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"These questions are more about the student than you, your classroom, or education. What every student should know starts with themselves and moves outwards to your content area: self knowledge-> content knowledge. As an educator, your job is lead students to understanding, but student self-awareness and self-knowledge should precede that. These questions hit at a range of topics, but all revolve around that idea of a learner's identity. If it hasn't already come, the first day of school is probably imminent for you, and these kinds of questions could come in handy there as well. Get to know you type stuff. But they can also help set the tone in your classroom that introspection is a must, awareness and thinking are always-on, and self-knowledge is the ultimate goal of any system of learning."

"A leading private school, with some of the best results in England, is publishing digital textbooks which are available to download free online. The Stephen Perse Foundation in Cambridge is publishing 12 multimedia textbooks for IGCSE biology. They are being made available on Apple's iBooks online store to use on iPad tablet computers."

"MIT App Inventor provides the fastest way to build apps for Android phones and tablets. Even with no prior experience, you can learn to build apps within hours. Here, you'll learn from USF Professor David Wolber, who has been teaching beginners programming with App Inventor since its inception in 2009. With step-by-step video screencasts, Wolber starts with the basics then leads you through the development of successively more complex apps, teaching you programming concepts as you go."

"Find repose by exciting the mind. Some of the world's leading thinkers offer the books that inspired them and their work. Skim the list for your favorite speakers, or get nerdy on a topic you've always wanted to know more about. Below find 52 books, recommended by TED speakers."

"The scientific research on the benefits of so-called expressive writing is surprisingly vast. Studies have shown that writing about oneself and personal experiences can improve mood disorders, help reduce symptoms among cancer patients, improve a person's health after a heart attack, reduce doctor visits and even boost memory. Now researchers are studying whether the power of writing - and then rewriting - your personal story can lead to behavioral changes and improve happiness."

"Money is a necessary tool, but like any other, it can easily lead its untrained users into uncomfortable - perhaps even painful - situations. So why, then is, financial literacy an educational requirement in less than half of the states in the U.S.? Students deserve to approach life armed with the knowledge they need to understand money matters. The following resources can give you insight into how to bring financial literacy into your classroom."

"As tomorrow's global citizens enter higher education with words like "make," "hack," and "prototype" embedded in their vocabulary, they are fueling a powerful movement toward "learning by creating." Faced with the shifting ambitions of students and changes in institutional funding streams, colleges and universities are embracing "learning by creating," allowing them to leverage the traditional spirit of an educational community with students' growing entrepreneurial focus. In response, these institutions are adopting powerful new models to erode the boundaries of historically siloed disciplinary thinking and empower new levels of discovery. A number of colleges and universities around the world are leading the way as they introduce learning facilities billed as "innovation + incubator + maker centers." These centers focus on multi-disciplinary inquiry that can foster partnerships with industry and fully leverage available grants and funding for research. Advancing these new models can help universities recruit fresh talent, establish new partnerships for success and promote an environment where emerging leaders can explore the complex social challenges of our time."

"Living in a sorority house is fun. There is always something happening with your sisters, so you become part of the drama whether you like it or not. Such life leads to long-term friendships, but to sleepless nights and frustration as well. Things get harder when you have to write an essay and you cannot find enough time to devote yourself to it."

"It's known as the "musician's advantage."  For decades, educators, scientists, and researchers have observed that students who pick up musical instruments tend to excel in academics-taking the lead in measures of vocabulary, reading, and non-verbal reasoning and attention skills, just to name a few. But why musical training conferred such an advantage remained a bit of a mystery. "

"Rarely, an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch will become completely unresponsive and errant, leading to what amounts to a frozen device that just won't do anything. The most obvious indicator of this is when something on screen just cease up completely and the touch screen becomes unresponsive to all input, and clicking on any of the hardware buttons also does nothing. Fortunately you can almost always remedy these unusual situations by forcibly rebooting the iOS device, a low tech solution that works to remedy most of these issues, it only takes a few seconds, and which is really pretty easy."

"Be creative. Curious. Seek questions. Develop ideas. Play. These ideas are familiar to modern educators, as they represent a kind of polar opposite to the standardized and industrialized form learning has taken on-or is at least perceived to have taken on in the current era of accountability. It was an interesting then to see these questions lead into a broader one: Should we teach art, or teach students to think like an artist? Should we teach history, or teach students to think like an historian?"

""Failing Forward" is a relatively recent entry into our cultural lexicon-at least as far has headlines go anyway-that has utility for students and teachers. Popularized from the book of the same name, the idea behind failing forward is to see failing as a part of success rather than its opposite. Provided we keep moving and pushing and trying and reflecting, failure should, assuming we're thinking clearly, lead to progress, So rather than failing and falling back, we fail forward. Tidy little metaphor. So what might this look like in your classroom?"

"he video does not seem remarkable on first viewing. A title informs us that we are watching Ashley Hinton, a teacher at Vailsburg Elementary, a school in Newark, New Jersey. Hinton, a blonde woman in a colourful silk scarf, stands before a class of eight- and nine-year-old boys and girls, almost all of whom are African-American. "What might a character be feeling in a story?" she asks. She repeats the question, before engaging her pupils in a high-tempo conversation about what it is like to read a book and why authors write them, as she moves smartly around her classroom. On an October morning last year, I watched Doug Lemov play this video to a room full of teachers in the hall of an inner-London school. Many had brought their copy of Lemov's book, Teach Like a Champion, which in the last five years has passed through the hands of thousands of teachers and infiltrated hundreds of staffrooms. To my eyes, the video of Hinton's lesson was a glimpse into the classroom of an energetic and likable teacher, and pleasing enough. After leading a brief discussion, Lemov played it again, and then a third time."

