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Diigo has tools that encourage students to collaborate with others to analyze, critique, and evaluate websites.

Diigo provides opportunities for students to apply higher level thinking skills while researching and gathering information.

Diigo allows you to gain access to the ‘collective intelligence’ of the internet.

Use Diigo to provide visual access to websites you have collected using the built-in program ‘webslides’.

Use Diigo’s advanced tools to link its power to blogs and RSS. Lists of similar websites that you have created can easily be posted onto a blog by using the ‘post to blog’ button.

Use Diigo tools to enhance professional reading and save time creating summaries of online posts.

Access your information from any computer, or even your iPhone or iPad!

we need to be active, trusting, and respectful participants in the digital lives of young people.

Our young people are still learning their way around the digital landscape largely on their own — when what we need to do is confidently take them by the hand, show them how to look both ways, and cross the street with them — at least at first. That means staying up-to-date about digital safety, the rules of the road, and what’s going on in the neighborhood. Finally, we need to foster the kinds of personal relationships that encourage our kids to talk about where they are going and what they discover along the way (their successes as well as their mistakes) once we let them travel on their own.

y, “Digital Generation: Parents,” is a good place to start.

read Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus (on social media

Jane McGonigal’s Reality Is Broken (on video games). If you want to try to keep up with the moving target of day-to-day digital parenting, I recommend Marti Weston’s information-packed, down-to-earth blog, Media! Tech! Parenting!

inspired by Adora Svitak,

Equally inspiring is nine-year-old Martha Payne, whose blog NeverSeconds, about the lunches served at her school in Scotland, sparked a national controversy about school nutrition that attracted the attention of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver

Some people call it a digital footprint, others a digital tattoo. As a parent, you are no doubt concerned about the possible missteps your children may take

the digital “brand” that will follow them for life.

although your children are already comfortable interacting online, they don’t yet necessarily know how to translate their skills into products that show them at their best

create “a portfolio of work that is both public and interactive, that reflects the potential of the online world and that serves as a solid foundation for a lifetime of participation online.”

Those of us in education need parents like you to be involved as active and open learners about the digital world, learners who can engage with us, their children and their children’s teachers, in much-needed conversations about digital matters.

we know that great attention must be paid to how a meeting is designed.

Frame the purpose and desired outcomes for the meeting and review agenda.

planning reflects an awareness of how power dynamics and systemic oppression may manifest in this group and seeks to interrupt these dynamics

We want to ensure that all will voices will be heard and will have equal access to decision-making and input.

Articulate the role participants will play in the meeting

Name any decision-making points and processes that will be used Identify the structures or activities that will be used in this meeting and how they'll connect to the desired outcomes

Articulate expectations for behavior or procedures

anticipates the emotional, cognitive and energy needs of the participants

Use a variety of listening strategies including paraphrasing and active listening

Determine structures to hold members accountable (self-monitoring and reflection, use of process observer, use of a team process rubric)

Use data gathered in the moment to modify and inform facilitation

Protect time for reflection and feedback within the established time

use various strategies to help a group a recover from a breakdown

Hold team members accountable to agreements, goals, structures, and protocols

Read the group's emotional and energetic state and adjust accordingly

Hold the expectation that members will learn, think creatively, and push each others' thinking

Show up as a grounded, calm presence that believes in the capacity of team members

Relevance: the information's level of importance to a particular reading purpose or explicitly stated need for that information Accuracy: the extent to which information contains factual and updated details that can be verified by consulting alternative and/or primary sources Bias/Perspective: the position or slant toward which an author shapes information Reliability: the information's level of trustworthiness based on information about the author and the publishing body

Verify and refute online information Investigate author credentials Detect bias and stance Negotiate multiple perspectives

Cross-checking claims between multiple sources (see Figure 2) can help adolescents: Recognize ideas they might otherwise ignore Weigh the usefulness (and reliability) of these ideas against what they previously believed to be true Consider that new ideas may actually be more accurate than their original thinking

To that end, I will close with a list of strategies to use or adapt to fit your students’ needs as they refine their ability to think critically while conducting online research: Is this site relevant to my needs and purpose? What is the purpose of this site? Who created the information at this site, and what is this person's level of expertise? When was the information at this site updated? Where can I go to check the accuracy of this information? Why did this person or group put this information on the Internet? Does the website present only one side of the issue, or are multiple perspectives provided? How are information and/or images at this site shaped by the author's stance? Is there anyone who might be offended or hurt by the information at this site? How can I connect these ideas to my own questions and interpretations?

2. Reflection and Goal Setting

Throughout the project, students should be reflecting on their work and setting goals for further learning. This is a great opportunity for them to set personalized learning goals and for you to target instruction specific to the goals they set.

