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Here's a complaint you often hear: We spend a lot of money on education, so why isn't all that money having a better result? It's because we're doing the same thing over and over again. We're holding 40 or 50 million kids prisoner for x hours a week. And the teacher is given a set of rules as to what you're going to say to the students, how you're going to treat them, what you want the output to be, and let no child be left behind. But there's a very narrow set of outcomes. I think you have to open the system to new ideas.

Schools Look to Teacher-Training Institutions for Tech Leadership

Tips for teachers to help students be safe on the Internet.

The Digital Generation Project presents video portraits of the lives of young students from around the country who are using digital media to learn, communicate, and socialize in new and exciting ways.

The Digital Generation Project presents video portraits of the lives of young students from around the country who are using digital media to learn, communicate, and socialize in new and exciting ways.

Some new and some common education resources.

Experienced writer Gaetan Pappalardo discusses his ideas on creating a positive writing atmosphere for students.  

Guest blogger Holden Clemens (pseudonym) describes the frustrations of working with "late to the game" parents and how to better manage parent communications. 

Mesquite Elementary School, in Tucson, Arizona became a top-performing school with a homegrown, easy-to-implement differentiated instruction program.

Smart Moves: The New PE Collaborative games, zip lining, and classroom aikido are part of a new physical education movement that makes kids smarter

I love this trip that is happening in Finland, especially the transparency. I'm going to be "hanging out" with some of those in Finland in the hangout on Wednesday. You can look at what they are doing and how they are traveling and sharing. I think more information-gathering trips should be this transparent. "Doctoral learners from the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education will spend a "week in the schools" -- the schools of Helsinki, that is -- looking at a variety of research areas through the lenses of students, teachers, parents and leaders. These lead learners will use that week to reflect upon where the United States and Finland agree and disagree on core beliefs surrounding teaching, learning and leadership."

You can help them think deeper but it takes time and sharpening the saw. Great article. "A common occurrence in classrooms is that the teacher, when he or she sees the students struggle mightily to "think out of the box" will precipitously step in and give the students the answers, or throw the deeper learning activity out all together, thinking that the students aren't ready for it. What these students and the teachers need is to be patient, practice and build those mental muscles over time. One thing that helps teachers and students is a better understanding the nature of the advanced thinking tools."

A nice reflection on what is happening to reading with Common Core. I find the overemphasis on literary nonfiction problematic, unless, the fact that math and history are primarily nonfiction allows literature to remain 60-70% fiction, however, for those schools who just have "reading" in literature (that would be sad), this is going to have issues. This is a great read. "The CCSS mandates that by the end of high school, 70% of what students read should be informational texts -- specifically, complex and non-narrative literary nonfiction. Furthermore, students should be able to identify central ideas and articulate their development, summarize, analyze, draw inferences, identify an author's purpose, evaluate the effectiveness of rhetorical features, and figure out the meaning of words. In short, the CCSS has reclaimed a technique popular in the 1940s, close reading, or sustained interpretation of, in particular, the wording of a text."

" Kristy Cooper's insanely rigorous mixed methods study, Eliciting Engagement in the High School Classroom: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Teaching Practices, published in the April 2014 American Educational Research Journal, does an exceptional job of showing what works. Cooper, an award-winning researcher at Michigan State University with an MA and Ed.D from Harvard, examined the impact of three well-supported strategies that teachers employ to increase student engagement. As you read each summary below, try to guess which practice had the greatest impact." Todd Finley shares the three methods and asks which has the most impact: 1) Lively teaching, 2) Academic Rigor and 3) Connective Instruction. A fantastic must-read on student engagement that you'll want to email your staff.

Starting class and getting over your "stage fright."