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Must read letter over at Edweek from a mom of one child who died at Sandy Hook and one who survived... if you want to be affirmed and remember why you teach, this is the post you should share with everyone. "Your courage will support students who are left out and overlooked, like the isolated young man who killed my daughter. At some point he was a young, impressionable student, often sitting all alone at school. You will have kids facing long odds for whom your smile, your encouraging word, and your willingness to go the extra mile will provide the comfort and security they need to try again tomorrow. When you Google "hero," there should be a picture of a principal, a school lunch worker, a custodian, a reading specialist, a teacher, or a bus monitor. Real heroes don't wear capes. They work in America's schools. "When I asked my son's teacher why she returned, she responded, 'Because they are my kids.' " Being courageous requires faith. It took faith to go back to work at Sandy Hook after the shooting. Nobody had the answers or knew what would come tomorrow, but they just kept going. Every opportunity you have to create welcoming environments in our schools where parents and students feel connected counts."

This post of mine has started being reshared again. It helps you see how you can use wordclouds with just about anything (including surveys.) A Quick tutorial.

I always like to watch people who are very productive and am deleting apps that don't add to my life. As a writer, I'm always looking for new cool apps and have been loving IndexCard for a while when drafting and writing books. Here's a new app called Editorial that has me intrigued along with one of the best posts on any app I've ever seen from the Mac Drifter. It has increased support for text versions in Dropbox, which intrigues me the most.

Remember one thing as you look at these scores - not all students are tested in many countries and in many countries only the brightest go to school. In my opinion, these tests have some serious flaws. For example, I don't play cricket - my scores would be low -- I don't know that I'm so upset about that. While math, science, and reading are important -- standards vary greatly between countries -- so unless we're going to prep for PISA scores. Also on another note -- comparing "Shanghai to nations makes me wonder - I'm sure there are certain cities in the US that would do very well on such a test. Anyway, I want to look deeper, but I think before we rattle cages and get too upset, the report should be looked at deeply but not only the report - but the test. I remember getting upset that my kindergartener scored in the 60th percentile on "environment" only to see that he missed that a judge was supposed to be a guy in a grey wig (who does that) and couldn't identify a subway turnstile (we live in a town of 5,000). Since that time, I always want to see the test. Lots of people will be talking about this so look at it and be prepared to answer questions. This is the post from Aljazeera so you can see what other countries are saying about the report. "Asian countries have topped the rnakings in a global education report which evaluates the knowledge and skills of 15 and 16-year-olds around the world. The report by Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), published on Tuesday, shows that children from Asian nations continue to outshine their western counterparts in maths, science and reading. The city of Shanghai topped the table in the three-yearly reported which tested more than 510,000 students in 65 countries. Children in Shanghai were, on average, the equivalent of nearly three years of schooling ahead of the majority of nations tested."

Awesome gifs and animations that are truly an inspiration and gift to teachers everywhere. I love this post from Buzzfeed about the great teachers. Some ring true and others are just kind of funny, but underneath it all is is how the teacher makes the student FEEL that counts. And you can't count that on a test. Enjoy and share.

NASA mars scientists posted at 1:30 pm on 9/28/2015 just a few hours after it was announced that liquid water was found on MARS -- that they would be answering questions on Reddit. This is a cool thread. yet another reason to join Reddit.

It is so helpful when people leave comments on blog posts to point out more great resources. Kathy Shrock has an incredible set of resources about infographics on her website. If you're interested in using infographics in your classroom, take a look.

Blog post about how more educators can share ideas and resources online and the tools with which to do it.

Featured Post Scholastic's The First Thanksgiving What it is: Scholastic has amazing resources all year long but the interactive on The First Thanksgiving is topnotch!  Students learn about how the Pilgrims reached America, and what daily life was before the First Thanksgiving.  Students can take a tour of the Mayflower, take the virtual journey to America, compare and contrast modern life with when the Pilgrims lived (housing, clothes, food, chores, school, games), and the Thanksgiving feast.  There is a great slideshow and play a webquest feature where kids can learn more about the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag and the famous harvest feast.  The site includes audio for every page and activity.  This is great for younger students. How to integrate Scholastic's The First Thanksgiving into the classroom: The First Thanksgiving is a collection of great activities for students to learn about Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims.  Students can use this site independently as young as first grade because of the audio features on The First Thanksgiving.  The site can be used as a center activity that a few students can explore together, independently in the computer lab setting, or as a whole class with a projector or interactive whiteboard.  The webquest at the end of the activity checks for student understanding with a quiz.  Increase students participation further with some The First Thanksgiving bonus features and extras.  Print out a Thanksgiving Readers theater, door signs, a fact hunt, a vocabulary quiz, and some letters from historical figures.  There are also research and historical fiction journals that students can continue learning with.  These range from a Plymoth Colony research starter to Our America: Colonial period. Tips: Check out Scholastic's Teaching resources for The First Thanksgiving as well as the literature connections that are available. Leave a comment and share how you are using The First Thanksgiving  in your classroom. Read More

...one phrase I saw in those documents some 20 years ago stuck with me. Reflective Practitioner. I sort of understood the concept but other than simply thinking about what you did in the classroom, I wasn't at all sure what to do with this term. PS. The only people allowed to criticize or challenge this idea are people who have blogged for at least one year and written at least 50 posts. The rest of you can ask questions but you can't dismiss it.

Great post from Cathy Nelson that I agree with so very much! "If an assignment can be plagiarized it isn't a very good assignment" theme that Doug Johnson and Will Richardson also echo.

This is an absolutely incredible blog post regarding the influx of stimulus money for 21st century classrooms and how it will (or won't) impact student learning without attention paid to instructional practices.

Publish2's Editorial Director Tammi Marcoullier reflects on her own experience with being plagiarized while blogging for The Washington Post and wonders whether placing more value on link journalism could help with the problem of plagiarism among journalists. Check it out at the Publish2 Blog.

New posts-my kids are in it, so I wanted everyone to meet them!

Perspective on blogging.

I really enjoyed reading Mike Sansone's blog post about Wallflowers and how they are part of the conversation. He has a great way of putting this. I think it is a good read for those trying to understand blogging and social media.

Great post on what it means to be a writer!

Strawpoll in twitter

Using a program called strawpoll to play with twitter polls. This makes it very useful. I'm going to include this on a blog post -- fascinating tool.

Loonyhiker has a MUST read post about a child who was in gifted programs and had a brain trauma and then, was treated by his teachers as being lazy because they couldn't see on the outside that any thing was different. It breaks my heart but is a story to share with people to understand the brain. Don't automatically assume a child is lazy, understand that the brain is something you cannot see and learning disabilities, ADHD, and brain issues are tough to understand.

Great thoughts from Pat (loony hiker) about a child that helps us better understand learningdisabilities.

Website recommended by Bob Sprankle for keeping up with the 5 things you accomplished today - see his blog post (also linked here) for how he uses it.

Interesting blog post on the time it takes to be involved in different types of social media.