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Indexed list of highly rated lesson plans at all age levels by the curators at TES for studying about teh events of the Titanic along with articles and videos.

Educurious™ is on a mission to reduce our nation's high school dropout rates. Our project-based curriculum connects students to real issues they care about and equips them with the lifelong learning skills for success. Our courses deliver on Common Core Standards via our web platform, which fosters collaboration among students, teachers and our global network of real-world Experts.

This sort of thing strikes fear in the heart of every administrator. So, I let them customize their lessons and they come up with word problems about how many times a slave would be beaten in a minute at a certain rate. It is offensive on so many levels but also because we see an uproar over slavery in words (in this worksheet) but not in deeds. Fact is, there are 29 million slaves in the world today, more than ever in history and they are being beaten and forced to work. We don't see an uproar over that and we should. Both the worksheet and the bigger problems deserve attention.

Looks like Mayor Bloomberg needs to watch the Dan Pink ted talk I shared here a couple of days a go. The higher the stakes and the more complex the problem, the worse effect a large monetary incentive has. Be ready for New York cheating scandals. That is a lot of pressure and will also incent teachers to find students that will do better. It also will put the method that they will use to rate people "highly effective" in the spotlight. This is sure to cause some resentment in the ranks. The easy solution is to throw money at it, but they don't realize that it is also the wrong solution if you look at the research on motivation.

"The old-fashioned practice of rating instructors by watching them teach is tricky, labor-intensive, potentially costly and subjective - but perhaps the best way to help them improve, according to a study released Friday by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation... "And the observers, typically the school principal, frequently don't know what to look for anyway. "The best way to evaluate teachers, while also helping them improve, is to use several measures - including data-based methods that rely on students' standardized test scores, along with an updated teacher observation system, the report found.

List of tech tools organized by learning goals and then rated by usefulness and ease-of-use.

Listen up: nothing is ever free! If you're gong to take a MOOC or other course, you have far less accountability and must have far more discipline. Maybe paying for college classes is more paying for someone to hold your feet to the fire. But the failure rate in these MOOCs is atrocious. If you look at the cost per passing student, it might just be back up there at the regular credit price. Nothing, I repeat NOTHING is free and that ESPECIALLY includes education. Read this article and discuss. What do you think, what is the place for MOOCs? (If you write on your blog, please leave a link in the comments so others can see.)

This app converts study notes to speech. This might be an app that some of you are interested in trying out for your special needs students. "OutlinesOutloud takes the sting out of studying by converting your study outlines to spoken audio. Super-flexible playback controls let you vary speech rate; jump forward and backward with ease, skip rows or whole sections, loop-and more!"

This game scores a 19 out of 30 and is a fantastic way to teach students to find the equation of the line slope intercept form. It is highly rated by students and educators. Look at the review to see if it fits your classroom. The game is browser based.

A school receiving e-rate funds must now: "'(iii) as part of its Internet safety policy is educating minors about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking websites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying awareness and response.'."

Google reader - is it next?

As Google shuts down unprofitable services, this thought that they'll shut down Google Reader - my trusty and favorite RSS reader just sends chills down my spine - I use it to generate my reader lists on my blogs. I have to question that Google is not looking at the affect of what we call "penetration rate" into the services people use - if they push us to ZohoNotebook (which is what they've done) and force us to another reader, what else will we start using. Just thought Google was going in the right direction with things and now... well, they just seem to be pooping lots of parties.

Thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars.

Named a top website in education, academic earth aggregates open content of all kinds into courses. Of the best use, I think, are the ratings that let you see the best lectures, etc. To subscribe to the best lectures in your field as a sort of podcast would be powerful.

There are some GREAT books on Emotional intelligence, but Debra Sanborn, Program Director at Iowa State University, is using an emotional intelligence assessment as part of the "toolbox of assessments that she relies upon for identifying issues challening students in the first weeks of college." She says that EQ has an 85% predictor rate of success in college. The EQ-i assesses 5 aras: interpersonal, intrapersonal, stress management, adaptability and general mood." Who is using this in high school? I read a book on this to help my two kids with learning disabilities but if there is a test or profile that would help us with these kids - to develop emotional intelligence, then we should do it. Life success is SO MUCH MORE than test scores! Hate that we have to have a "test" to measure this one - although the result is more an indicator of a person's behavior, albeit self-reported.

Is there a link between air pollution and student performance in K-12 schools? That's what University of Michigan researchers said they hope to discover as they embark on a three-year research project to determine correlations between air quality and performance benchmarks like absenteeism, test scores, and dropout rates.

Information about paying people to pass ap tests.

Paying kids to pass the AP test isn't working... but those supporting it say give it time. In some ways, money is the easy answer. But money doesn't solve problems when you have a child who has low self esteem. A child who is beaten every night isn't going to want to learn more during the day for a one time incentive... they feel trapped. Although the average improved (there were more "5's") - the overall pass rate declined slightly -- but more tests were taken. I am glad that people are willing to put money into trying new things, but sometimes I think teachers are left out of the equation. If we look at brain rules, improving the family life of kids and making sure they get more sleep are two of the most beneficial things we could to improve test scores.

Website that sends you children's books in return for reviews from librarians and teachres.

Website which will send you free books and asks the school and library professionals to rate the children's books. This is a great opportunity for those who are strapped for cash.

yWriter is a free, highly rated, novel writing program that I found through a very complimentary review in PC Magazine. It is for the PC. Just save your file as an RTF with chapter headings and it will import right into ywriter.

This fascinating tool for writing novels has other applications for writing books with chapters.

Where blogosphere meets twittersphere from the makers of Technorati -- just when you thought Technorati was irrelevant that old authority rating comes back -- time to make sure you're pinging technorati again!

Pirates of Somalia Somali pirates continue their attacks against international ships in and around the Gulf of Aden, despite the deterrent of stepped-up international naval escorts and patrols - and the increased failure rate of their attacks. Under agreements with Somalia, the U.N, and each other, ships belonging to fifteen countries now patrol the area. Somali pirates - who have won themselves nearly $200 million in ransom since early 2008 - are being captured more frequently now, and handed over to authorities in Kenya, Yemen and Somalia for trial. Collected here are some recent photos of piracy off the coast of Somalia, and the international efforts to rein it in. (30 photos total)

2009, Tasmanian educators shared ideas on free software for education. A list of useful software was assembled and an online survey was developed. Iinterested educators began to rate the free tools, and new suggestions were added. Finally, after several weeks, a list of the "Top 10" free tools for education had emerged based on rankings by Australian teachers. And so, colleagues, to the top 15 (there were several cases where the difference in votes was too close to call, so the 10 became 15)