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"Often students are called upon to make presentations for class projects, and many are eager to break out of the mold of the standard PowerPoint and do something really special."

Why Learning Should be Messy. The following is an excerpt of One Size Does Not Fit All: A Student's Assessment of School, by 17-year-old Nikhil Goyal, a senior at Syosset High School in Woodbury, New York.

I extracted this excerpt summing up the excellent points made In a summary published on Edutopia, Brigid Barron and Linda Darling-Hammond reviewed numerous studies and found that: : Students learn more deeply when they can apply classroom-gathered knowledge to real-world problems, and when they take part in projects that require sustained engagement and collaboration. Active-learning practices have a more significant impact on student performance than any other variable, including student background and prior achievement. Students are most successful when they are taught how to learn as well as what to learn. As the old adage goes, "Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand." Harvard Professor Howard Gardner said to me that schools should incorporate the best of two models of learning: a hands-on children's museum, which encourages open-ended exploration, and an apprenticeship, which provides a more structured environment for practicing meaningful skills in an authentic, real-life context.

Here are some questions I have for anyone in the edtech community that has taken their school down the path of 1-1 learning with iPads: Does giving every student an iPad mitigate or exacerbate issues of equity in our school communities? iPads are often times promoted as being really 'easy' to use. Is this true? And is 'easy' what we really want? What are the learning dispositions we aim to foster in our students and school community and is going all-in with iPads going to help us build these dispositions? How are iPads helping your students participate in the long tail of invention, creation and manufacturing (the 'Third Industrial Revolution' as some have called it)?

"After two articles in the irish papers (links below) where I was asked about how I use twitter in my classroom, I decided to detail what exactly I do, so that it's a little clearer. Before I begin though we have to talk about fear. There's so much fear about the educational value of twitter from teachers, managers, parents and students that some might be worried about entering that lion's den. My answer to these fears is simple: the internet is where kids are, schools have to go there. It was video for an earlier generation and tv before that. It was probably radio once and I'm sure some Greeks were worried about writing things down rather than learning them by heart. Students will always be ahead of us, so why not meet them there, rather than dismiss them as fad-followers or time-wasters?"

The purpose of this blog is to have a place to reflect and analyze the use of my "flipped classroom" method of teaching during the 2012 spring semester in my two math classes: Algebra 1 and Math Analysis Honors. My goal is to able to see what is working, what isn't, and what could use improvement as I strive to continue to help my students succeed at their highest level!"