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From September, I am starting a new role. I am going to be a year group leader for year 5. This has come about relatively quickly since my return from mainstream and so I have spent some time over the summer reflecting on my practice and how I am going to develop and inspire the people I work with. One of those people is an NQT. My sister is also starting her first post as an NQT in another school. After speaking on the phone for half an hour this morning, I realised that some of the stuff that I was saying to her is probably some of the stuff that I will be saying to the NQT I will be working with...

Many schemes of professional development for teachers, as well as advanced teaching certificates, include an element of 'Action Research' (AR). In my work as a team leader of EFL tutors, I've come to see just how important AR is for teachers to continue to develop and professionalise their teaching practices. And I'm so enthusiastic about teachers doing research that I want to share some introductory thoughts with a wider audience - with you, my dear blog readers! I hope I can inspire you to start your own AR projects, and would love to hear what you get up to...

We are a happy and stable staff, and my colleagues are a fabulous group of people who look after each other and genuinely care about one another. We have an experienced leadership team, and always aim to take account of how people are feeling and the pressure they are under when trying  new approaches and changes to practice. Even so, it has become more and more clear that workload is becoming untenable and wellbeing is suffering a result. I feel that we have felt obligated at times to put policies in place that seem to be there to collect evidence for Ofsted rather than solely to improve the learning of the children in our care. We want to change this.

"This is a really good way of testing out practical measuring skills in Maths lessons. I always teach 'measuring' by incorporating a Harry Potter themed Potions lesson. Pupils follow potion recipes to create potions from the Harry Potter universe, e.g. Polyjuice Potion or Skele-gro. I have a mixture of powders (cornflour), plants (herbs) and potions (water with food colouring). I then have pipettes, a range of different containers with different scales for measuring liquids, scales for measuring the plants and powders, in addition to gloves for handling the 'poisonous' plants, a pestle and mortar for the plants and stopwatches for timing."

"I have created several posts recently about how Headteachers/Principals, teachers and librarians can work together in order to make a difference to academic attainment. If we are to effect change I do believe it has to come from the top. There are, however, many teachers out there that have never worked alongside a school librarian and have no idea what we can do for them or their students and we need to find a way to change this ourselves too. Which teacher would say no to free help and resources within their classrooms? Not many, I'm sure, so this has to be down to a lack of knowledge and understanding of what we do and this is where we can all do something. So whilst working towards change at the top, librarians need to find a way to start collaborating with those who never use the library and encouraging those who are already working with us to start sharing their best practice."

Primary school assemblies should be exciting and interesting. They should allow children to share in valuable learning experiences. Over his 30 years as a head teacher, Mike Kent has developed amazing assemblies that do just this, and he shares them in this new practical resource.

Interesting, a biology lesson using a style from "the Apprentice" to provide peer feedback in the area of forensic entomology. Themed lessons like this add interest, especially if it is a program that kids watch.

Commentary about best practices in. technology rich classroom

Practice rounding whole numbers to the thousands. This quiz was difficult for fourth graders. Students needed to have scratch paper / mini-whiteboard on hand to work out the problems.

This is a lesson plan that you can use as a starting point if you choose to involve your classrooms in the movement to end slavery in the world. Could you imagine if we could leave a legacy of this one thing. Our job is to speak for the helpless and to encourage empathy and understanding for others in this generation of children. It isn't all about what you can get, but about what you can give. This booklet is out of the UK. "The antislavery movement was the first major campaign in Britain to involve ordinary citizens across all classes (as well as the slaves themselves) in the struggle to end the practice. As such it is a good example of how change can come about when people work together for a just cause. This booklet More…intends inspire and equip young people to take a stand against the continuation of slavery and injustice in the world today."

More information on the Cnet download.com controversy. This one probably explains best why this "gray area" practice is drawing the ire of security analysts and those who have shared their software on download.com. What will be the alternative? Stay tuned.

One of the things I have as my "big three" this year is the concept of a paperless portfolio using adobe acrobat pro. I'm a member of Adobe ed exchange and am using it to find all kinds of great resources. This page has links to best practices for eportfolios, digital assessment, as well as streamlining admin tasks. Useful resources. The cool thing is you can annotate with video, audio, an text and pdfs move very well onto ipads and devices like that.

Higher education, a field that gathers an astonishing array of data about its "customers," has traditionally been inefficient in its data use, often operating with substantial delays in analyzing readily evident data and feedback. Evaluating student dropouts on an annual basis leaves gaping holes of delayed action and opportunities for intervention. Organizational processes-such as planning and resource allocation-often fail to utilize large amounts of data on effective learning practices, student profiles, and needed interventions.

John Seely Brown's PDF on the new learning environments for the 21st century based upon a 2005 presentation he did at the Forum of Higher Education's 2005 Aspen symposium. This is an important read. (of course many of you have already read it.) If you wonder why I'm digging into the research, it is as I work on my second book on collaborative writing. It is amazing to me that I can find so many more things online than I ever could in the Georgia Tech library when I was a research assistant for the then president of the national Economics Association, Dr. Danny Boston. I may not be in an institution of higher learning but I can institute higher learning in my daily practice. I want everything I write for publication to be well grounded. I hope that is why those of you who gift me with your presence on this blog will feel free to let me know in the comments if you have concerns or pointers to other work.

We often hear about tech-savvy educators and administrators who have an array of best practices and whose love for technology is evident. But as anyone who's ever been part of a school or district knows, not all teachers and administrators are as comfortable or familiar with technology.

Aims Aims One of the OERtest project aims is to provide support for future OER-related initiatives by European HEIs. One way to do it so is by the establishment of a European network to promote and follow the development of OER and Open Educational Practices within the EHEA. The project partnership will act as a vivid example of a consortium of European universities that offer credit certification under a self-developed framework of learning based on study using OERs, which is shared among several universities and proves to be feasible. Formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding, the OER Europe Network is intended to initially consist of an agreement between the project partners to continue the sustainability objectives of the project beyond its lifetime. As a framework agreement for cooperation on the topic, the agreement will also however admit for other institutions to join, and for the network to take on its own life.

Simple Multiplication table practice.

"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.

Peter Pappas has a great model here for reflective practice for students based on each level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Students used this in class today as part of their midterm reflection.