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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

USA resource Thinkfinity.org makes it easy for educators to enhance their classroom instruction with lesson plans, interactive activities and other online resources. Thinkfinity.org also provides a wealth of educational and literacy resources for students, parents and after-school programs. All of Thinkfinity.org's 55,000 standards-based K-12 lesson plans, student materials, interactive tools and reference materials are reviewed by the nation's leading education organizations to ensure that content is accurate, up-to-date, unbiased and appropriate for students.

While most teachers will not understand what this means, an API is something that lets other websites interact with a main website. OpenEd has released an API to allow others to interact with their resources and find things based on standards or keywords. What this means is that OpenEd is going to be a very useful tool for all of education in the future because of this technological tool. It also means that if you're developing for a state or for an organization that provides educational resources, you should tap into this for a huge repository of almost a quarter of a million standards aligned resources that your teachers can search. This is great news.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND CLASSROOM MATERIALS TO SUPPORT THE STUDY OF WORLD HISTORY Bridging World History is organized into 26 thematic units along a chronological thread. Materials include videos, an audio glossary and a thematically-organized interactive. There are so many more ways to study history than looking at simply military, nation-state analysis. This site  addresses other tools historians use to investigate world history, such as the frameworks of geography and chronology. A geographical area can be used to explore commonalities across political borders to discover the effect of trade, disease, and migration. Included in this unit are readings, resources, maps, audio clips, a video to watch, as well as a transcript of the video. Pertinent questions and activities are also provided. There are so many more ways to study history than looking at simply military, nation-state analysis. This site  addresses other tools historians use to investigate world history, such as the frameworks of geography and chronology. A geographical area can be used to explore commonalities across political borders to discover the effect of trade, disease, and migration. Included in this unit are readings, resources, maps, audio clips, a video to watch, as well as a transcript of the video. Pertinent questions and activities are also provided.

Gooru is a free platform for students and teachers to access standards-based online resources in organized "playlists" for learning. Created by a Google employee, it's run by a nonprofit group called Ednovo. Students can access "ClassBooks"-collections of textbooks, videos, and assessments-on any topic, and they can interact with their peers and teachers while studying. Teachers can search for standards-aligned web resources organized into "ClassPlans," which they can customize and share with the larger community. In short, educators can use the site to search and teach, while students can use it to search and study; the website's tagline is "learning is social."

Thinklink has made some upgrades for teachers. There is an improved student sign up, the ability to organize students by class. You can create image "channels" and interactive albums and you can have a more safe way to find images and use them. I recorded a session on my podcast this week about UDL and Beth Ritter-Guth highly recommends Thinglink to use with students.

Interactivate is a suite of fifty-nine interactive mathematics assessments. These assessments allow users to track their percentage of correct and incorrect responses on each activity. Most assessments are designed for individual use although there are some activities that can be used by multiple users. Interactivate is produced by the non-profit organization

Business people and management should read this article about the transformation of business by using workplace communities. "Workplace communities are designed to solve workplace-related challenges" -- they focus on tasks. I would find it interesting to see a business REALLY use technology to change things. Having the business in a business network (OK a NING) and let people tag their posts with the business related PROBLEMS they are having and blog, video, or photograph it-- the tag cloud would tell the business IMMEDIATELY what the problems are in the company. The problem with this model is that there are few corporate executives who REALLY want to know the problems within their organizations. They don't want to be problem solvers, just opportunity creators. However, when managers open their eyes (and I'm a former General Manager myself) and see that two things give business opportunity: problem solving and innovation. And they are directly related. True innovation solves problems. Read this article and think about how you may solve problems using the networks you may now create. If you don't want everyone to know, keep it private and only allow people in your company in.

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

Web 2.0 tools and interactive learning sites organized by subjects. Also includes Teacher Tools and Specials subjects.

The students read what is supposed to be typed on each page of the website. A step by step description of the parts of the letter is very nicely organized. It includes the heading, salutation, body, closing, signature and postscript. All are needed to finish the letter. The student can then choose the border and have the option of emailing, printing or saving their letters.

Very interesting app if you're using Edmodo and have ipads. Here's what it will do as per the company who contacted me: "It's a versatile mapping tool for creating timelines, and an assessment platform for Edmodo users.     myHistro Extended in a nutshell.  - What makes it better than other apps out there? Its comprehensive digital archive with stories created by historians. An unique way of generating tests. Hassle free and easy grading system and evaluation of students' answers." MAny teachers are using Edmodo and Timelines are important prewriting and graphic organizing tools. I'm very fascinated to see how this works and will see if there is someone out there using it so we can link to it from my blog.  - Who's it for? Teachers. First and foremost History, Social Studies and Geography teachers. And for everyone else, who are looking for innovative ways teaching their subjects through dynamic storytelling.   - What is the coolest feature? Generating tests with a few clicks. Removing the location, time, description or/and the title from all the public stories, and forming it into tests. 

Thinking Blocks is a suite of learning tools designed to help students solve math word problems accurately and efficiently. Using brightly colored blocks, students model mathematical relationships and identify known and unknown quantities. The model provides students with a powerful image that organizes information and simplifies the problem solving process. By modeling increasingly complex word problems, students develop strong reasoning skills which will facilitate the transition from arithmetic to algebra.

Article about how people look at web pages.

As you design web pages for use with your students -- do you wonder why they don't sometimes SEE what you're putting in front of them -- it is because of eye movement. It is design!!! This paper writes about the effect of website design on eye movement. Those who are desigining online curriculum need to understand this. My sister, Sarah, has been an onlien professor for Savannah College of Art and Design for a while, ,and this is something she talks about in her courses and shares with me. This is why I emphasize wiki layout and design w/ my students (like having a table of contents and white space.) If it is not attractive, it just doesn't exist, because it IS NOT READ! Educators will do well to remember that!

Digital Vaults gives you and your kids a place to find raw materials that are arranged in ways that may make more sense to them. The site is set up a bit like a social network. Data is organized by tags and linked to both the tags as well as other resources. Like a social network, you can make your favorites documents / materials your "friends," search for new "friends" by using tags and create "mashups" using primary sources.

Fabulous resource for Primary Sources! Very interactive.

Digital archives 2010

free mind mapping & collaborative site

Multimedia online note taking tool. Students can capture screen images, make audio recordings for notes, or write text notes to accompany drawings. These different media can then be organized into videos!  I envision it being similar to Evernote with more interaction capabilities and with the great addition of being able to create videos of the information gathered. I like this tool!

make screencasts and save as wmv, free