gently prod students to dig deeper and reveal more. Teachers embed Common Core standards like the ability to use textual evidence to back up arguments, into the culture of class. They also understand that the love of learning takes ownership and self-awareness."

"Teachers and administrators struggle to find time to work together in a meaningful way. There are plenty of meetings scheduled. Many teachers leave these meetings though with the feeling of "could have spent my time doing more important things"."

"So how are we doing on the push to teach "digital literacy" across the K12 school spectrum? From my perspective as a school-based technology coach and history teacher, I'd say not as well as we might wish - in part because our traditional approach to curriculum and instruction wants to sort everything into its place. Digital literacy is defined as "the ability to effectively and critically navigate, evaluate, and create information using a range of digital technologies." Many educational and business professional cite is as a critical 21st century skill. Even so, many schools have struggled to adapt it into their curriculum. This is often because most institutions already have rigorous, established curricula with little wiggle room - and this is especially true in schools subject to state and federal testing. Content becomes king. However, there are ways that schools can adapt these skills into existing structures - integrating them into their current pedagogical framework."

"In 2004, Danielle Sullivan was working as a legislative aid when she had an Aha moment. In the years that she'd worked in Washington, nothing had changed in education. Sullivan decided to trade her desk on the Hill for one in a classroom. That year, she joined the DC Teaching Fellows and started teaching special education in DC's Logan Circle. Four years later, she had moved back to New York to teach in Ithaca, and found herself in the same boat as so many other teachers-burnt out, miserable, and struggling to reclaim her passion for education. Looking for a change, Sullivan signed up for a four-week National Writing Project seminar and found inspiration. "Being in a room, writing, with other teachers blew my mind," she remembers, "and put me on a trajectory for personal happiness." The experience of collaborating with teachers prompted Sullivan to start Extraordinary Teachers, her organization dedicated to empowering teachers to reignite their passion and take back their classrooms. "

"English grammar is a topic that actually frustrates a number of people. Irrespective of learning level or nationality, spelling and grammar error seems to confuse a lot of individuals. And in case anyone has a learning debility such as dyslexia, using accurate grammar looks like a terrible task. Using grammar correctly could be challenging may be not for those who are English native speaker, but surely for those who learn English from scratch. English language and its difficulties can be very much puzzling. Although, a dictionary or software can assist learners but it cannot give accurate answer. In fact, word processing programs are not very much effective in correcting grammar errors completely. Now, the question is how one can improve or nourish their English grammar skill? With the advancement in the technology, there are a number of tools that might help those struggling to improve their grammar. Web technology has actually contributed a lot in this through the ease of access. Today, you can find a number of tools, apps and websites available over the web that helps in learning and improving grammar from scratch. Here is a list of top ten websites for teaching or learning grammar lessons."