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"I refuse to hear any more about how important it is to differentiate our instruction as we prepare our kids for tests that are anything but differentiated. This negates our hard work and makes us look bad."

I think that diigo is wonderful. It is such a good way to organise your bookmarks.  It's also a great way to collaborate on resources. I often find great websites that my colleagues may find useful, though I'm never quite sure if they are worthy of clogging their inboxes. With diigo I can just add to a group list and then everyone can access them.

"It's quite remarkable what children will achieve when adults have confidence in them."

A must-read: "Although we find ourselves as travelers in the age of over sharing, it turns out we remain quite adept at avoiding the really tough topics."

New report from Center on Education and the Workforce, Georgetown University, September 2012, by Anthony P. Carnevale, Tamara Jayasundera, Andrew R. Hanson - Daniela Fairchild of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute writes in The Education Gadfly Weekly: "At 31 percent, the United States currently ranks second among OECD nations-behind Norway-for the percentage of its workforce with a four-year college education. That's the good news. The bad news is that we rank sixteenth for the percentage of our workforce with a sub-baccalaureate education (think: postsecondary and industry-based certificates, associate's degrees). Yet a swath of jobs in America calls for just that sort of preparation, which often begins in high school. Dubbed "middle jobs" in this report by the Center on Education and the Workforce, these employment opportunities pay at least $35,000 a year and are divided among white- and blue-collar work. Yet they are largely ignored in our era of "college for all." In two parts, this report delineates five major categories of career and technical education (CTE), then lists specific occupations that require this type of education. It's full of facts and figures and an excellent resource for those looking to expand rigorous CTE in the U.S. Most importantly, it presents this imperative: Collect data on students who emerge from these programs. By tracking their job placements and wage earnings, we can begin to rate CTE programs, shutter those that are ineffective, and scale up those that are successful. If CTE is ever to gain traction in the U.S.-and shed the stigma of being low-level voc-tech education for kids who can't quite make it academically-this will be a necessary first step."

"This timelapse video was six months in the making, and could quite possibly the most impressive ever made"

TED 2013 talk about 'Building a School in the Cloud.' He argues, quite effectively, that school as they currently exist are outdated. Worth a listen.

Is homework needed?

"Teaching about sound in the classroom used to involve lots of fiddly bits of kit such as Signal Generators and Decibel Meters that would cost a lot of money and only get wheeled out once a year. Thankfully if you have an iPhone or iPad you can replace quite a bit of that kit with a couple of handy apps which are either free or relatively inexpensive. Here's a couple to get you started:"

What can educators learning from Uber? Quite a bit, actually.

A few months ago I went on a Mental Health First Aid in schools course. We learnt about the stress bucket. So it goes like this. Basically we all have a stress bucket. If it gets too full as the stresses of life flow in to it, it will over fill and over flow and we will begin to feel overwhelmed. Coping strategies are like a tap on the bucket and should be used to allow some of the stress to be released and will prevent us from becoming overwhelmed. If our stress bucket gets too full we can suffer from mental ill health. Some life events such as bereavement, illness etc. can cause our buckets to overflow quite quickly but sometimes small life stressors can build and accumulate also causing our buckets to fill...

There's quite a bit of information out there to support the claims that people are moving farther away from broadcast television, and closer to the digital realm. And within that landscape, people are straying from their desktops and laptops, and opting to get online via mobile with more frequency. At least, that's what the folks at Nielsen and Google have found in their research. As the latter puts it, mobile devices are no longer "secondary," and people aren't just using them to get online -- they're using them to get social.

Students at a Toowoomba school face expulsion for using Facebook.

Resources for teaching Plagiarism from Rutgers University, shared by Gretchen Schroeder in Spring 2009, with the following caveat: "There are a couple of things in the "Quiz" video that are not precisely accurate e.g. they don't cover common knowledge quite right."

"If we continue to treat our teachers like children, what will become of our children?" Although this article is very confrontational, it does offer some solution-focused thinking. Teachers should be pushing our profession in these ways--prompting dialogue and debate among our communities and our faculties. 

"If only everyone, regardless of gender, learned to harness and appreciate both forms of thinking, we could minimize instances where people seem to just be talking past each other. Many, many years of psychological research has shown quite convincingly (to me, at least) that each mode of thought is fundamentally different from the other and when we are in a particular mode of thought we actually perceive everything around us differently and use different information to make decisions. "

When principals hear the words Twitter and Facebook they cringe. Immediately, visions of excessive socialization, time wasted, and meaningless conversations in the form of updates come to mind. This is true, in many cases, when these tools are used for personal use. I am here to share ways in which principals can harness the power of these free resources to improve communications, public relations, professional growth, instruction, and create a brand presence for your school. Quite simply, social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook have improved my effectiveness and efficiency as an educational leader.

"why some people never seem to be on time.  Surely you know such people, perhaps quite well.  Indeed, if you can overcome a rising bubble of defensiveness, you may admit that you are one of those people.  Everyone is late now and then, of course, but I'm talking about folks who habitually show up after an event has started.."