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"If you're a teacher, or teaching assistant there are plenty of great blogs out there to help you with everything from coming up with teaching plans, to implementing technology in the classroom. Where to start though? The internet is crowded with blogs. We decided to go through some of them for you, so that you can find the blog(s) covering the topics you're looking for and be sure it's quality content. Generally, there are four key qualities of a good teaching & learning blog: Activity (25%). Information should be updated regularly Originality (25%). It should add value with content that's different from all the other blogs out there Helpfulness (25%). A good teaching & Learning blog should teach you a new skill, direct you to a useful resource, or at least get you to think in a new way about something Authority (25%). The author/authors have the authority and credentials to blog about the topic of teaching & learning Each category was assigned an equal weight in our evaluation. They were averaged together to determine the final score in order to come up with our list of the top 68."

"Please, No More Professional Development! By Peter DeWitt on April 17, 2015 8:10 AM Today's guest blog is written by Kristine Fox (Ed.D), Senior Field Specialist/Research Associate at Quaglia Institute for Student Aspirations (QISA). She is a former teacher and administrator who has passion for teacher learning and student voice. Kris works directly with teachers and leaders across the country to help all learners reach their fullest potential. Peter DeWitt recently outlined why "faculty meetings are a waste of time." Furthering on his idea, most professional development opportunities don't offer optimal learning experiences and the rare teacher is sitting in her classroom thinking "I can't wait until my district's next PD day." When I inform a fellow educator that I am a PD provider, I can read her thoughts - boring, painful, waste of time, useless, irrelevant - one would think my job is equal to going to the dentist (sorry to my dentist friends). According to the Quaglia Institute and Teacher Voice and Aspirations International Center's National Teacher Voice Report only 54% percent of teachers agree "Meaningful staff development exists in my school." I can't imagine any other profession being satisfied with that number when it comes to employee learning and growth. What sense does it make for the science teacher to spend a day learning about upcoming English assessments? Or, for the veteran teacher to learn for the hundredth time how to use conceptual conflict as a hook. Why does education insist everyone attend the same type of training regardless of specialization, experience, or need? As a nod to the upcoming political campaigns and the inevitable introduction of plans with lots of points, here is my 5 Point Plan for revamping professional development. 5 Point Plan Point I - Change the Term: Semantics Matter We cannot reclaim the term Professional Development for teachers. It has a long, baggage-laden history of conformity that does not

"We have designed a Mathematical Mindset Guide to help teachers create or strengthen a growth mindset culture. This guide contains five Mathematical Mindset Practices along with links to teaching videos.  The videos all show Jo and Cathy teaching middle school students. There are different stages described in each practice to help capture the journey of a mathematical mindset classroom and the evidence teachers may collect along the way for their own reflection or for discussion with colleagues.  The guide has been designed for teachers to use in the process of self-reflection, or for coaches or administrators to use to encourage a mindset teaching culture. In the interactive version of the guide on this web page, you can click on the arrow buttons in the Expanding descriptors to see a short extract of Jo/Cathy teaching in the ways described. Our goal for the guide is to support a mathematical mindset journey of learning and growth. Teachers can work with the guide individually or in collaboration with others. The guide is intended to be non-judgmental, non-evaluative, and iterative in nature. When using the guide consider the classroom community as a whole rather than the teacher alone. It is also important to note that while the goal of the guide is to communicate all aspects of a mathematical mindset classroom, it is not always possible to find evidence of all practices in one lesson. We encourage teachers, coaches, and administrators to use this guide, and our reflection suggestions iteratively over multiple lessons."

"This is part 2 of a 3-part series on Mobile Teaching. Part 1 was Making The Shift To Mobile-First Teaching.  Mobile teaching is about planning and executing learning through mobile devices. You might want to be notified when a student accesses a quiz or reading you uploaded, or leaves a comment on another student's blog, or shares a self-assessment. Or when a certain number of student's answer a question correctly or incorrectly. Or when a student reaches a goal. This is one approach to mobile teaching. There's also the star of mobile technology, social media. With access to real-time social streams like twitter, or even a closed Google+ Community page, teachers can ask other teachers for resources, facilitate school-to-school collaboration, monitor student-led and hashtag-based discussions, and more."

"This page contains some useful resources and links to help teachers in their art teaching. You will basically be directed to websites where you can find art materials, videos, printables, worksheets, activities, games, and many other teaching ideas that are art informed."

"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:"

"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."

What would your classroom be like without your students cracking open their oversized textbooks everyday? Probably a lot more interesting, especially for the kiddies. There are so many other resources out there for teachers to use, online and off, that teaching without textbooks is becoming more and more acceptable. If you don't believe us, scroll down this list of over 100 different resources - including websites, iPod lectures and field trips - that will encourage you to toss out your textbooks.

