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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

Guidance counselors and principals should read this article - not to share and tout as a defense of bullying for there is no defending meanness ever - not among adults and definitely not among children. However, it is time to de-escalate the frantic misreporting and hysteria that some are causing on the topic of bullying and suicide. Suicide is horrible and often the person who commits suicide is bullied -- here's a quote from the article that I thought was telling. This would be worth discussing with those who can maturely see the balance that is called for here and again, not to use it to excuse atrocious behavior. "Reporters are often reacting to other misinformed authorities.  For example, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd explained to reporters that he arrested two girls (one 12, the other 14) in Sedwick's death, after seeing a callous social media post from one of the girls, "We can't leave her out there, who else is she going to torment? Who else is she going to harass? Who is the next person she verbally and mentally abuses and attacks?" While it's a great quote, it implies that this girl has the ability, through random meanness, to inspire others to commit suicide. "Everything we know about unsafe reporting is being done here - describing the method(s), the simplistic explanation (bullying = suicide), the narrative that bullies are the villains and the girl that died, the victim," Wylie Tene, the public relations manager for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, wrote in an email to me. "She (the victim) is almost portrayed as a hero. Her smiling pictures are now juxtaposed with the two girls' mug shots. Her parents are portrayed as doing everything right, and the other girls parents did everything wrong and are part of the problem. This may be all true, and it also may be more complicated.""

As a mother of a daughter who is applying to Georgia Tech in Computer Science, this is important. My daughter's life was changed when I had her use Kodu in class, write a program and win an NCWIT award. She was on a panel with Sylvia Martinez at ISTE about encouraging more girls into STEM and really realized that she liked Computer Science and would at least try it as a major. She said until she saw people talk about it and realized she could code, she had no idea that it was something she could do and like. Girls who code is a group that works to encourage girls to enter computing fields.

Hi Vicki. It's been my experience that students (boys and girls) who are exposed to programming in elementary school and then have it as part of the school IT curriculum are far more likely to stay the course through to high school and beyond. Some of my best programmers at Middle School have been Gr. 6 girls, a few of whom continued on to complete AP level programming, undergrad and graduate work in Comp Sci. Papert's work with LOGO pointed the way, ALICE and Scratch are there to play. Just need to keep programming in the curriculum so that students (boys and girls) know that it's a valued academic skill and not just a preserve for hobbiests and tinkerers.

Excited to see Discovery work with an incredible nonprofit, Girls Inc to bring STEM to girls. Now THIS Is something with a lot of potential. Girls INc is a great organization that I worked with here in Albany (yes, back in the 90 - has been a while) but I was always impressed with their programs. Excited to watch this develop.

"Asking young girls to "do science" leads them to show greater persistence in science activities than does asking them to "be scientists," finds a new psychology study by researchers at New York University and Princeton University. "Describing science as actions, by saying 'let's do science,' leads to more science engagement than does describing science in terms of identities, by asking them to 'be scientists'" explains Marjorie Rhodes, an associate professor in NYU's Department of Psychology and the senior author of the study, which appears in the journal Psychological Science. "These effects particularly hold for children who are the target of stereotypes suggesting that they might not be the kind of person who succeeds in science-in this case, girls," she adds."

New research published in the journal Science confirms what all of us teachers have known for a long time: girls are just as smart as boys. I hope none of our tax dollars went into that one. A quick quote from the article before I get into the more interesting findings from the researchers: Overall, the researchers found "no gender difference" in scores among children in grades two through 11. Among students with the highest test scores, the team did find that white boys outnumbered white girls by about two to one. Among Asians, however, that result was nearly reversed. Hyde says that suggests that cultural and social factors, not gender alone, influence how well students perform on tests.

The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued.

"In our school this year, we are focusing on raising the attainment of boys in relation to their female peers. This is by no means anything new; the gender gap is an entity that has plagued school results for as long as I can remember (and probably long before that). I should say that our boys perform better than national averages, but do not perform as well as the girls. You might be sat there in the same position. You've got an interesting situation in your school, where girls are outperforming boys, it features prominently on your School Improvement Plan (SIP), and you've read all the new books on the subject etc."

Girls who play video games are three times more likely to choose physical science, technology, engineering or maths (PSTEM) degrees compared to their non-gaming counterparts, according to new research from the University of Surrey

"New research from Monash University has found that girls in single-sex schools are more likely to study chemistry, intermediate mathematics, advanced mathematics and physics in their senior years when compared to their co-ed counterparts."

"A major study into maths attainment has found that boys and girls perform equally in the subject, dispelling long-held myths around gender and education. The first UK-wide research of its kind for 13 years was carried out by Keith Topping, Professor of Educational and Social Research at the University of Dundee, and education assessment company Renaissance found differences in maths attainment between girls and boys to be almost negligible. The study also found that regular and high-quality maths practice improves outcomes across the board and that primary pupils outperformed secondary students, with better attainment scores."

