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"Schools are so caught up in teaching fundamentals like reading, writing, and good old "'rithmatic", as and knowledge required to pass standardized tests, but how often are they actually teaching students how to learn?"

"In an age of creators, makers, and innovators, we hear of the concept design thinking too often. What is design thinking? More importantly, can design thinking help you as an educator in your classroom? Design thinking is a concept that centers around applying creativity and innovation to our actions, decision making, and problem solving as human beings. More significantly, it focuses on the impact that this creative and innovative thinking has on individuals. As a concept, design thinking can be used pedagogically to enhance our teaching practices. As a tool, it can be used to foster and teach empathy in the classroom."

"Education in Social Studies is needed to achieve levels of civilization that the nation requires of its citizens. Teaching and learning in Social Studies is effective only when it is substantial, authentic, integrated and value-based. Its disciplines are diverse with an expanse of historical, geographical, political, civic and a lot more content. So, learners and educators of Social Studies should possess tools and resources to learn about it and acquire skills in it. Here are some worthy and free tools and resources for Teaching and learning Social Studies, available online:"

""How To Teach Online" is a MOOC that takes a broad view of teaching online"

"Kids and healthy eating habits do not usually go hand and hand. Healthy eating habits are learned rather than just acquired, but have you ever tried to teach kids to eat healthy? Well, here is a bit of a secret: since kids are more involved than ever with technology, harnessing the power of that technology is a great way to teach them something as mundane as healthy eating. Check out these apps to get you started."

"We are proud to share Brilliant or Insane senior writer Angela Stockman's new book, The Teach Kindness Project, with you today. The Teach Kindness Project: 52 Ways to Make a Colleague's Day is available now for free. Stockman has thrilled hundreds of thousands of B or I readers with her inspirational articles, and many have been eagerly anticipating her new book, which is certain to launch a powerful movement in schools and in the work place."

"So many of us teach the way we were taught. We may not even realize we're doing it. And that means certain practices get passed down year after year without question, methods that are such a normal part of the way we do school, we perpetuate them without realizing there are better alternatives. Today I'm going to roll out five of these for your consideration: five teaching practices used every day that are not backed by research. In many cases, these practices are not only ineffective, they can be downright harmful."

"This may be news to you (it was to us), but Apple has a guide for teaching with apps. Called "Using iOS Apps for Teaching & Learning," it's 8 pages long and really, honestly isn't as self-embracing and superificial as you'd expect. Of course, it's only 8 pages and acts more as an overview than the book, PD, and years of experience it actually requires to get it just right. But it does hit some high notes, encouraging teachers to consider 5 factors that actually work pretty well as a checklist when choosing the next app for your classroom."

"The Question Game: A Playful Way To Teach Critical Thinking Big idea: Teaching kids to ask smart questions on their own A four-year-old asks on average about 400 questions per day, and an adult hardly asks any. Our school system is structured around rewards for regurgitating the right answer, and not asking smart questions - in fact, it discourages asking questions. With the result that as we grow older, we stop asking questions. Yet asking good questions is essential to find and develop solutions, and an important skill in innovation, strategy, and leadership. So why do we stop asking questions - and more importantly, why don't we train each other, and our future leaders, to ask the right questions starting from early on? In A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas, Warren Berger suggests that there are three main questions which help in problem solving: Why questions, What If questions, and How questions."

"The National Geographic Society was founded in 1888 "to increase and diffuse geographic knowledge". Its mission, to inspire, illuminate and teach is a very noble cause, and a cause that few National Geographic Channel viewers would be aware of. Staying true to its founding principles National Geographic has embraced digital extremely well and in turn provides a huge set of versatile and engaging resources that can be used to inspire, illuminate and teach students about the world around them."

"We've done tips in the past for teaching with tablets. This one is similar, so there is some overlap, but this has more to do with apps specifically. Below are 25 tips for teaching with apps. Let us know in the comments what we missed."

"How do you teach programming to children with no prior programming experience? How do you teach programming to children that can yet read or write?"

"Teaching reading is an art filled with limiting factors: motivation, vocabulary, decoding, and comprehension are only a few of the comprehensive skills or traits that students need to be able to comprehend text, making the subject of literacy, in particular, difficult to teach. video gameYes, there are ways to garner student interest, especially when it comes to interacting with text, but in a society that is becoming increasingly visual and dependent on instant gratification, the delayed gratification of interacting with text can be far less enticing to our little ones. And for this reason, it's important to help them see that interacting with text can be just as gratifying as watching a movie or playing a game. But this is not a simple task. Not simple at all."

"Historical inquiry helps make history class exciting. History teachers can use primary sources in creative, exciting ways to make history come alive. Many people in history might be dead, but your teaching doesn't have to be. Let's dive in. What is historical inquiry? How can it be used to teach history? How can you use technology, creativity, and exciting projects to teach history? Here's how."

"Teaching kids to code offers a lot of challenges that you don't run into when instructing adults. Kids don't have a ton of real world experience, so a lot of analogies fly over their heads. Abstract thinking can take a lot more effort, so you need to keep things more concrete. Many kids have extremely short attention spans, especially in groups. And if there isn't a cool payoff almost immediately, they are going to get bored and zone out. All the lecturing in the world won't get the lesson into their heads at that point. When teaching children programming, the goal is to empower them to understand the everyday systems they already use, and to know they have the skill to pick this kind of stuff up, both now and later in life. Not everyone wants to do software development for a living, no matter how smart of a career choice it is, but programming is creeping more and more into other fields every day."

"The ultimate goal of teaching is to do just that - teach, not stand up in the front of the room and talk. But sometimes it's easier to talk than to teach, as we all know, especially when we need to cover a lot of material in a short amount of time. We hope students will understand, if not now then before test time, and we keep our fingers crossed that their results will indicate we've done our job. The problem is, we rely on these tests to measure understanding, and then we move on. Few of us take the time to address weaknesses and misunderstandings after the tests have been graded, and by that time it's too late for students to be interested. This means we need to rethink how we approach assessment during class. The most effective way to test student understanding is to do it while the lesson's still going on. Asking students to fill out a questionnaire and then correcting misunderstandings during the next class period won't work because students have already moved on. You've got to take advantage of the moment. If you hope to spend the majority of your time getting through to students, and not just talking, then understanding must be measured and dealt with as soon as the first frown appears on a face. "

"Connecting STEM and the arts is an increasingly popular method of teaching as the STEAM movement gains momentum. It's easy to recognize the benefits students will enjoy when educators teach STEM through music. After examining the required curriculum for the year, incorporate music into lesson plans to engage more students and expand their STEM repertoire. "

"It used to be so easy to distinguish between truth and fiction. In previous years, I would focus on just teaching my students the difference between fact and opinion. Now the Internet has become a murky river of information, and buzzwords like "fake news" and "alternative facts" have become real concerns of an educated society. How do we teach our students to discern all these differences in this post-truth era?"

In response to concern over kids' interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), companies have been churning out cool toys that teach them coding and logic skills. The idea: get kids hooked on STEM early, and via their toys. Since there are so many more STEM toys on the market these days, it can be difficult to figure out which ones will be the most worthwhile. Below, Working Mother's picks for the best toys and games that teach the basics of coding. Your kid will be building her own robot in no time.

There is an understandable interest in deep-learning, after all, who wants their students to have a superficial understanding of the content. Read the marketing of almost any school and you are likely to find some statement about the deep-learning that is achieved as a result of their excellent teaching and learning platform. Likewise, ask any teach about their philosophy of teaching and you will hear how they engage their students with learning that promotes a deep-understanding.