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With the No. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman helped millions of readers see and understand globalization in a new way. Now you can have it for free. From now until August 11th, you can download the audiobook version of The World Is Flat and receive an exclusive audio preview excerpt of Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

"Our 5th grade is currently studying the impact on American life that several famous inventors had. When I was brainstorming with Shelley Olin, 5th grade social studies teacher, we began to wonder about connections these standards had to makerspace.  It started as an idea seed and grew into a set of experiences for all 5th graders to engage in. I wanted students to put themselves into the shoes of an inventor so that they could begin to understand the perseverance and curiosity that inventors have. We focused on 3 of the inventors: Thomas Edison (electricity), Alexander Graham Bell (communication), and the Wright Brothers (flight)."

"ne of the most common questions math teachers hear from their students is, "why does this matter?" They are constantly trying to convince students that math is useful and could help them in their everyday lives. But it can be a tough sell. Word problems alone often feel contrived and students see right through them. Thomas Petra has taught math at every level for more than 20 years and encountered dubious students at every grade level. That's why he developed Real World Math, a free website with lessons based on Google Earth aimed at grades 5 - 10. "I was trying to show them actual applications of the math ideas that they see in the textbook," Petra said."

"I'm trying hard to adopt the language of iteration, persistence, experimentation and play and consciously stop using the word "failure" when I teach design."

"Over the last few years, Thomas Goetz and his research team in Konstanz, Germany identified five different types of boredom and reached the conclusion that students tend to experience just one type over the course of their lifetimes. Interestingly enough, Goetz suggested that boredom was by far the most intense and most common emotion experienced by students as well. As it turns out, boredom leaves us feeling far more uncomfortable than any other emotion. It's no small wonder then that many parents invest great time, energy, and cash in the battle against it."

"There are two main methods for capturing text while using your iPad.  One way is by using Siri to carry out an ever growing variety of commands and tasks.  The other method is through dictation accessed via your iPad keyboard.  While Siri is a perfectly capable tool to use for dictation, and might be your preferred way to capture text, we have found that our favorite digital assistant especially shines when asked to answer questions and perform tasks.  Thomas recently wrote about some of his favorite uses for Siri on his iPad.  Dictation, however, is more of a quick and dirty way to collect your thoughts and have them transposed right onto your iPad screen whenever you typically would need to enter text in an app.  Think of it as an alternative to typing.  While a very helpful tool, there are some initial challenges to dictating effectively on your iPad or other iOS device.  The manner in which we speak doesn't always translate exactly to how we write-or even how we collect our thoughts.  As a result we've collected some tips to help you be the most efficient at using dictation."

The Flat Classroom Project is a global, collaborative project using Web 2.0 tools to foster communication, collaboration and creation. For inspiration and content material it draws on the work of Thomas Friedman and 'The World is Flat'. Read more about the project background and view past projects.

"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. "

"Last week, Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced more than 400,000 high-resolution digital images of public domain works in the Museum's world-renowned collection may be downloaded directly from the Museum's website for non-commercial use-including in scholarly publications in any media-without permission from the Museum and without a fee. The number of available images will increase as new digital files are added on a regular basis."

"Today there are many resources for people to learn code. The Barbies and GI Joes of yesteryear have become tablets and smart phones. Young kids, such as 12-year-old Thomas Suarez, who gave this excellent TED Talk, are learning advanced forms of coding that few adults even fully grasp. The following is a list of websites online that offer free tutorials and courses for children that want to learn how to code. And even if you are not a kid, you might learn a thing or two. We reviewed a collection of websites and the following three are the best that we found, incorporating various features that put them above the rest. We went through all the most popular coding websites on the Internet and found the three best free coding websites, based on the following criteria: ● Ease of use ● Aesthetics ● Fun ● Effectiveness ● Free Without further ado, the following are the best coding websites we found that was designed especially with kids in mind."

"Often the idea of creativity is put in a special box that is limited to only certain kinds of people. This is one of our great myths. I am sure that Albert Einstein, Gandhi, David Bohn, Martha Graham, Wendell Berry, Aristotle, Pablo Picasso, Billie Holiday, Steve Jobs, Vincent Van Gogh, Mozart, Socrates, Leonardo Da Vinci, Martin Luther King, Beethoven, Charles Dickens, Carl Jung, Tesla, Galileo, Thomas Edison, Ben Franklin and Michelangelo all came from different backgrounds, cultures and ways of life. What they did have in common was the ability to see or feel the dynamic interconnectedness of the flow of life."

"This ASCD Study Guide is meant to enhance your understanding of the concepts and practical ideas presented in Learning Transformed: 8 Keys for Designing Tomorrow's Schools, Today, an ASCD book written by Eric C. Sheninger and Thomas C. Murray. You can use this study guide either with teachers if you are a professor, teacher leader, or coach, or with younger students if you are a classroom teacher. You may already have posed to yourself or a colleague many of the questions included here, and others will become evident as you read through the book. You may choose to answer the questions before tackling each chapter of the book or answer them as you finish the chapter. Each chapter is rich in information-content, pedagogy, and research-so take the time to digest one at a time. The study questions provided address some of the most salient ideas in the book. They do not address all of the notions covered in the book."

"Increasing the gender diversity of the computer science faculty should be a priority for all schools as it would provide female students--as well as students of color--with role-models and mentors. In a study conducted in a suburban area near Oklahoma University, researchers examined the correlation between an after-school engineering mentoring program led by female college students and the perceptions of sixth and seventh grade girls (Holmes, Redmond, Thomas, & High, 2012). The researchers found that high quality mentoring relationships with a female role model led to an increase in the girls' confidence in their mathematics ability (Holmes et al., 2012). Similarly, seeing a confident and successful female computer science teacher could have a positive impact on girls and boys in computer science classes."

""Wow in the World is a place where we can tap into the crazy cool things that are happening all around us, every day!" says Thomas. "We want to help spark conversations between kids and other kids and also with their grown-ups that will ultimately lead to their own big discoveries." Each episode begins with a series of questions that lead to an explanation about a new amazing scientific discovery or finding. For example, "How long would it take to get to the closest star outside our solar system?" or "How did we Homo sapiens come to dominate the planet?" or "How do astronauts poop in space?" Through comedy and conversation, along with voices from real kids, Mindy and Guy make the news fun and interesting. "

"Augmented Reality (AR) is the imposing of digitally generated images into a viewer's real-world surroundings. Unlike Virtual Reality, which creates a completely artificial environment, AR uses the existing environment and overlays it with new information. Augmented reality apps are usually written using special 3D programs which allow developers to superimpose animation in the computer program, to an AR "marker" in the real world. It is now popularly being used by advertisers to create 3D renders of products, such as cars, the inside of buildings, and machinery. This provides consumers with a 360-degree product view. The term 'Augmented Reality' was coined by Boeing researcher Thomas Caudell in 1990, to explain how head-mounted displays of electricians worked during the assembling of complicated wiring. Since then, the technology has been used in CAD programs for aircraft assembly, architecture, digital advertising, simulation, translation, military, and various medical procedures. Tech giant Google, unveiled Google Glass in 2013, propelling AR to a more wearable interface - glasses. It works by projecting on the user's lens screen while responding to voice commands, overlaying images, videos, and sounds."

"Asked to name important inventors and you might start with Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell or Leonardo da Vinci. But what about Mary Anderson? Or Ann Tsukamoto? You might not know their names, but they are just two of the female inventors behind everyday objects and scientific innovations."

"Mathematicians Hannah Fry and Thomas Oléron Evans have crunched the numbers. Forget utilities - these are the properties you really should be investing in."

"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."