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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

This is a very honest, open discussion between educators about why diigo or delicious -- I think the fact we can have this conversation within diigo at all says a lot for the usefulness of the tool. Diigo is an emerging tool for social bookmarking and collective intelligence.

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A great way to get started with technology is to join in an exciting project. this project by Susan Silverman was designed using the principles of Universal Design for Learning. I've heard her present and she is a pro. (Along with my friend Jennifer Wagner.)

Susan Silverman creates excellent projects for global collaboration among elementary students.

What are they? * Each activity can be completed easily in five to fifteen minutes. * Late arriving students can easily join in. * Activities are fun rewarding and educational. Why do them? * Reward and don't punish students who come to class on time. * Encourage punctuality. * Value student time. * "I can't start because there aren't enough students in class yet," is not an acceptable excuse to begin class late. Begin on time with a class starter, so students are immediately stimulated and ready to learn!

I love these views from my student and her use of the term "horizontal" teaching - I think she has inadevertently hit on a very important concept for us teachers to understand. "Everyone has different views, different things they are good at, and different things they know. In a classroom, the teacher used to stand in front of the students, and lecture all day long. Now many of those teachers have started to teach "horizontally". This means that the teacher doesn't necessarily stand in front of her class and lecture, but works with the class, not only teaching them, but allowing them to teach her new things as well. This video gave me different opinions and opened my mind to a flattened world. I agree in many ways with Mr Friedman, because I personally do not learn well by having someone lecture me, it is very easy to get distracted, and by learning horizontally, I can interact with my teacher and classmates, and I feel like I learn so much more, because not only do I pay attention, but the fact that I am interacting, and experiencing what she is teaching helps out a lot."

Love this phrase "horizontal learning"

If you have older kids and want to Mystery Skype - I'd like to start setting some up - tweet me through this Skype profile or via Twitter. I have students at a variety of times -- 5 classes. ;-) Join in and find others!!!! This is for you. Set a goal of how many mystery skype's you'd like to do in your classes. I'd like to do once a month eventually but for now, if I can just get for each class, I'm going to take it from there.

This free powerpoint has 120 ways to start you class including pictures to help with recall. Can be used in any classroom at all grade levels. Cool powerpoint worth having, especially with the holidays coming up. Have interesting ways to start class to hold their attention.

"Starting in the final term before I officially started in September was tough. I wasn't  anticipating having such a full teaching timetable and my own classes were incredibly unsettled. I found it difficult to establish myself as an average science teacher let alone attempt to lead a department. I was seriously considering if I had made the right move! I remember one student in what I thought was a difficult Year 9 class saying "sir why don't you go and get the head of science" to which I replied "I am the head of Science!"."

"Whether you are an experienced teacher, just starting your training, or starting in your own classroom as an NQT for the first time, beginning the year right will make things so much easier for the rest of the year. By now you have probably meet your class(es) and have begun some lessons, but how can you keep that initial momentum going?"

If you want to record your Google hangouts and post to your YouTube channel, you need to get started with "Hangouts on Air." HEre's the page to get you started. Note that Google plus isn't available for Apps for education so you'll need to use your personal or another gmail account with a Google plus profile if you want to record and share your class hangouts.

Nice start for rubrics for 2.0 projects

Educational Origami is a blog, and a wiki, about the integration of ICT into the classroom, this is one of the largest challenges that I feel we as teachers face. Its about 21st Century Learning and 21st Century Teaching. Marc Prensky coined the now popular and famous phrase "Digital natives and digital immigrants" in his two papers on digital Children. We the teachers are the immigrants and our students are the natives, brought up in a world where there has always been computers and the internet, where information is always instant and varied. Our teaching and their learning must reflect this.

Educational Origami is a blog , and a wiki, about 21st Century Learning and 21st Century Teaching.

We combine performance evaluation with a series mastery quizzes to lock in the essential concepts delivered by the tutorials. As an educator you'll have access to performance evaluation and mastery quiz data. You'll have an online record of each student's performance that can be downloaded for data analysis.

I've downloaded this free book with 50 ideas to "meet" your new students. If you don't feel you started well last year or are looking for ideas, this is a book with lots of ideas. Targeted to younger classes but you could get some ideas for older kids.

I've used this site before but as we were talking on my FAcebook page the other day about how to start class, teacher, Donna Browne left this message, "Donna Browne Instead of writing the class agenda on the board, I simply send it as a message to Wifitti. It is easy to do when you are the creator of the screen. I send a message for things I would mention anyway, like upcoming due dates, school events, changes in schedule. The Wifitti screen is projected onto a screen and catches kids eye's as they walk in the door. Since Wifitti only flashes one message at a time, they continue paying attention to see what will pop up next. See one of the screens at http://wiffiti.com/screens/timeline/81606"  Cool idea.

The student blogging challenge starts next week. Here's the page to register your class. Remember, you can choose which challenges to participate in. It's a great way to build an authentic audience for your students!

Attention: 4th and 5th Grade Teachers Starting February 1, 2010, join @ewitt43 as he invites you and your class on a reading adventure with classes from around the country. They will be discussing and reading the story "The Invention of Hugo Cabret." It is an amazing story that takes the students on an adventure of over 500 pages of words and illustrations. He does this as a read aloud and the students will be answering the questions on the blog on their own so they can communicate with other students of similar age.

Supercool School is a system that allows you to coordinate and hold live and interactive online classes. The process starts by creating a request for a class and specifying what you would like to learn. Other users can then join these requests by browsing through the request list, or by being invited by their friends. Once a request is full, the teacher seat opens.