"The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) describes close reading in light of the Common Core State Standards.  Close, analytic reading stresses engaging with a text of sufficient complexity directly and examining meaning thoroughly and methodically, encouraging students to read and reread deliberately.  Directing student attention on the text itself empowers students to understand the central ideas and key supporting details.  It also enables students to reflect on the meanings of individual words and sentences; the order in which sentences unfold; and the development of ideas over the course of the text, which ultimately leads students to arrive at an understanding of the text as a whole. (PARCC, 2011, p.7)"

"Do you like to have a free-flowing exchange of ideas in the classroom? Do you encourage and nurture dissenting opinions? Do your students feel empowered to voice their thoughts and critiques of research or ideas? If you answered 'YES' to all of the above questions, you're leading a fantastic classroom filled with a lot of engaging discussion. Bravo! But if you aren't satisfied with the level of discourse taking place in (and out of) the classroom, then this flowchart from Wonkblog is for you. It's designed to help anyone (not just students or teachers) engage in a discussion about a topic they don't agree with. For example, let's say a student cites some research in a project-based learning assignment that another student doesn't think is quite relevant. How would that student voice his or her opinion? Is interrupting okay? Is one opinion better than another?"

"ome widely held ideas about the way children learn can lead educators and parents to adopt faulty teaching principles Jan 1, 2015 Credit: Kiyoshi Takahase segundo MYTH HUMANS USE ONLY 10 PERCENT OF THEIR BRAIN FACT The 10 percent myth (sometimes elevated to 20) is mere urban legend, one perpetrated by the plot of the 2011 movie Limitless, which pivoted around a wonder drug that endowed the protagonist with prodigious memory and analytical powers. In the classroom, teachers may entreat students to try harder, but doing so will not light up "unused" neural circuits; academic achievement does not improve by simply turning up a neural volume switch. MYTH "LEFT BRAIN" and "RIGHT BRAIN" PEOPLE DIFFER FACT The contention that we have a rational left brain and an intuitive, artistic right side is fable: humans use both hemispheres of the brain for all cognitive functions. The left brain/right brain notion originated from the realization that many (though not all) people process language more in the left hemisphere and spatial abilities and emotional expression more in the right. Psychologists have used the idea to explain distinctions between different personality types. In education, programs emerged that advocated less reliance on rational "left brain" activities. Brain-imaging studies show no evidence of the right hemisphere as a locus of creativity. And the brain recruits both left and right sides for both reading and math. MYTH YOU MUST SPEAK ONE LANGUAGE BEFORE LEARNING ANOTHER FACT Children who learn English at the same time as they learn French do not confuse one language with the other and so develop more slowly. This idea of interfering languages suggests that different areas of the brain compete for resources. In reality, young children who learn two languages, even at the same time, gain better generalized knowledge of language structure as a whole. MYTH BRAINS OF MALES AND FEMALES DIFFER IN WAYS THAT DICTATE LEARNING ABILITIES FACT Diffe

"Tinkering activities provide a powerful way to inspire students' interest, engagement, and understanding in science. The Tinkering Fundamentals course will help educators and enthusiasts develop a practice of tinkering and making. This course will focus on key design elements of high-quality, science-rich tinkering activities, effective facilitation strategies and environmental organization. Watch Intro Video About the Course The Tinkering Fundamentals course will offer educators and enthusiasts an opportunity to develop a practice of tinkering and making.  We see tinkering as a serious endeavor -- one that is generalizable across content and especially good at interweaving disciplines in a way that leads to complex projects and individualized learning opportunities.   Tinkering has recently been introduced into the educational field as a potential driver of creativity, excitement, and innovation in science learning. It is seen by many as an effective means to engage in exploring STEM concepts, practices and phenomena. Tinkering typically blends the high and low tech tools of science along with a strong aesthetic dimension that supports children's (and adults) self expression.  For over a decade, the Exploratorium has been developing science-rich tinkering activities. Working with learning scientists, we have identified a set of design principles and indicators of learning that can help you to integrate tinkering activities into your elementary and middle school science programs. This course will focus on key design elements of high quality science-rich tinkering activities, facilitation strategies, and environmental organization. Selected  tinkering activities will be centered around circuits for this course.  We will review the ways in which tinkering supports science learning through providing opportunities to deepen engagement, intentionality, innovation, collaboration, and understanding. This course will excite you, inspire you, and get you tinkering in

"One of the time-honored practices of school leaders is to visit classrooms and conduct teacher observations. These visits are intended to provide teachers with constructive feedback about their performance and help them enhance their professional practice. They also help principals keep tabs on instruction and evaluate teacher performance. While the goals behind teacher observations are laudable, the process sometimes does not follow the script and can even lead to frustration and resentment for both parties."

"I sometimes learn more about my own practice in the classroom from the questions I am asked than I do from my own reflection. There is something about the lenses through which others see our work that helps us to see ourselves more clearly.  That was the case earlier this month at the Building Learning Communities Conference in Boston. At the end of the first day of a two-day session I was leading on Building Learning Communities in elementary classrooms, I asked the participants what they specifically wanted to talk about on the second day. One of the attendees asked me to address the way I introduce the idea of digital citizenship in my classroom. What a great question! Unfortunately, I didn't have a great answer. I did though, have the evening to think about my response."