""Be sure to cite your sources." "Give credit where credit is due." "Don't plagiarize." It's possible all teachers have said these things to students. But what do those directives mean to students who, in all reality, haven't had to do much citing?  What does it even mean to cite your sources?  The first step in the process is for students to understand the purpose and importance of citations. We found this great resource outlining that information from The Write Direction. One of the co-authors of this piece, Jessica Steege, is a middle school writing teacher. In her first year of teaching she did her best to explain the importance of citing her work. But somewhere along the way, the message got lost. When a student turned in a research project citing just one source-www.google.com - she felt defeated and wondered where she'd gone wrong. She realized that teaching citations from a "handbook," especially one that would quickly become outdated, wasn't the best way to teach her tech savvy students. So she turned to electronic resources. The Internet offers an abundance of online citation tools, from the extremely easy to use, to ones that require more research on the part of the user. We'd suggest teaching students about a few tools and let them decide which one to use to help them successfully cite their research."

Teaching Dossiers, sometimes referred to as Teaching Portfolios, are becoming more pervasive tools for faculty use

"One of the most important skills of the 21st century - web literacy - is often overlooked in the classroom. The ability to read, write and participate online is an indispensable skill for learners, but it's curiously absent from many educators' curricula. At Mozilla, we believe web literacy should be a cornerstone of education. When students can create their own content on the Web, tinker with HTML, and understand the basics of online privacy, they're empowered to do great things. We also believe web literacy is best taught through hands-on, interactive learning. We've just wrapped up Maker Party, Mozilla's annual celebration of teaching and learning the Web through hands-on activities. But Maker Parties can be held anywhere, anytime. And our resources for teaching web literacy are free and open source, always. To kickstart web literacy learning in your classroom - or outside of it - here are six tools and activities from Maker Party for teaching critical 21st-century skills:"

"Following yesterday's post on Seven Deadly Digital Sins I received a couple of requests for digital safety and citizenship resources appropriate for elementary school students. Here are some of my favorite resources for teaching digital safety and citizenship at the elementary school level."

"So we thought we'd start an ongoing collection-that is, one that is updated to reflect trends and changes-of the best resources for teaching with the iPad. This will include resources from all of the best sources, from Apple's own stuff to TeachThought to edutopia to MindShift to DMLCentral to Jackie Gerstein and more. We can update it, or make it a wiki to crowdsource the process, or you can add suggestions in the comments below. Based on the activity of the comments, and the sharing of the post, we'll decide how to handle it moving forward."

"One of the most iconic freedom fighter has just left us a couple of days ago leaving behind him a huge legacy for next generations to learn from. Nelson Mandella's life was a genuine fight for human rights and justice and it was thanks to his civil activism that apartheid was abolished in South Africa. The fight for freedom cost Nelson so dearly, 27 years of his life was spent in prison. The lessons we can draw from Nelson's eventful life experiences are inestimable and here are some of the teaching resources I have curated fro you to help yu teach your students about this legendary man."

"Higher education leaders and decision makers use the annual Issues, Technologies, and Trends resources to know what's important and where to focus in their IT planning and management activities. When viewed together the resources provide more complete and nuanced guidance on institutional IT priorities. The lists are created by the community for the community, with support from EDUCAUSE staff. The Top 10 IT Issues list is developed by a panel of experts comprised of IT and non-IT leaders, CIOs, and faculty members and then voted on by EDUCAUSE members in an annual survey.  The Trend Watch and Strategic Technologies reports are derived from authoritative sources that annually identify emerging and maturing technologies and trends in higher education. The ELI Key Issues in Teaching and Learning list is crowd-sourced by surveying the higher education teaching and learning community to identify the issues and topics most important to them. The NMC Horizon Report identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education. "

Hi impact, curated magazine of articles and professional resources for those interested in e-learning and online teaching. Published by Dennis O'Connor, Program Advisor for the University of Wisconsin Stout E-Learning and Online Teaching Graduate Certificate Program.

"Remembrance Day commemorates the sacrifices of people in all armed conflicts.  In order to assist our fellow educators, here are a few Remembrance Day teaching resources that have been shared inside Cube for Teachers."

"Learning technologies change student-resource interactions not only by the amount of resources that are now available to students, but also by the quality of the resources. Instead of students being limited to the textbook they receive from their school, that may or may not be outdated, they now have access to resources from literally around the world. Websites like Project Gutenberg and the National Archives give students access to millions of resources, in various forms of media, on just about any topic they could imagine. With that being said, quantity does not necessarily mean quality. For every respectable source of information online, there's an endless amount of second rate information. Teaching students how to find valid and reliable sources of information is paramount to education in the digital age. However, I don't believe it stops there."

"Great teaching can be learned. This web site provides tools and resources that support ambitious science instruction at the middle school and high school levels. Ambitious teaching deliberately aims to get students of all racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds to understand science ideas, participate in the discourses of the discipline, and solve authentic problems. We describe 4 core instructional strategies that support this kind of teaching. These "high-leverage" practices make up the Science Learning Framework (below), and have been selected based on extensive research of how young people learn science, on authentic forms of science activity, and how teachers learn to appropriate new practices. "

"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."