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Why small, organic, agency-driven schools are important.  Addresses the extraneous factors important to school reform such as poverty, drugs, violence, etc.

If you use wordclouds to help extract meaning on a topic before beginning, (try pasting the Gettysburg address into one) then these 9 word cloud generators will be of use to you.

ePals and th Smithsonian are sponsoring their third Invent It challenge where students address real world problems with inventions. The projects are due on April 11. Sign up now and plan this authentic project into your classroom this spring.

Our Mission To research how online learning can be made more accessible, engaging, and effective for K-12 learners with disabilities by investigating approaches that address learner variability within the range of conditions under which online learning occurs.

Technology Integration Professional Development Guide | Edutopia - Great free guide to use and read that addresses the NETS standards from ISTE.

From MGuhlin: I wrote the following as part of my participation in the Abydos Learning Writing Institute. I'm grateful to the feedback from folks during "clocking" exercises. As you will see, it is my first attempt to address the cognitive tension that exists between paper-oriented publishing approaches to writing workshop and the digital possibilities.

AlertNow, designed specifically to address school communication needs, supplements conventional school communications and replaces outdated phone trees and automated dialing tools that require staff resources and large blocks of time to deliver messages to multiple recipients. AlertNow is the industry's only rapid communication service that displays the school phone number on caller identification devices (Caller ID) for non-emergency calls and distinguishes urgent emergency calls with a "411" caller ID display.

Fascinating way to create virtual servers.

This software lets you take one host PC server and this lets you virtualize servers. In Walton County - have 100 servers and 60 are virtual. All independent and have their own IP address and appear completely independent -- they have 6 blade servers. This does cost money. This would let me move the Accelerated Reader and Accounting system to separate "virtual servers" and if one needed to reboot, I could reboot a "virtual server" and not the physical server. This is from an expert IT - Jack Higgins, Network Analyst - Walton County schools in Atlanta, GA -- met by accident in the Atlanta airport. A lot of these bookmarks are from him!

From Steve Hargadon: "I've started a new community at http://www.FutureofEducation.com to providing an opportunity for those who care about education to share their voices and ideas on charting the course of education in a networked world. It's a place for thoughtful discussion on an incredibly important topic. The site will launch officially at the end of the month with the start of a weekly interview series, but I'm inviting some participation now because of an email Carol Broos (http://www.classroom20.com/profile/beatechie) sent out. Carol is one of twelve teachers who have been invited to participate in a round table discussion concerning the direction of education the new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on Jan 21. She was sent the following questions, and is asking for feedback and ideas. You can respond either at the new http://www.FutureofEducation.com site or her wiki at http://education20.pbwiki.com/FrontPage. Here are the questions: 1. What is the one most important education issue you wish Secretary Duncan to focus on during his tenure and why? 2. How shall the tenets of the No Child Left Behind act be altered or invigorated? What are its positives? How can its negatives be improved? 3. How should the new administration respond to the nation's need for better prepared and more qualified teachers? 4.What should the new administration do to increase student engagement in mathematics, the sciences and the arts? 5. How should funding equity issues be addressed? There is also a discussion topic on what questions were not asked that might have been." This seems to be a great thing!

Prof Brian Butterworth FBA Department Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience & Dept. Psychology Institution University College London Address Alexandra House, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR Telephone 020-7679-1150 Home Page Email Current Research and Interests Cognitive psychology and neuropsychology of numbers and arithmetic. Neural network models of reading and arithmetic. Reading and acquired dyslexia in English, Japanese and Chinese.

Video addressing the new DNA that teachers need in order to change our current system of education.

Wow...amazing video addressing the need for change in current ed systems

the twitter id that lets you follow additions to the edublogger directory.

The twitter address that lets you follow new additions to the edublogger directory.

This is a great site for temporary email addresses for students -- perfect for signing your students up with a web 2.0 service that requires an email address.

A good in-depth article arguing that purposeful networking (easily done w/ web2.0 tools) should be a skill addressed in education.

Think of ThinkingGear as an online toolbox for educators who are interested in developing lessons and assessments that put the cultivation of good thinking and deeper understanding up-front as instructional goals. ThinkingGear's general mission is to develop situated tools and technologies to address some of the most intractable problems in education and to improve the depth and quality of learning.

OK, this breaking news from Spellquizzer 9software for helping with spelling: "I'm currently offering SpellQuizzer free to any educator who contacts me at http://www.SpellQuizzer.com/Contact.htm so if you know of any other educators who might be interested please let them know. They would need to provide an email address from an educational institution in order for to qualify." This is from an email from the owner.

The Reflective Principal: A Taxonomy of Reflection (Part IV) Reflection can be a challenging endeavor. It's not something that's fostered in school - typically someone else tells you how you're doing! Principals (and instructional leaders) are often so caught up in the meeting the demands of the day, that they rarely have the luxury to muse on how things went. Self-assessment is clouded by the need to meet competing demands from multiple stakeholders. In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection" - modeled on Bloom's approach. It's posted in four installments: 1. A Taxonomy of Reflection 2. The Reflective Student 3. The Reflective Teacher 4. The Reflective Principal It's very much a work in progress, and I invite your comments and suggestions. I'm especially interested in whether you think the parallel construction to Bloom holds up through each of the three examples - student, teacher, and principal. I think we have something to learn from each perspective. 4. The Reflective Principal Each level of reflection is structured to parallel Bloom's taxonomy. (See installment 1 for more on the model) Assume that a principal (or instructional leader) looked back on an initiative (or program, decision, project, etc) they have just implemented. What sample questions might they ask themselves as they move from lower to higher order reflection? (Note: I'm not suggesting that all questions are asked after every initiative - feel free to pick a few that work for you.) Bloom's Remembering : What did I do? Principal Reflection: What role did I play in implementing this program? What role did others play? What steps did I take? Is the program now operational and being implemented? Was it completed on time? Are assessment measures in place? Bloom's Understanding: What was