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"AUTHOR: ISSIE LAPOWSKY. ISSIE LAPOWSKY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 05.04.15. 05.04.15 TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM. 7:00 AM INSIDE THE SCHOOL SILICON VALLEY THINKS WILL SAVE EDUCATION Click to Open Overlay Gallery Students in the youngest class at the Fort Mason AltSchool help their teacher, Jennifer Aguilar, compile a list of what they know and what they want to know about butterflies. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/WIRED SO YOU'RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend's neighbor's sister. It's prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools-with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning-just aren't cutting it. At the same time, you're thinking: this school is kind of weird. On one side of the glass is a cheery little scene, with two teachers leading two different middle school lessons on opposite ends of the room. But on the other side is something altogether unusual: an airy and open office with vaulted ceilings, sunlight streaming onto low-slung couches, and rows of hoodie-wearing employees typing away on their computers while munching on free snacks from the kitchen. And while you can't quite be sure, you think that might be a robot on wheels roaming about. Then there's the guy who's standing at the front of the conference room, the school's founder. Dressed in the San Francisco standard issue t-shirt and jeans, he's unlike any school administrator you've ever met. But the more he talks about how this school uses technology to enhance and individualize education, the more you start to like what he has to say. And so, if you are truly fed up with the school stat

Stepping Aside: The Art of Working With Student-Teachers\n\nTeacher Leaders Network Although traditional teacher-education programs rely on veteran educators to invite student- or "practice-" teachers into their classrooms, many skilled professionals can be heard expressing some reluctance about sharing instructional responsibilities with green recruits. They may be concerned about their ability to mentor an inexperienced colleague effectively, or simply hesitant to relinquish control of instruction in an atmosphere of high-stakes accountability.\n\nIn a recent post to the Teacher Leaders Network Forum daily discussion group, veteran teacher Vicky expressed some reservations of her own about working with a student-teacher and asked for help.\n\nI may be getting the opportunity to work with a student-teacher. I was wondering about your ideas for starting the year off right, helping the student-teacher, and balancing the load of mentoring the student teacher and teaching the students myself. I'm excited about the possibility, but I'm also a pretty hands-on control freak kind of person, so I want to alternately challenge and excite the intern but not be unfair or scary. Tips?\n\nNancy, a veteran K-12 music teacher, replied:\n\nGreat questions, Vicky. My first suggestion would be adopting the perspective that you will learn as much as the novice teacher-about yourself, your beliefs, and your practice. The first step is probably building a relationship in which the novice teacher trusts you enough to share real information and opinion (and vice-versa).\n\nCreate a safe space to communicate honestly, in both directions. A student teacher who feels comfortable enough to share fears, anxieties, confusion, and frustration-and knows that he or she is not being judged, but honored as a learner by a veteran teacher who also has fears and frustrations-will be a student teacher who can grow.\n\nMy second thought is that from your students' perspective there should be two experts

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., the top school in U.S. News & World Report's America's Best High Schools rankings, is designed to challenge students. A course load of offerings that include DNA science, neurology, and quantum physics would seem to be more than enough to meet that goal. But students and the faculty felt those classes weren't enough, so they decided to tackle another big question: What are the social responsibilities of educated people? Over the course of the school year, students are exploring social responsibility through projects of their own design, ranging from getting school supplies for students with cerebral palsy in Shanghai to persuading their classmates to use handkerchiefs to reduce paper waste. The One Question project demonstrates the way "TJ," as it's referred to by students and teachers, encourages the wide-ranging interests of its students.

Feel like the day is not long enough and you never get enough done? Welcome to teaching! This site offers a nice visual 'to do' list so you can see the progress, or lack of progress, you are making. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+%26+Web+Tools

"Conversation is key . Sawyer succinctly explains this principle: "Conversation leads to flow, and flow leads to creativity." When having students work in groups, consider what will spark rich conversation. The original researcher on flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, found that rich conversation precedes and ignites flow more than any other activity.1 Tasks that require (or force) interaction lead to richer collaborative conceptualization. Set a clear but open-ended goal . Groups produce the richest ideas when they have a goal that will focus their interaction but also has fluid enough boundaries to allow for creativity. This is a challenge we often overlook. As teachers, we often have an idea of what a group's final product should look like (or sound like, or…). If we put students into groups to produce a predetermined outcome, we prevent creative thinking from finding an entry point. Try not announcing time limits. As teachers we often use a time limit as a "motivator" that we hope will keep group work focused. In reality, this may be a major detractor from quality group work. Deadlines, according to Sawyer, tend to impede flow and produce lower quality results. Groups produce their best work in low-pressure situations. Without a need to "keep one eye on the clock," the group's focus can be fully given to the task. Do not appoint a group "leader." In research studies, supervisors, or group leaders, tend to subvert flow unless they participate as an equal, listening and allowing the group's thoughts and decisions to guide the interaction. Keep it small. Groups with the minimum number of members that are needed to accomplish a task are more efficient and effective. Consider weaving together individual and group work. For additive tasks-tasks in whicha group is expectedtoproduce a list, adding one idea to another-research suggests that better results develop

