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Episode 3 of Gareth Malone's quest to raise achievement and engagement in reading and writing in six months.

"A four-week lockout of teachers from schools in Denmark has come to an end. In central Copenhagen, where I live, my daughter and her classmates gleefully cycled to school on their first day back. The month-long closure has led to schools being valued even more highly by the more than 556,000 pupils and about 50,000 teachers who were affected. "

"Just improving poor children's access to books they can read and want to read may seem too simple an idea for improving reading achievement. But the evidence is clear. When children from low-income families are given the opportunity to select books for summer reading they will read those books during the summer months."

How a second language and work abroad changes a student's life.

2nd in an NPR series on School Improvement. Transcript and link to audio. "Long before the Obama administration started talking about turning around failing schools, Annapolis High School in Maryland embarked on a radical transformation. It went to a 12-month school year. Teachers and administrators had to re-apply for their jobs, and those who were rehired vowed to never again let a single student fall through the cracks."

Where does he find the time?

y StoryMaker lets you control characters and objects - and creates sentences for you! Once you are done with your story, you can print it out. You cannot go back and edit a story once you have ended it but, if you click "yes" when asked to share it with others, you can print it out again by entering the magic number it gives you in the box on the right. Since lack of space forces us to delete story files older than 1 month, please save the .pdf file that prints to your own computer.

The Inner Life of a Cell, an eight-minute animation created in NewTek LightWave 3D and Adobe After Effects will run for three days during the 33rd annual SIGGRAPH exhibition and conference in Boston next month....

Online activity generator with stored grading and student accounts to view their progress through teacher created activities. 30 students and results stored for 1 month is free. Paid accounts provide more and are cheap, $35/year.

article from the Economist "The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

In recent months, a handful of companies have introduced rankings that claim to calculate a college's brand value or online influence by looking at the attention an institution receives online. One ranking found that the University of Wisconsin at Madison has the strongest brand equity among universities, based on its number of mentions across the Internet. Another named Stanford University the most influential college on Twitter.

This website has a variety of learning and teaching materials for purchase, and they will give you a free book download each month.

Lately, I've been trying to find a solution for backing up my school files in a way that I will never lose them and will be able to access them from anywhere, including a mobile device.  There's about a thousand services out there, but the cheapest I've found is Sugarsync.  First of all, it gives you 5 gb for free.  That's 3 more gb than Google, Dropbox, and others give.  Also, it's $5 a month for 30gb.  It syncs all my files and I can access from anywhere.  I tried really hard to find a syncing solution for Google, but you have to have a $50/year Google Apps account and then pay another site to do the syncing for you.  

"Arguably, the upheaval, activism and revolutions in of the last two months may serve to counter what has been a longstanding stereotype: youth are largely apolitical. Moreover, those that do participate in politics and activism online do so in shallow ways, the so-called "slacktivism." But recent findings from a longitudinal study of high school-age students challenges these notions, suggesting that youth who pursue their interests online are more likely to be engaged in civic issues."

Interesting to read that time spent by many youth online can still promote engagement with the broader society.

Keep that status update to yourself. That's the advice teachers are being given as the education system grapples with the expanding use of social media by students. Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation has been conducting workshops with high school teachers in Algoma in recent months after the Ontario College of Teachers issued an advisory that teachers should keep their distance from students when it comes to Facebook, Twitter and other electronic communication.

This blog houses a wealth of information on connectivism and shared knowlege. While I did not read every post, there is a large variety of articles, posted by various authors, written in the past several years. I think this would be a great place to conduct research on current information since there are articles only a few months old.

The good news is that entering the mobile market no longer necessarily requires thousands of dollars and months of work. There are many mobile platforms available to help you build an app on a budget - quickly, and with no coding knowledge required.

"Lack of access to education and health care for girls around the world doesn't just hurt girls -- it hurts their families, communities and economies. Last month, UN Women released an infographic illustrating in numbers just how beneficial supporting young girls can be for a country's economy. "

losing the dark video from dark sky.org April is astronomy month.