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"The oft-shared John Dewey quote "Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." is one that resonates with progressive educators around the world. Our education system however, seems to have missed all of those tweets and Pinterest pins. In a recent podcast (listen below) with Getting Smart's Emily Liebtag, I mentioned moving students from consumers to creators to contributors. Justin Tarte had said this in my TeachThought Podcast with him earlier this year and I appreciated that language. It certainly is a great step to shift our teaching and learning from having students just consuming information to the top of Bloom's taxonomy where they are creating. That next step, however, where their creations are at least potentially adding value to their community and perhaps the world at large is powerful. While it's true that our students are indeed the future, there are real reasons why we need to remember that they are also a big part of our today and our teaching and learning should reflect that."

"On Twitter, I recently shared an excellent article by Justin Tarte called 5 Questions Every Teacher Should Ask Him/Herself. The first reflection question Justin recommends is: Who is doing a majority of the talking in your classroom? It's the person who is doing the majority of the talking that tends to do the most learning, so what is the teacher/student talking ratio in your classroom? If you find yourself always talking more than your students, try and figure out some ways to empower your students so they are more involved in the learning."

"A student-centered classroom allows students to be an integral part of the assessment development process. This doesn't necessarily mean every assessment is created and designed by students, but it does mean there is a collaborative and joint venture of teachers and students in the planning and implementation stages of assessments. Students who help to design and create their assessments will find the assessments to be more meaningful, and typically students end up creating assessments that are more rigorous than what teachers would have created anyway..."

"Why Twitter should be a part of your PLN... "