3. Mini-Lessons, Centers, and Resources

Perhaps you offer mini-lessons or center work to support your students' learning, or maybe you show students a variety of resources from which to learn, including videos, games, and readings.

1. Differentiate Through Teams

4. Voice and Choice in Products

Another essential component of PBL is student voice and choice, both in terms of what students produce and how they use their time.

"How can I allow for voice and choice here?"

5. Differentiate Through Formative Assessments

as you check for understanding along the way, you can formatively assess in different ways when appropriate.

6. Balance Teamwork and Individual Work

We want to leverage collaboration as much as content. However, there are times when individual instruction and practice may be needed. You need to differentiate the learning environment because some students learn better on their own, and others learn better in a team. In fact, we all need time to process and think alone just as much as we need time to learn from our peers. Make sure to balance both so that you are supporting a collaborative environment while allowing time to meet students on an individual basis.

Perkins closes this piece of identifying three national agendas (achievement, information, expertise) that may have had too much importance placed upon them.

Play-based learning should allow for the students to explore their passions and interests without an outcome necessarily in mind. “Play is not something you do to a child. If you have an agenda, if you are requiring them to do it, if you have to make it ‘fun’ to get them to comply, if they are not free to stop at any time, then it is not play.”

Play is self-chosen, enjoyable, inherently valuable, and unstructured.

‘Okay, we’re now welcoming you to the majority, where you should be’—with the white people, so to speak.” But “inherently within that, you are sacrificing who you are as a person—and it’s not like that would ever happen on the opposite end.” There had been costs to going to Spence. One of those, she now realizes, was “sacrificing my Blackness.”

The parents had demands of their own, including an immediate halt to curriculum changes.

Many schools for the richest American kids have gates and security guards; the message is you are precious to us. Many schools for the poorest kids have metal detectors and police officers; the message is you are a threat to us.

Shouldn’t the schools that serve poor children be the very best schools we have?

For example, having one or two processing experiences for every 30 minutes of instruction alleviates feelings of content saturation.

The key to product options is having clear academic criteria that students understand. When products are cleanly aligned to learning targets, student voice and choice flourish, while ensuring that significant content is addressed.

teachers should aim to get students doing as much domain specific writing as their curriculum allows for.

The best part of this approach? That both genders would benefit from changes that would be made if educators more closely considered the needs and interests of males in the learning process.

Offering appropriate challenges, lots of choice, reasonable accommodations, and opportunities to be active are strategies that allow for all learners to be more successful and less frustrated with school.

Top-notch ISEE scores mean very little if the family unit is not a cultural match for the school.

If you want to dive into the thick of concepts tested, I strongly recommend downloading the guide. However, if you’re looking for something a bit more digestible, start with this post and do further reading at your leisure.

Be sensitive to how diverse cultures deal with conflict. Many citizens of Asian countries avoid open conflict, believing that differences are best worked out quietly. Written exchanges might be preferred over face-to-face conflict resolution.

Clarify expectations. If you put students into groups, for example, explain and model the difference between “helping” and “doing the work for” a partner.

Emphasize a positive environment, not punishment.

Increasing punishment fails to change student behaviors.

earned students’ consent and trust through humor.

Develop a key of symbols that you can use in the margins instead of writing in sentences or bullets.

Carol Jago reminds us that it's the students job to correct their errors. In fact, it would be even more powerful for them to identify the errors in the first place using hints provided by you

allow a student to choose the section or numbers they feel best represent their comprehension

This will require students to translate as well, which embeds the lesson even further.

Sometimes, assignments will take a huge leap in quality when students think someone other than their own teacher is seeing them.

Keep the final grade of an assignment as a carrot dangling until the feedback is read, attempted, and proven. Make them solve some of the problems in the assignment based on your feedback, and trade their solutions for access to their score.

You conference; they write.

Stagger due dates for your classes.

Ask them what worked and what didn't. Model your own comfort at criticism and they will work harder at their own.

It seems clear that after tremendous efforts to catch up to the high performing education systems in test scores, the U.S. has not succeeded. Two questions arise. First, can the U.S. ever catch up? Second, is it really necessary to catch up? My answer to both questions are no.

. If it is true that whatever policies and practices that resulted in higher test scores also make students less confident and less interested in math, are these policies and practices really educationally sound? Don’t we want more people have confidence in math and value math?

Test scores simply do not reflect what our children need to live in the future, let alone what they need to defend and improve a democratic society. Test scores are simply the indicator of one’s ability in taking the test. We should never read too much into it and attempt to draw conclusions that fuels actions that could affect the future of millions of children and the future of our society.

education is both deeply rooted in and an integral part of culture, hence they mutually enhance and perpetuate

Different cultures impose different values and expectations on education. Different cultures also support and suppress different educational practices. Unless one is ready and able to redefine one’s culture and society, copying isolated educational policies rarely works.