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If you believed the media shock jocks, every kid on the internet is either an idiot or in great peril. But I want to tell a different story starring my daughter, her best friend and a small group of friends ( including my opportunistic son!). This is a completely different story that highlights the amazing opportunities that today's available technology offers our students. It's also a story about how, if given the freedom, children will take what we 'make' them do at school and take it to a whole new level that the limited minds of us teachers don't even plan for. It explains why student led learning can be a success if we don't restrict our students from going beyond our stated objectives. It shows how true engagement doesn't need a teacher or a classroom for children to achieve great things and how technology can allow young students follow their dreams with the restrictions we had in the past.

Dr. Tony Wagner, co-director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group has identified what he calls a "global achievement gap," which is the leap between what even our best schools are teaching, and the must-have skills of the future: * Critical thinking and problem-solving * Collaboration across networks and leading by influence * Agility and adaptability * Initiative and entrepreneurialism * Effective oral and written communication * Accessing and analyzing information * Curiosity and imagination

"Schools are inherently full of different characters. With a mix of personalities, students and staff can often clash with each other, using different strategies to gain the upper hand, or simply to avoid conflict and live a quiet life. Yet, there are those characters who can be sneaky, back-stabbing, manipulative or darn right confrontational. It's these people who know how to play politics to win friends, influence and possibly to gain the upper hand in climbing the next step on the career ladder."

"I have created several posts recently about how Headteachers/Principals, teachers and librarians can work together in order to make a difference to academic attainment. If we are to effect change I do believe it has to come from the top. There are, however, many teachers out there that have never worked alongside a school librarian and have no idea what we can do for them or their students and we need to find a way to change this ourselves too. Which teacher would say no to free help and resources within their classrooms? Not many, I'm sure, so this has to be down to a lack of knowledge and understanding of what we do and this is where we can all do something. So whilst working towards change at the top, librarians need to find a way to start collaborating with those who never use the library and encouraging those who are already working with us to start sharing their best practice."

"Too many films about school insist on showing the teaching and learning enterprise at its worst. Students are portrayed as at best troubled and often just rotten, teachers are stupid or mean; parents are arrogant or absent. "Monsieur Lazhar" doesn't, and that is only part of what distinguishes this moving, intelligent Canadian film, which opens in the Washington D.C. region on Friday."

"Over the last two weeks I've had five occasions to work with teachers to either develop new websites or improve existing websites in Google Sites. Over the course of these workshops I've found that there are five ways that Google Sites are commonly being used in schools. Before you jump to the list, the shameless promotion department at Free Technology for Teachers would like to mention that you should see Google Sites for Teachers if you need help getting started using Google Sites."

"Maintaining Classroom Discipline (1947). Good and bad methods of disciplining inappropriate classsroom behavior. This was a very well made instructional movie for teachers. While there are new & different problems in the modern schools, the basic ideas of this film still holds. The opening messages are exactly what the best research on classroom behaviour tells us:"

My very own little star learns best just like me-when she's interested, motivated, under no pressure of expectation and not afraid to fail. How do we as teachers transfer this type of learning to the classroom?

discussion of the basic components of PBL.

One of the best articles I've read on combatting the many forms of bullying in schools.

The principle of the MeasuringWorth is that there is no one standard measure for comparing what a monetary value in the past is worth today. The best measure depends on the question asked. At present, we have comparators that give you seven answers for the United States (from 1774 on), five for the United Kingdom (from 1270 on), five for Australia (from 1828 on). These dates are determined by the limits of available data.

* Videos and interactive presentations drawn from NASA's vast collection of media resources * Informational texts, discussion questions, and teaching tips to support the Next Generation Science Standards and the Common Core State Standards for Literacy * Professional development resources that illustrate best practices and provide concrete models of effective teaching

15 Crazy Useful JavaScript Solutions for Charts and Graphs Graphs and charts are a great way to break down the information at hand to the user in a descriptive and visually enticing manner. These visual structures allow you to easily simplify complex data and output easier to understand content. Everyone can use a graph or chart, however, not everyone has the right tools to create an effective one. Below we've compiled the best JavaScript graphs and chart solutions. We chose to put a list of JavaScript graphs because of their flexibility and functionality.

This video works best as a conceptual overview of how the Diigo slides feature can be used to create a variety of different web-based presentations. I'd recommend this video as an 'eye opener' to the potential uses for this remarkable social bookmarking site. On the other hand, it is is not a 'How to' video. Well worth watching for anyone involved in e-learning, collaborative research, blended teaching environments, library media studies, web 2.0 communications.

Interesting movie presents an allegory about why normal children fail in school. It has messages for all of us, especially relating to the child that seems to be having trouble. It may not be the only answer, but it's an important point of view that is not often heard. ENLARGE THE MOVIE for best viewing!

Well-presented examples of how we can break out of the "all the seats in a row" mentality using the tools available today.