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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

Two Million Minutes (Running time: 54 minutes) THE DOCUMENTARY Regardless of nationality, as soon as a student completes the 8th grade, the clock starts ticking. From that very moment the child has approximately - …Two Million Minutes until high school graduation…Two Million Minutes to build their intellectual foundation…Two Million Minutes to prepare for college and ultimately career…Two Million Minutes to go from a teenager to an adult

My friend Karyn Romeis in England has done a nice job of sharing two perspectives of the flat world. Verdict -- we have a long way to go!

Two views of the flat classroom.

This is a tough one and I've had two or three this year who will call out - in a disruptive way. Sometimes it is when I'm speaking. I have one great class that causes me to struggle because of several who have a bit of a problem with knowing the appropriate time to engage (not in the middle of a question or when someone else is talking.) I encourage kids to have a pencil and paper or a tablet in  hand to jot down notes of what they want to say - sometimes they are afraid they'll forget. Other times, when it is class discussion, I use poker chips. Each student gets two. When they want to interject, they spend their chip. Every student must participate twice before anyone can have a third input. It is a daily grade and so easy to assess b/c everyone must give up their chips.  This article takes it much further and is a good one if you're struggling with this. "Namely, how do you deal with a student who, despite receiving consequence after consequence, continues to call out in class? Before we get to the solution, it's important to note that there are times during a normal school day when you may want to allow your students to respond to you or their fellow classmates without raising their hand"

Two New Free Games! Just in time for the Holiday Season - two brand new games! Test-N-Teach (TNT) is our new spelling game and Read-A-Word is our first-ever reading game. Both games are available to everyone!

Yes, taking pictures and recording videos are two of the biggest uses of Google glass. I think disclosure is going to be the issue, while you do have to speak to it, does it have a light to show others around you that you are, indeed, filming.  "Once you wake up Google Glass, you see the time (in rather large type) and "Okay Glass" right underneath it. That's your control command. I found that I could yell or whisper this and Google Glass sprang into action. It did have trouble in some noisy areas, but most of the time, I could get Glass' attention and then get something done. The two most obvious options, and the ones you'll likely use the most, are "Take a picture" and "Record a video." The former captures a relatively sharp 5-megapixel image. The second grabs just 10 second of 720 p video (that's the default; you can change it in settings). You can see some of the video I captured with Google Glass below."

I love how Nathan Gray (@maccprincipal on Twitter) shares small, short snippets of what he is thinking and what he wants for his school. Whatever your thoughts are about what he shares here, this is a great example for principals to see. This principal shares about once every two months a small paragraph or two about what he is thinking and what he wants for the school. It is enough that I could read it and get a feel for who he is as a person. If a parent needs to interview anyone for a school it is the principal. So much flows from the front office into the classroom. Great best practice.

Two studies were released in an attempt to "quantify the benefits of mobile technology in education and the infrastructure needed..." In these students students had tablets and Internet access at home and at school. Of course, I'm not sure that it is tablet computers that give benefits, Internet access, cloud computing, or a combination, but I'm sure these studies will be touted by many far and wide. Of course, remember if they had strapped the tablets to the kid''s back and hadn't used them - they would have had lower scores. All improvement is all in how technology is being USED to teach. "The studies put Android tablets in the hands of students and their teachers in two schools - eighth-graders at Stone Middle School in Fairfax County Public Schools and fifth-graders at Falconer Elementary School in Chicago Public Schools - and provided wireless access to the students both in school and away from school. (The devices were HTC Evo tablets.) Researchers then followed the students' activities over the course of a year, with the aim of evaluating "how access to these devices for communication with teachers and classmates increases comfort with technology, extends the learning day, and allows students to develop digital citizenship skills within a safe and secure learning environment.""

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.""

Two-year programs offered by junior and community colleges are quicker and less expensive than four-year programs. Contrary to popular belief, the path to advancement does not always travel through a bachelor or master's degree program. Two-year associate degrees are more convenient because most offer part-time, evening, weekend, and online classes. This convenience provides advantages for those who have full-time jobs, especially adults with families.

JUst in my inbox - a new bookmarking site for academics. My name is Andrew Cullison. I'm an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Fredonia. I just launched a social bookmarking site for academics, and you seem like someone who might be interested in playing around with it. You can check out the site here - http://www.sympoze.com I love social bookmarking sites like Digg, but I was always disappointed with the academic content that was promoted. I thought it would be great if there were a site like Digg that only allowed academic philosophers to vote up links. That way, I would know that the philosophy content that was voted up would definitely be up my alley. So two years ago, I started that site. Just two days ago, I expanded the site to all areas of academia. We are in beta testing now, but the idea is to eventually set everything up so that grad students and professors only vote up links in their area or a variety of general interest categories. It should be a quick and easy way for academics to find out what is popular in their area with their professional peers.

crash two cars, change mass, velocity, bumper material two dimentions

From Alfred Thompson, my favorite Microsoft Computer Science blogger -- "I was asked to pass along the news that the submission deadline for the June 17th Alice Symposium call for papers has been extended to March 31st. You can of course go to that website to find out more about the symposium and register to attend. There are also some other workshops going on at Duke in June. I understand that they are filling up quite quickly so if you're interested you'll want to sign up soon. Duke in June 2009 * Two-day Alice 3.0 Workshop June 15-16, 2009 * Two-day CompMedia Workshop June 18-19, 2009 * One-week Alice Workshops * June 22-26, 2009 * June 28-July 2, 2009"

Using an online calculator to find great circle distances between two points on Earth.

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.

Back in 2006, when I was 24, my life was cozy and safe. I had just been promoted to associate editor at the publishing house where I'd been working since I graduated from college, and I was living with my boyfriend, Henry, and two cats in a grubby but spacious two-bedroom apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I spent most of my free time sitting with Henry in our cheery yellow living room on our stained Ikea couch, watching TV. And almost every day I updated my year-old blog, Emily Magazine, to let a few hundred people know what I was reading and watching and thinking about.

One Nut and Two Boys : Moral Stories : Short Stories : Animal Stories

"Last week, we had a welcome evening for the new staff joining DBIS at the start of this academic year, and as I was sharing a glass of wine and chatting to our newly arrived teachers, I realised that just two short years ago, it was me who was the newbie; just landed in Hong Kong and starting to settle in my new country and starting to get to know my new school."

I'm embarrassed to admit, but two weeks ago I didn't even know anything about  Angry Birds. It looks like this addicting little game has been around for a while. I know … Where have I been? I guess I've been spending time with a less angry little bird … I'm really not the angry type! I guess I see Twitter as better use of my time and professional collaborative learning than shooting birds out of a slingshot. A casual conversations with my hairdresser a few weeks ago about the game led to a quick demonstration on her phone. Another reference came last Friday while attending a session on Instructional Coaching for principals. Some areas that Instructional Coaches can assist schools with are referred to as the Big Four: Classroom Management, Content, Instruction, and Formative Assessment. While the presenters facilitated dialogue around the topic of formative assessment the analogy was made to video gaming; and specifically Angry Birds. This piqued my curiosity.

Have a bookmarked this before--these two bloggers are great. Have a book being published by Heinemann.