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"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

Estie Cuellar from Texas has a dream to take nine of her students to the conference. While many of us have raised our money from private donors, Estie is located at a school with many underserved children from families in poverty. I have pledged to do what I can to help her spread the word about her situation. She has scholarships for four of her students to pay their conference fees, however, all schools must raise money for their own airfare. This is a great cause and I hope that there are some people out there who believe in the vision of representing ALL of our society here in America at a conference which plans to turn conferences upside down -- working hard to give students a meaningful place alongside the educators who will be attending the leadership strand of the conference. Julie and I dream of writing a book to fund this conference in the future, but for now, we have to do it all the hard way ( a lot of pavement pounding and hard work.)

"As teachers, one of the biggest challenges that we face in the classroom is students who give up. 'I can't do it', 'It's too hard', 'I dunno'. We spend hours planning a lesson that could stretch and challenge our students, only to find that they don't want to be stretched and challenged because it's too much like hard work. Where do we go from here? How do we make sure that we are molding our learners to be Hobnobs rather than Rich Teas?"

If you're not already using Dropbox - you should. They had a developer conference and will likely end up everywhere in every app. Some very cool things coming. Just like Evernote - who has a powerful "trunk" features where developer work is showcased - Dropbox is going to find that opening up to development opens a whole new marketplace and ingenuity beyond what they have in house.  Some info from the wired article.  "But after all that single-mindedness, Houston and Ferdowsi now want to let their baby sing. Today, at Dropbox's first-ever developers conference, the company is officially launching a new set of coding tools designed to push Dropbox into every corner of your digital life. Not content to stay sequestered inside the box, the company's co-founders are unveiling ways for developers to meld their service with every app on every device you own. For the first five or so years of its existence, Dropbox was synonymous with its "magic folder." Save your files in the Dropbox folder on your computer, and they "magically" reappear in your Dropbox apps on your phone and tablet and in your Dropbox account on the web. Now, if developers take to the company's new tools, the service will escape the confines of this folder, fusing with third-party apps running on practically every computer and smartphone operating system. Houston wants Dropbox to become the "spiritual successor to the hard drive." He says the hard drive needs to be replaced because so many of us are doing so much computing on devices that don't fit the traditional paradigm for working with files. Users don't interact with files on iOS, Android, or the web the way they do on PCs. Apps don't have "open" or "save" options that launch a separate window where you tap through a folder tree."

7,000 photos of school lunches are being passed around the Internet. Be aware that your school might be next as this is a hot topic (and has been for years.) Before you know it, you might find that your school has a pic. My school is blessed with amazing lunchroom staff who work hard to serve up great meals. In fact, for their Thanksgiving meal, there are people in town who come to the school to eat it is so good. It is hard with the money they have to make the meals, but we can do better. Delicious lunches are one way to make everyone's day brighter and school to be a place people want to go.

"Spies with surveillance agencies in the United States and United Kingdom may have spent time undercover as orcs and blood elves, infiltrating video games like "World of Warcraft" in a hunt for terrorists "hiding in plain sight" online." I find this very believable for this reason. I had a student in Teen Second life several years a go and he came across a "meeting" of sorts that was obviously something very strange. When he tried to interact with the players they had a way to throw him out and port him other places. It was obviously some sort of strange thing happening. I have no doubt that games are just another way to have "secret" meetings for those who want to hide. That said, it would be hard to tell the difference between those gaming and those doing other things as the games themselves have people plotting and planning so I'm thinking the language used would be hard to separate the real world from the game itself, which, in some ways makes it the perfect way to hide in plain sight.

This powerful infographic shows why it is so hard to find some black boxes in the ocean but also shows the complete and utter power of an infographic. The Washington Post made this one about the downed Korean airliner and the quest to find the black box. Some don't know why it is so hard -- take a dive through this infographic and start to understand. Wow.

Plagiarism, believe it or not, comes from a Latin verb that means, "to kidnap." If you plagiarize you're kidnapping and stealing others' hard work and intellectual property. It is academic and public dishonesty. You wouldn't want someone stealing your hard work, intentionally or even unintentionally, would you? Of course not.

It's a hard job, answering phones and talking to customers for hours at a time. So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company's strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period. After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it's time for what Zappos calls "The Offer." The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: "If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you've worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus." Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!