"As we all know, education is an essential part of life but do kids spend enough time at school? Should their day of learning be extended or are they already doing enough in class? This topic has been debated over the years, so Sophie Davidson takes a closer look at the pros and cons of keeping children longer."

"Research has shown that teenagers don't get enough sleep at night and go to school tired. Some experts believe the cause is biological. Others believe that teenagers stay up late because of adolescent distractions. Early high school start times can also contribute to teens' tiredness. This article will explore possible causes and solutions to this problem."

Oddly enough, John Green and I share the same worst book ever. Who knew?

"3rd Grade Teacher, Laura Chesebro here at ISB continues to impress me with her innovative use of technology with kids. ... And if that wasn't enough, she's now reinventing the way a classroom newspaper is created. "

See helps to assessing how well Web resources meet accessibility guidelines. ☐  Can the application be used with only the keyboard? ☐  Do images have appropriate text descriptions? ☐  Do pages have a consistent look-and-feel? ☐  Does text have enough color contrast? ☐  Do pages includes headings and landmarks? ☐ Do form controls and widgets have labels? ☐  When styling and layout is removed, is the document understandable? ☐  Does audio content have transcripts? ☐  Do videos have captions?

Useful critique that argues that the national common core standards should be voluntary, not mandatory, since they have been developed within a corporate context that required such standards as a condition of eligibility for "race to the top" funds, and that it is unclear whether these standards will have positive or negative effects on students--they just haven't been tried enough to justify them as "national" or "mandatory."

Everybody knows enough about some topic - be it English, science, yoga or bourbon - to teach other people about it. And every topic is covered by content scattered around the Web. The idea behind a new site called Learnist is to give everybody a spot to teach through curation. The site, which is also available as an app for iPhone and iPad, features user-created lessons that bring together Web pages, videos, Google Books e-books and other items on a specific topic. At the moment, only a relatively small group of people approved by the site - including some teachers - can create these "learnings," but anyone can check them out. Read more: http://techland.time.com/2012/09/18/50-best-websites-2012/#ixzz2KnPnZqks

Everybody knows enough about some topic to teach other people about it. And every topic is covered by content scattered around the Web. The idea behind a new site called Learnist is to give everybody a spot to teach through curation. The site, which is also available as an app for iPhone and iPad, features user-created lessons that bring together Web pages, videos, Google Books e-books and other items on a specific topic. At the moment, only a relatively small group of people approved by the site - including some teachers - can create these "learnings," but anyone can check them out.

Curation

"Over time, we as educators have become used to listening to and reading from gurus with simple truths. So many of us feel that we are well below the expertise of these edugurus (and I don't mean to single out the examples above as being the only ones going around) so we pack into venues, feverishly copying dot points from slideshows, handing over cash to buy the book and match up the dispensed wisdom against our own learning, our own classrooms and schools to see if we are headed in the prescribed direction"

I used to be a massive advocate of using mobile phones in lessons; the ways they could be used are just endless. I had students use them to research topics; find the answers to a question we didn't know, even as voting devices. I used them just rarely enough that students didn't take it as a given and rarely tried to use their phones for uses other than I intended. I even use them to avoid printing off sheet after sheet of homework, instead having students take a picture on their phone (with the added bonus that they can't lose the sheet).

The question of what learning matters most to our students is one that I return to regularly. A fascinating range of models are available each with similar elements but presented in a slightly different manner. Most could be summarised by the 'Four C's' model outlined in 'Most Likely to Succeed' by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith. Critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity are vital and each plays an important role in allowing us to manage the complexity of modern day life. Beyond being relevant to success in the classroom the Four C's are the foundations of life-long learning but I question if alone they are enough. I believe we must include a fifth; compassion.

In this vast digital age, there is more information available than can ever possibly be processed, and the way that students vet this data is incredibly important. While the internet has opened up the world in amazing and beautiful ways, it has also skewed the way information is obtained. Instant knowledge, or perceived knowledge, is available as soon as kids are old enough to type in a computer password or swipe the lock screen of a tablet or smartphone.