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My sister, Sarah Adams has just won her second distance learning award this year. She is an online professor for Savannah College of Art and Design and continues to wow everyone with her incredibly high ratings, ability to engage her students, and teach tough graphic design without being in a formal classroom. YES, I'm incredibly proud of her but even more proud that she's so helpful, cooperative, and encouraging when anyone (like me) or other professors reach out and want to understand how she does it. Yes, she's my sister and yes, I'm incredibly proud. I"m so proud of you sis. She differentiates learning in amazing ways. I promise I'll get her on Every Classroom matters and ask her how she does it. If you have any questions, post them here and I'll be sure to ask.

I'm recording another episode of "Every Classroom matters" interviewing some of the teachers and organizers in the Chicago Early STEM college movement. As I researched for this show, I found this report out of North Carolina reporting an increase in test scores. A county here in Georgia is also implementing Early college stem as well. STEM is something every school needs (listen to the earlier show I recorded w/ Kevin Jarrett) but this is an interesting approach. "Just two years after it opened, a North Carolina high school has found that teaching students the principles of STEM can boost test scores and keep learners engaged. That's prompting the school to ask, "If we can do it, why can't other schools do it, too?" The school has a mouthful of a name: the Wake NC State University STEM Early College High School. It has attracted many students to its Raleigh campus - first generation-college students, minorities, and students from poor backgrounds - who are underrepresented in STEM fields. But in 2012, students did far better than average on the state's standardized exams, with more than 95 percent passing."

YEs, they are here. Smart furniture. This is the smart table. Expect to see desks and more as we begin to merge our technology with everything around us. This would make a great unit for a demo or cool interactive learning center. " SMART Table® 442i collaborative learning center. Publicly unveiled at the British Education Technology Conference in London today, the SMART Table features an engaging 360 degree, multitouch surface with a brilliant 106.68 cm (42") high-definition 1080p LCD display. The SMART Table enables up to eight students to interact simultaneously and actively collaborate to achieve shared learning goals."

Collaborative discussion methods help students engage text and become better readers.

It is essential that children in today's 'technology focused world' get real, hands-on experiences. The only things that some of my children have in their hands, once at home, are games console controls! By making learning fun and interactive we can engage children in finding out about the world around them and their past, instilling a love of learning and giving them some practical skills to use in the real world...

As much as possible my wife and I try  and engage our children in as many different activities as we can; whether it be rock pooling on South Wales beaches in the rain, feeding the animals at a local farm or watching the fantastic Balloon display at Bristol Balloon Fiesta...

Never has the theme of wellbeing been so much in vogue! And it's really no surprise why. The presence and prevalence of the wellbeing 'movement' is growing fast among the teaching profession and beyond. As teachers, we have one of the most privileged and fulfilling roles - to nurture, engage, inspire, and motivate the children we teach. It's a profession full of dedicated, talented people who commit so much of themselves striving to make a difference, to have an impact.

One good are is student wellbeing though more can always be done. http://www.textbooksfree.org/Child%20and%20Youth%20Well-Being.htm

"A programme that brings live fish into classrooms to teach the fundamentals of biology not only helps students learn, but improves their attitudes about science, a new study finds. The study of nearly 20,000 K-12 students, who raised zebrafish from embryos over the course of a week, found that kids at all grade levels showed significant learning gains. They also responded more positively to statements such as "I know what it's like to be a scientist." The results, to be published by the journal PLOS Biology, suggest that an immersive experience with a living creature can be a particularly successful strategy to engage young people in science, technology, engineering and maths."

An interactive White Board (IWB) or SMART Board has the potential to deliver content better than traditional methods of teaching. Why? Because it provides multi-media functional interaction across audio, video, and computer media. It is also ideal for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. These qualities of an IWB also promote the dynamic delivery of content (if used to its full potential) in an engaging manner, which allows students to interact with science or math content their self. Examples include: * data manipulation * responding to data * even creating data So with all these attributes - "How are interactive white boards unsuccessfully used in science and math classrooms?" For the most part - not effectively!

"Children improve at maths when instruction engages their own bodies. This is one of the findings from a recent study coming from the University of Copenhagen's Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports. The results also document that children require individualised learning strategies."

"Educators normally plan their lessons out in advance, and teach subjects and related topics on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Is it almost time for your topic for the week? If you have a normal approach that you're growing tired of, need more engagement from students, or want to improve your teaching style for the new year, using video is an exciting way to get information across."

"Detailed and engaging video about how the surface of the Earth has changed over its billions of years long history."

