What we must do is create an engine room of high quality teacher coaching within our schools to drive improvements in pedagogy and teacher quality.

The psychology of change and actually changing the habits of adult professionals is very complex. What is widely known is that externally imposed change rarely sticks and changes the culture within schools, or indeed any organization.

Teachers must be emotionally invested in any development of their practice in the school community. Involvement and choice are powerful drivers of habit change. Local knowledge form within the school is powerful and develops a greater degree of trust in what is an emotional and often messy process! Teacher coaches have a better knowledge of the school community; they will invariably gain greater respect than any external figures and they will certainly benefit from higher levels of trust.

use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of one page in a single sitting.

Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of using different mediums

 Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) in order to make informed decisions and solve problems, evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source and noting any discrepancies among the data.

The most obvious takeaway, he said, was that "the age of the computer lab is kind of out," in which students travel out of their classrooms to log on.

The idea kids can access tools for learning 24 hours a day and can access learning not bound by the walls of the school is critical," Hobbs said. "It's indicative of what we mean by a 21st-century education."

A PBL project includes both the creation of the authentic product aligned to the project AND the scaffolding, learning activities, drill and skill, etc., that must occur to support student creation of the final product.

Projects and PBL aren’t the same.

I use the Project Essential Elements checklist to ensure that I am in fact doing PBL and not projects.

Jeff Weaver, the dynamic superintendent of the Upper Arlington City School District in Ohio, was planning to unveil the district’s vision for 21st century learners … at the first district leadership meeting of the year. So he had the vision statement printed on adhesive-backed vinyl, purchased a hundred inexpensive dinner plates, and affixed a copy of the vision to each of the plates. At that first district meeting, Weaver asked for the plates to be passed out to the district’s leaders, then stood at the lectern and said something like this: “The last few years, whenever I talk to you about 21st century skills — about the importance of creativity, collaboration, critical thought, and all the other proficiencies that phrase implies — you remind me how much we’re already trying to accomplish. You tell me, ‘I would grapple with this,  and make it work — but there is so little time, and there is already so much on our plate.’ You ask me, ‘How can we make room for this on our plate?’ . . . And so, I am letting you know you today that, moving forward, this is the plate. . .“