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Great article about the partnership between University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and our latest Flat Classroom Project, NetGenEd. This sort of arrangement in which preservice teachers served as expert advisors and judges for the project provided real, authentic learning experiences for both students and participants. We skyped into Eric's classroom a few times to talk to his students about pedagogy and they did a great job providing feedback and input on the project. It would make sense that many more preservice programs are going to want to put in authentic distance learning experiences for their preservice teachers and there are many teachers who need high quality feedback and educator review and interaction for their projects.

As former elementary science and math education professor, I was always encouraging preservice teachers to teach science and math from a hands-on, minds-on perspective. My goal was single minded in the sense that for students to learn science and math their curiosity must peaked. This was always a challenge because most of these preservice teachers learned science and math by rote memorization of facts. Their prior knowledge and experience had few opportunities to actually investigate science phenomena and truly understand the usefulness of math.

This is a fascinating conversation about connecting, symbiotic relationships and more with some powerful, spot on answers. The teachers in our current Flat Classroom 12-1 cohort are amazing (and we have another cohort starting soon -- here's what we've been talking about this week. "This is happening now. Live Mocha and other sites have tandem learning - each learner teaches the other a different language. In my classroom, I have the older students teach younger students about computer hardware. But we could be doing so much more. Some professors like Dr. Leigh Zeitz (his students have served as expert advisors) and Dr. Eva Brown (her students helped run Eracism last year) are flattening their college classrooms with preservice teachers by having the teachers connect with high school and younger classrooms. These preservice teachers are understanding the nuances of the global collaborative classroom before graduating from college! There are so many ways we could be creating these types of learning relationships. This week, let's publicly talk about our ideas and also experiences in creating these experiences. We can learn more and do more in this area and technology opens up limitless possibilities. What do you think?"

New website set to share information between preservice teachers.

Site for preservice teachers

A look at predicting success of teachers in education. Makes some interesting comments on teacher preparation, merit pay, and the effect of good teachers.

Part three of our New Teacher Boot Camp: Boot Campers are playing with this powerful drag-and-drop storytelling tool this week.