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"Whether you are an experienced teacher, just starting your training, or starting in your own classroom as an NQT for the first time, beginning the year right will make things so much easier for the rest of the year. By now you have probably meet your class(es) and have begun some lessons, but how can you keep that initial momentum going?"

"At the age of 11, in England, pupils sit their SATs papers, assessing their progress mainly in Literacy and Maths (some school also check progression in Science). Although there have been subtle changes to the system over the last few years, many schools, observers, parents and politicians still hold the tests in high esteem, so pressure is placed on pupils to do the best they can."

Have you ever wondered how to create an animated picture ? If you have here is an answer for you. There are several online  tools  that allow users to create GIF animations from pictures stored on their computers. Here are some of the best free web tools that can help you create animated GIFs

Larry erlazzo best ways to create slideshows

I've separated my "The Best…" lists here by topics. A number of the lists, though, can fit into multiple categories, so it still might be useful to scan all of them.

The online learning congress has named their outstanding award winners. I was excited to see one of my blog sponsors, WizIQ win best virtual classroom provider for the second year in a row. Lots of interesting companies herein the global education community.

I'm a huge fan of the American School of Bombay and visionary Shabbi Luthra - this article on Edutopia captures so much about this amazing school that uses laptops at a very young age in ways that empower students to learn, create, and share. Shabbi is passionate about bringing the best to her school but also shares expects that what is brought and discussed there will be used. Such a great school - it is well worth attending ASB Un-Plugged when they host it just to see what they are doing. It is hard to find a better school anywhere in the world.

The six top free online tools were selected from available web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning using presentations, blogging, and bookmarking online resources. There are many excellent online tools available in these three categories, making the selection difficult at best. However, the selection was made based on reviewing available online resources along with other contributions and feedback from teachers.

The heavy focus on measuring teacher quality can give the false impression that teacher quality is everything. Study after study, however, has shown that poverty is a stronger factor than teacher quality in predicting achievement. The best teachers in the world will have limited impact when children are undernourished, have high levels of lead in their bodies, live in noisy and dangerous environments, get too little sleep, and have no access to reading material.

"In education we are very comfortable using the term "middle leaders", rather than "middle managers", to talk about heads of department and heads of faculty. But are they really leaders? What distinguishes middle leaders from middle managers?  Middle managers - and senior managers for that matter - work to the specification of their leaders. Managers only become leaders when they inject something of themselves into their work. Managers sing the hymn sheets of others. Leaders do much more, they add verses, create harmonies and the best compose new scores. "

This is an awesome sliderocket about how to use Google Docs to facilitate a Writing Workshop created by Susan Oxnevad. Look for links to examples within the presentation so you can use everything she shares. This slide show shares not only best practices in running a writing workshop but also is a best practice itself in creating a stand alone presentation that instructions in a powerful way. Writing teachers everywhere should take 10 minutes to work through this slide show this week.

Students at Burlington High School are reviewing hour of code tutorials and their thoughts. For high school students, this is a great way to learn and share and also helps teachers identify best practices and best tutorials. Great job, Jenn Scheffer.

Opportunity for teachers to become involved in a global collaborative project by being a judge. Definitely a best practice to review.

This fascinating project needs judges (oh and horizon still does too!) -- hat tip to David Warlick for this link. The student web site entries are due in tomorrow (April 2) for the 2008 competition, and ThinkQuest needs people to judge these entries. To be a judge, you must be employed as a teacher or have a minimum of five years experience in the field of education; be proficient in the English language; and be able to, and have the time to evaluate and score websites based on the provided criteria.

FROM THE ABOUT PAGE... the real purpose of this exercise is to alleviate our natural tendency to edit everything-and learn to flow. an analogy would be a film camera: when a film is shot, the camera just rolls and captures everything-good and bad. when all the shooting is complete, the raw film is edited into a cohesive piece. the camera operator doesn't keep stopping the camera and rewinding and editing on-the-fly-the camera just rolls. if it were to stop, some of the best performances and spontaneous moments might be missed. so: be the camera. well, that's a stupid saying, but you get the idea. in writing-just flow. go back later and edit. Go write.

a 1 word prompt for creative writing.  timed response.

As some friends and I have been talking on my Facebook fanpage about how much grading and planning we're doing over Winter break, Chris Fancher shared his wish for teachers on the page which relates. While I don't agree that kids are "{products" I do know that I have to spend quite a bit of extra time to have any hope of considering myself a good teacher. It is a thought provoking read challenging us to be more. WE're all getting so much out of Twitter (many of us are) and the off-time things we're doing and sharing, so you might want to think about it and read his post. Chris says: "My wish for 2013 is that the 2 or 3 teachers who read this go out and find someone on their campus who they can get together with outside of "normal" hours.  Then these same teachers need to get on twitter and find a group of teachers who is on twitter at times they are on and are willing to interact and help with plans and ideas.  Then these same teachers need to pick one day a week when they can devote to a twitter chat and start being an active participant. My wish is that every student has a teacher who is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure they are receiving the best education available. "

I love this reflection from Azhar Youssef, an EFL teacher in Egypt who is so passionate and excited. This is what MOOCs are all about - connecting the world and finding the best wherever they are. Hat tip to my friend Lee Graham of #diffimooc who let me know about Azhar's work. This is her introduction video that she used for the Mooc work. I think that all teachers in the near future, are going to need to have an introduction video. Like a resume, you'll need it to use to introduce yourself when you participate in elearning projects. Do you have an intro flyer or video? Isn't it time? I love her smore flyer. (via Azhar's Reflections: Twitter in a new dress!)

Any internet search will show that there are a huge number of online tools available for the creation on polls and surveys. The ones included here are some of the best I have used and show some of the variety of polling tools available.

I love how Nathan Gray (@maccprincipal on Twitter) shares small, short snippets of what he is thinking and what he wants for his school. Whatever your thoughts are about what he shares here, this is a great example for principals to see. This principal shares about once every two months a small paragraph or two about what he is thinking and what he wants for the school. It is enough that I could read it and get a feel for who he is as a person. If a parent needs to interview anyone for a school it is the principal. So much flows from the front office into the classroom. Great best practice.

I want to point out one of the first blogs I ever read and one I've continued to read since I started building my PLN in 2005 -- Stephen Downes is one of the best resource sharers on the web. He's widely read and interjects his opinions and big picture issues into the conversation. I highly recommend that though leaders and researchers subscribe to his daily updates via RSS or email.