I've been learning somethign new this week. On Tuesday nights, I 'd noticed the #gno hashtag floating around. It stands for Girls night out (although I've seen men participate) and I was asked to be a part of it tomorrow night. I wanted to learn how to host a twitter panel and do this, so here we are. Here is the information on how to do it. On Wednesday night, I and some friends are going to experiment with this to share some tools for teachers at http://edutweetpanel.wikispaces.com -- feel free to join in. I think that learning how to do a twitter panel is probably something new to help us comprehend how Twitter works to bring us together in deeper ways than we have thought of before.

The game occurs inside the ecosystem of an estuary on the West Coast of the United States. Following a young girl named Valerie, players interact with Oscar the sea otter and the fictional Claminator, a geoduck clam. To succeed, players must learn about the factors that produce healthy estuaries, food webs, and why estuaries are essential to both ocean life and humans. During the course of the game, students recycle and clean up trash, remove obstructions in waterways, replant the habitat to bring back food webs, and battle pollution monsters to restore Oscar's home

I agree with Audrey Watters -- we need a way to QUESTION TED talks. Good ideas worth spreading are worth interrogating and discussing. There is NO platform for that and a growing issue, I think that TED MUST address if it is going to live long and prosper. Good educators, good leaders always question and are curious. We try things out and we wonder. We want solutions but solutions packaged in a cute 15 minute presentation aren't ever really as simple as they seem. There is a different between a sound byte and a bit of something I can REALLY use.  I agree with Audrey - READ her post. My worry is that we're spreading ideas that haven't, perhaps, been tested and gone through full examination. IF we didn't learn anything from the Mortensen "3 cups of tea" fiasco then education deserves to be mislead again. We should examine and have transparency with the speeches and be able to continue the conversation. "But I have questions. I have questions about this history of schooling as Mitra (and others) tell it, about colonialism and neo-colonialism. I have questions about the funding of the initial "Hole in the Wall" project (it came from NIIT, an India-based "enterprise learning solution" company that offers 2- and 4-year IT diplomas). I have questions about these commercial interests in "child-driven education" (As Ellen Seitler asks, "can the customer base be expanded to reach people without a computer, without literacy, and without any formal teaching whatsoever?"). I have questions about the research from the "Hole in the Wall" project - the research, not the 15 minute TED spiel about it. I have questions about girls' lack of participation in the kiosks. I have questions about project's usage of retired British schoolteachers - "grannies" - to interact with Indian children via Skype. I have questions about community support. I have questions about what happens when we dismantle public institutions like schools - questions about

I met a girl working at GameStop who is a college student. She was furiously working with a somewhat beat up Galaxy Tab. I talked to her about what she used and she said that Handy Notes ROCKED. She got her Caseen stylus and showed me what she was doing and I loved it. She said that she had a whole semester's worth of notes. She took notes in this and went back to her dorm and printed off the notes so she could highlight and study them but that when she needed to review, she could. I have to admit, I was quite envious. There are some classes I took that I'd love to have in evernote. If you use a Droid, I'd recommend trying out handy notes. This is a link to the app review on Android Authority.

I love this conversation from Natasha Devon, body image expert and recovered bulimic. Please read to help get inside the mind of what we're dealing with here and the messages from media (particularly to girls) about how we "should" look, "should" behave, and "should" be so we can be happy and live good lives. So much of it is manufactured unattainable hogwash, but still many of us (including me) struggle with self esteem issues that come from the fact that we aren't the "type" of person we see in the media who is a "popular" person. Criticize as you will, but it is reality for many of us. From Natasha: "I have one hour to convey the message that inspired my business, Gossip School; just one hour to emphasise the importance of self-esteem, to give these young people the tools to recognise negative messages from the media and to convince them that it is OK to be themselves, however they look."

Yet another reason to use YouTube. PBS Math Club has a Youtube channel with topics such as "Adding Negative Numbers: Mean Girls and Darth Vader" and What is an integer?" It is important to give teachers access to YouTube even if you block it from student use. Think of it as free cable where you determine the time for everything to be shown.

Receiving a Georgia award for the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing changed my daughter's life. She could see herself in a STEM field and has applied to go to Georgia Tech and several other schools in Computer Science. If you have a girl in your school who has done some cool things with technology. APPLY!!! It is a great program. You can win $500 and a laptop if you receive a national award.

Some students believe they are entitled to grades just for showing up, according to new research, especially if they are paying for their education (like college or private school). On this Radio show at the BAM Radio Network hosted by RAE Pica, she talked with researchers, an anonymous teacher, and I had a small reflection from my own experience about entitlement. It was a fun show to record and is pretty short.