Finland is an innovator in education and now they're doing it again. Schools need a facelift. If you're building a new school - rethink school. I'd look at the designs. Also, Ewan McIntosh wrote a great "7 spaces of schools" that is in the "Choice" chapter for those of you have bought my book Flattening Classroom, Engaging Minds - he talked about this on a boat in South Africa with me 2 years a go and is an expert to follow in the area of school design. "Finnish students consistently have placed among the top countries on the Program for International Student Assessment, which gauges 15-year-old students' ability to understand and transfer concepts in reading, mathematics, and science. For example, in the most recent mathematics assessment, in 2009, Finnish students scored 54 points higher than their American peers on a scale of zero to 1,000. Pasi Sahlberg, the director general of the Center for International Mobility and Cooperation at Finland's education ministry, attributes the nation's academic achievement to a three-fold approach: quality of the academic curriculum, equity in educational access, "and the third one is the environment. How the environment and design of the school is supporting students' learning. When we combine these three things we can say something about the overall goodness of the school system."

This website offers a free global chat on blogs and is creating quite a stir. While it may not be appropriate for all sites - if you put it on a password protected site of some kind (where you know those viewing the page have permission to view - like a wikispaces) - then you could engage in conversation with all kinds of audiences including parents, etc. around topics of interest. Students could host their own live chats. Interesting possibilities here.

Wonderopolis, a program brought to life by the National Center for Family Literacy, engages and inspires families in the pursuit of education and learning together. We help families create a new force - transforming the parent/child relationship into an engine for progress and upward mobility.

It is finally here. Here are the details on our Flat Classroom global book club. (click the link for more) Every week for 10 weeks we will meet at an alternating time - 12 hours apart. (For the East Coast USA it is Sundays at 6 pm Eastern or Monday mornings at 6 am eastern)  Visit our Book club calendar to convert these times to your Time Zone. Subscribe to this calendar via Google calendar to keep up with events.This is Sunday evenings at 22:00GMT alternating with Monday mornings at 10:00GMT in our Blackboard Collaborate room https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007066&password=M.065891D192F8072208BF5756999CE0 .   The book club is free and everyone is welcome. #flatclass Book Club Meeting Times Week and Date Time Topic of Conversation Week 1: Sunday March 11 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 1 - Flattening Classrooms through Global Collaboration (p 1-17) Chapter 2 - Impact on Learning: Research in the Global Collaborative Classroom (p18-30) Week 2: Monday, March 19 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 3 - Step 1: Connection (p 31-61) Week 3: Sunday, March 25 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 4 - Step 2: Communication (p 62-96) Week 4: Monday, April 2 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 5 - Step 3: Citizenship (p 97-125) Take a break. Week 5: Sunday, April 15 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 6 - Step 4: Contribution and Collaboration (p 126-157) Week 6: Monday, April 23 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 7 - Step 5: Choice (p 158-196) Week 7: Sunday, April 29 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 8 - Step 6: Creation (p197-214) Week 8: Monday, May 7 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 9 - Step 7: Celebration (p 215-234) Week 9: Sunday, May 13 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 10 - Designing and Managing a Global Collaborative Project (p 235-267) Week 10: Monday, May 21 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 11 - Challenge-Based Professional Development (p 268-293) Chapter 12: Rock the World (p 293 - 304)  We're also inviting the educators featured in each chapter to be with us for the conversations about "th

Ah, epaper. Digital books. They started as barely a blip but now have become the battleground for the next all out war between tech giants. "The app update -- which Apple is calling iBooks 2 and is already released to the iOS App Store -- will allow for textbooks to be sold through the popular app, which in the past sold novels, nonfiction and poetry, but not textbooks. All textbooks sold through the free app, which is available only to Apple's i-devices, will be priced at $14.99 or less -- a stark contrast to the high-priced paper books that fill college bookstores. But the main allure might not be the price as much as the interactive features iBooks textbooks can offer. Apple, which announced the iBooks update at a press event in New York at the Guggenheim Museum, said the iBooks textbook exceeds paper texts in terms of engagement, calling it a durable, quickly searchable book that offers easy highlighting and note-taking  as well as interactive photo galleries, videos, and 3-D models and diagrams.

One of my favorite youtube channels for teachers and educators is from Jarrod Robinson "Mr. Robbo the PE Geek" from down under. He is helpful, loves kids, and has a unique understanding of engaging bodily kinesthetic learners in all subjects and a passion for mobile learning.

This is an issue we should be studying, talking about, and weighing in on. With the blocking that this proposes, say that you claim fair use, that may not matter - you may be blocked for using copyrighted material, period... no matter whether you have fair use claims or not., the way I understand it. Looking for some more good information on SOPA. Please share. "SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, is another one of those bills that sounds like it's going to do something mildly positive but, in reality, has serious potential to negatively change the internet as we know it. It puts power in the hands of the entertainment industry to censor sites that allegedly "engage in, enable or facilitate" copyright infringement. This language vague enough to encompass sites you use every day, like Twitter and Facebook, making SOPA a serious problem"