"Going to the library gives people the same kick as getting a raise does - a £1,359 ($ 2,282) raise, to be exact - according to a study commissioned by the U.K.'s Department for Culture, Media & Sport. The study, which looks at the ways "cultural engagement" affects overall wellbeing, concluded that a significant association was found between frequent library use and reported wellbeing. The same was true of dancing, swimming and going to plays. The study notes that "causal direction needs to be considered further" - that is, it's hard to tell whether happy people go to the library, or going to the library makes people happy. But either way, the immortal words of Arthur the Aardvark ring true: "Having fun isn't hard when you've got a library card!""

And going to the public library is free!

I remain very, very concerned with the notion that all we have to do is let the kids connect with the world.... There's a fallacy there, and my experience with how much really deep teaching of digital ethics we've had to do at SLA to counter all that the kids come in the door thinking about the digital world.

Free online hard drive space-- we may use this to share some files.

As we share files, this virtual hard drive may be cool.

Even more inspirational, here Sandy shares how she worked hard to find a place where students are treated with compassion and inclusion and how she found someone to work with her. She also built onto her house and had surgery on a thyroid tumor. I think that some people think that innovators have it easy and they'll just work when it is easier. Sandy didn't have it easy at all and look at what she's done. I find her reflections so heartwarming and hope some of you will share your stories. We should draw strength from one another.

Drafts is a handy app for those who who use a variety of tools like Evernote and dropbox. For example, you can jot a note and click a button to send it to Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote and more -- (like if you want to save copies of certain tweets, etc. since it is so hard to get things out of Twitter.) I'm not entirely clear on the workflow automation piece of Drafts after watching this video on lifehacker but am going to learn more about this handy app.

Doug Johnson is a great read for his blunt, in your face honesty and his point about how technology companies are trying to differentiate is a great one. I think, however, we should extend this to schools as well. If your school is great, say why, but dissing the competition is no way to compete. If you think your school has no competition, think again. So, read this in light of the arriving and coming competition on the edulandscape and have an honest take on how you should "sell" the virtues of your school. If you can't talk about how great your school is and have to resort to how bad the other one is, prepare for a day when you'll shutter the windows and wonder how they're going to keep the bugs out of your empty building. Wake up and smell the wires burning their way into your student's computers and tablets, great teachers are just a click away and we've all got to learn how to blend and trend our courses, teaching, and to bridge our classrooms to add real value as teachers. It isn't hard as you think but if you just sit and teach like you've always taught, you're setting yourself up for some unpleasant days. You can't do everything but you can do something to improve yourself. Next practices are an important part of your best practice. Always innovate and never settle. Standards are only the beginning, you must have purpose if you're going to be a great teacher. Doug says: "But what I do know that when competitors trash each other, I tend to tune out. And I flat out hate it when I know they are lying - and I will NOT buy from a liar. A salesman recently promoted his video storage service by stating "unlike YouTube, we don't own your movies." That's just not true. (YouTube doesn't own your movies, GoogleApps doesn't own your Docs, CIPA, FERPA, etc. do not ban social media.)"

In the UK, a very large selective authority admits that grammar school pupils favors wealthier children. The test has now caused schools to be warned against using the test because affluence plays a role in the results. Additionally, they imply that because of the influence of affluence that ethnicity is also a factor. Because coaching can have such an impact, and those with more money pay for coaching, it has been discredited. However, one could take this and apply it to the SAT in the US. I'm an SAT coach at my school and those who go through the process and take it seriously, do improve their scores much more. It is hard to remove affluence from influence but I think it is good to get this out on the table and let people know about it.

A great set of videos explaining how various pieces of technology work. See hard drives to touch screen smart phones. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Video%2C+animation%2C+film+%26+Webcams

I have to admit that it was very hard to put into a few short words my thoughts on adaptive learning. I didn't really intend for it to center on the testing piece but I guess that is what the editors thought hadn't already been covered, although I do agree with everything I said on it. Of course, many will say we need much more than testing but I think the big point is that pencil and paper don't cut it. We are wasting time with how we test now and can be much more targeted in terms of what students know and how we can teach. Your thoughts? The biggest thing that bothers me about all these apps is that we have no learning analytics - no feedback loop at all to parents or teachers. I literally have to watch my son play his ipad learning games to really understand where he is and what I need to do to fill things in. 

I wish every leader who runs any meeting would read this post about how to start a meeting on time. It isn't that hard to start meetings on time but it does require STARTING ON TIME. Even when people are late. Please read and apply, as a former manager myself - these tricks work.

Lesson plan to help you cover human slavery. This is hard topic but you cannot blame those who did nothing about slavery in the Civil War if you turn a blind eye to the unpleasantries of our world. This is from the New York Times and I am going to use it with my 9th graders on Monday.