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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

Few people enter the teaching profession because they are passionate about controlling behaviour or disciplining prospective pupils. Most become educators because they want to make a positive difference in students' lives. However, countless well-intentioned yet potentially ill-prepared teachers find themselves in situations during the school year where they feel compelled to use forms of intimidation, manipulation, bribery, yelling, scolding, or even false praise to make students behave. These archaic classroom management techniques often backfire- as they did for me early in my teaching career-and result in students losing respect for and disliking the teacher.

Defines the difference between technology and media and provides information (based on academic experience) about how to most effectively create online lessons and media.

Nocera discusses "The New Republic" - a documentary film about teaching in a new Brooklyn high school (new in 2006), and the trials of learning classroom management in this trying environment.  His discussion focuses on the need to do a better job of training new teachers in classroom management.

"With 20 years' teaching experience in a wide variety of schools, I've frequently encountered staff who despair at the behaviour of boys in their classes. Frankly, I love teaching boys, and perhaps my experiences as a P.E. teacher, often teaching single-sex groups, prepared me well for managing the classroom behaviours of boys. Perhaps being (at the very least) a cheeky student myself, frequently preferring attention-seeking behaviours to concentrating in class, I am able to relate to much of what is seen in classes every day. Or maybe I was just under-stimulated and over-confident. Regardless of the circumstances, I certainly have some successful strategies for teaching boys and am happy to share them. So here are my tips on improving behaviour, engagement and outcomes for boys."

25 Teaching Tools To Organize, Innovate, & Manage Your Classroom

Pasi Sahlberg Blog Finnish education reform Originally published in Washington Post, 24 July 2014 An intriguing question whether innovation in education can be measured has an answer now. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in its recent report "Measuring Innovation in Education: A New Perspective, Educational Research and Innovation" measures Innovation in Education in 22 countries and 6 jurisdictions, among them the U.S.

SuperTeacherTools.com is dedicated to providing technology tools for teaching that are quick and easy to download, learn, and start using in your classroom. In the site, you will find a variety of review games, classroom management software, and other miscellaneous tools for educators.

Making online teaching and learning easier for everyone Over 150,000 teachers and 2 million learners are using WizIQ

"Walk into a typical classroom and you'll find the teacher in perpetual motion. In an effort to be the best teacher they can be, most teachers over teach. That is, they talk too much, help too much, and are seen too much. They become so preoccupied with giving of themselves, with providing, nurturing, guiding, reminding, directing, and advising, that they don't leave room for their students to learn"

"if you do not aggressively deal with cheating your students will lose respect for you and what you are teaching.  Cheating will happen, and you must be prepared to deal with it. Worse yet, though, is that when a teacher sees a student cheat, it often forever taints his impression of the child. Before talking about how to deal with cheating, it might be useful to put it in a reasonable context."

Swift and draconian teaches one thing: don't get caught. They know they're not supposed to cheat and, largely, why. Although I will agree with the point regarding a lack of intrinsic value in rules for teenagers. However, there is no reason we can't try to begin developing a sense of genuine effort for ones own gain. Authentic assessment is a much more productive approach to reducing cheating behaviors. Good scaffolding and levels of feedback on research projects discourage academic dishonesty simply due to the attention the work receives. Kids cheat because they think they can get away with it. Why? Because objective assessments make it easy? Because teachers don't pay enough attention to the work? If we, as professionals, model a means of making work easier for us, how can we blame the kids for following our lead?

The first blog post on Edutopia's new teacher academy - a series of many posts about the basics of teaching!

In 2011 footballer Xabi Alonso gave an interview to the Guardian on his experiences as a young player moving from Spain to Liverpool.  He describes the most significant difference here. I don't think tackling is a quality," he says. "It is a recurso, something you have to resort to, not a characteristic of your game. At Liverpool I used to read the matchday programme and you'd read an interview with a lad from the youth team. They'd ask: age, heroes, strong points, etc. He'd reply: 'Shooting and tackling'. I can't get into my head that football development would educate tackling as a quality, something to learn, to teach, a characteristic of your play...

Text your classroom. Broadcast updates to parents and students. Engage any student on any device - during or after school. Ask and answer questions, individually or with groups of students. Incorporate modern technology in your teaching safely and easily. Use ClassPager to instantly message everyone's phone - where you know they'll read it. Let ClassPager protect everyone's phone numbers while you manage everything easily from the web. Use ClassPager to run classroom polls in realtime. Confirm everyone's understanding.

"Few teachers are drawn to the profession for its administrative duties. But the reality of attendance taking, lesson planning, grading and parental communications is that they're a big part of the job. These tasks, however, need not take over. With help from the many online services and mobile apps designed for teachers, it can be easy to efficiently organize and complete classroom management responsibilities. Here are five of our favorite virtual tools for tackling some of the most common classroom chores."