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One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from? With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward. Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines. Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas.

My first year teaching a literacy coach came to observe my classroom. After the students left, she commented on how I asked the whole class a question, would wait just a few seconds, and then answer it myself. "It's cute," she added. Um, I don't think she thought it was so cute. I think she was treading lightly on the ever-so shaky ego of a brand-new teacher while still giving me some very necessary feedback.

The Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition Model offers a method of seeing how computer technology might impact teaching and learning.  It also shows a progression that adopters of educational technology often follow as they progress through teaching and learning with technology.   While one might argue over whether an activity can be defined as one level or another, the important concept to grasp here is the level of student engagement. One might well measure progression along these levels by looking at who is asking the important questions.  As one moves along the continuum, computer technology becomes more important in the classroom but at the same time becomes more invisibly woven into the demands of good teaching and learning.

We asked Shaun some questions about why he decided to produce Sketches from a Nameless Land, the companion title to The Arrival. Here he talks about the way The Arrival mirrors a multicultural society as well as the background characters of the city. For more information on The Arrival and Sketches from a Nameless Land, see www.thearrival.com.au

We asked Shaun some questions about why he decided to produce Sketches from a Nameless Land, the companion title to The Arrival. Here he talks about the book as a manifesto for the art of illustration. For more information on The Arrival and Sketches from a Nameless Land, see www.thearrival.com.au

Over the last month I've shown the picture that you see to the left during a number of presentations and workshops. I've used the picture to model using pictures to spark students' minds at the beginning of lessons on search strategies. This is a strategy that I've developed by borrowing ideas from Daniel Russell's Search ReSearch activities and Dan Meyer's strategy of using videos and pictures to prompt students to ask math questions.

A proven program for enhancing students' thinking and comprehension abilities Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study.? Rather than a set of fixed lessons, Visible Thinking is a varied collection of practices, including thinking routines?small sets of questions or a short sequence of steps?as well as the documentation of student thinking.?Using this process thinking becomes visible as the students'?different viewpoints are expressed, documented, discussed and reflected upon

This will be very useful for when parents ask tricky questions.

Another fab post by Kath Murdoch re inquiry. I love the challenge of connecting the children's questions and interests with the resources we have, the curriculum and the teacher's bigger picture view of where he/she wants to taker her students. I also love the fact that, in the schools I am fortunate enough to work in, teachers are prepared to have real conversations about the concepts the children will be exploring.

WHEN Tony Wagner, the Harvard education specialist, describes his job today, he says he's "a translator between two hostile tribes" - the education world and the business world, the people who teach our kids and the people who give them jobs. Wagner's argument in his book "Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World" is that our K-12 and college tracks are not consistently "adding the value and teaching the skills that matter most in the marketplace."