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A fascinating experiment in which Sugata Mitra attempts to solve the conundrum that the best teachers and schools aren't present where they are needed most in the world. He installs a computer in highly impoverished areas and gives students unsupervised access to the web. What he found was that children the world over have an inherent desire to learn and will latch onto their interests and teach themselves with little to no need for supervision. Just goes to show that if students are engaged in the material, the teacher need not focus on discipline and can instead serve to stimulate students' inherent curiosity.

Whether or not you move on from Laurier to go teach in other countries it is important to keep in mind that the culture your students have come from may have an impact on the effectiveness of your chosen strategies. This article examines some of the techniques used in countries around the world.

The Friends program is used across Canada and the world to help children & youth (8-16 years of age) cope with feelings of fear, worry and sadness. I thought that this would be something that could be used in conjunction with a restorative justice approach. Clearly, the whole community needs to do something to deal with escalating bullying.

An interesting study on how gender can affect teaching style. The start provides with some background information on gender studies which I was a little surprised by. It states that "a man's world focuses on competition, status, and independence", and "a woman's focuses on intimacy consensus, and interdependence." The second part is a case study on experienced and inexperienced male and female teachers that is worth a read.

We have been discussing cyberbullying in a few of our classes and what to do when an incident occurs, but what about prevention? This website offers great ideas, complete lesson plans, and activity sheets categorized by grade. Each lesson/idea is developmentally appropriate and provides great ideas to get students thinking about proper use of the internet. The world is becomming increasingly technological and I think it's up to parents and teachers to take the time to teach children how to use the internet responsibly and safely.

This website is a little like a blog with teachers from all over the world sharing their strategies on dealing with behavior problems

For those who did not sign up for the ELL elective, this video is a little introduction to some effective ways of teaching ESL students. The video identifies some struggles students have through testimonials from actual ESL students and then shows some strategies to use in the classroom. It shows clips from classrooms using these strategies. The following games are previewed in the video: grammar races, "What is it?", mock newscasts, misordered sentences, "What am I?", simulating real world conversations, and sing-a-longs (with hand gestures). The video is only 7 minutes long and worth the watch.