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Diane Ravitch calls it. Read her blog post on this major ethical issue. I think we need an independent testing company. Isn't there a conflict of interest here when a company creates textbooks and the test? "I am an 8th grade teacher in Xxxx, NY. On Day 1 of the NYS ELA 8 Exam, I discovered what I believe to be a huge ethical flaw in the State test. The state test included a passage on why leaves change color that is included in the Pearson-generated NYS ELA 8 text. I taught it in my class just last week. In a test with 6 passages and questions to complete in 90 minutes, it was a huge advantage to students fortunate enough to use a Pearson text and not that of a rival publisher. It may very well have an impact on student test scores. This has not yet received any attention in the press. Could you help me bring this to the attention of the public?"

Another 20% project. These students are talking about the apps to encourage and help those with disabilities.

Science and elementary teachers CAN'TMISS THIS. Every hour on earthday will mark another hangout by National Geographic with scientists and all kidsof amazing people. Get in on this! This is one of those things to forward!! 'This year National Geographic celebrates its 125th anniversary and a long legacy of exploration, conservation, and research. Every hour of every day, National Geographic explorers take to land, sea, and sky (each frontier represented by a colored band on National Geographic's historic flag) trying to uncover, understand, or help care for the world around us.

KNowmania is a very cool website which now has an app. You'll want to look at the online site, but if you're looking at flipping and have detailed screencasts, etc, this is a nice site. It is also an interesting app to have children use to create their own screencasts. "Knowmia Teach is a new free lesson planning and recording tool for teachers. It helps you create short video lessons on any subject and publish them on Knowmia.com so your students and the public can find them. Knowmia Teach makes it easy to bring in visual aids from multiple sources, organize them in steps (like slides in a presentation) an"

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 not partisan. There are some things that Aaron Maurer says in this post that make a lot of sense. "What bothers me is this "punish the whole system method" employed in the education world. I agree that teachers need to be held accountable. However, I know that state test scores do not show what I teach. What happens in schools is that we never address the specific issues at hand. If a teacher is not doing their job, then call them out. Tell them, show them how they are messing up, and then give them a plan to improve. Help them with necessary skills. If they choose not to improve or they simply don't improve, then you let them go. No more of this keeping teachers for 30 years and for 30 years they have been bad. That affects too many children that need good quality teachers. Hold us accountable like we should be holding our students accountable."

If you want to see how Learnist is being used - here are Dawn Casey-Rowe's 10 favorite learnist boards built by teachers. This will help you see how this tool is used.

I agree. Students who got to read the passages ahead of time had an advantage - of course, is anyone looking to see if there was a "hit" on other textbook passages - is this luck or is it corruption. Either way - it smells like corruption. There is a conflict of interest if you're testing and selling textbooks to help kids do better on testing.  "students who read the Pearson test before seeing it on the state test had the opportunity to fill the gaps in their own knowledge-whether through class discussion or simply by reading and answering the questions provided in the curriculum-before they took the test. And that means that the validity of a test that aims to differentiate between "good" and "poor" readers is necessarily called into question. Unfortunately, it seems that New York education officials don't realize how significant this problem is. Or even that it is a problem. (Meryl Tisch, New York Board of Regents chancellor, actually defended the quality of the assessments, boasting that, thanks to a rigorous new quality-control review, the Department of Education had avoided the kinds of problems that lead to last year's now-famous pineapple scandal. And that failure to recognize what may be a far more serious and consequential challenge may be the biggest red flag that Common Core assessment decisions are in trouble in the Empire State."

This is a superb classroom management tool where you can track the behaviour of your class and keep them motivated. Simply click on the child and assign them a positive or negative behaviour point. You can also track their reading and spelling ages and make your own customised data set. Use this information to help you arrange the children within your class. You can have multiple classes on your teacher's account and you can share data with colleagues using different accounts. The data is encrypted to ensure data security. The system works on the majority of web enabled devices. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Classroom+Management+%26+Rewards

No, the government isn't CREATING a WIFI network (the Washington Post didn't really look at this), however, this article on Gizmodo does share what is happening at the FCC that could help many, especially those in rural areas, be part of the world's new digital landscape. As we work to put devices in our student's hands, this sort of development could make a big difference for kids and can further spur online and blended learning initiatives as digital divides are further bridged. Applause? Can we have it next week? "Let's get one thing straight: the government is not creating its own "super WiFi network", but its plans will indeed make awesome new WiFi networks possible. Technically, what the FCC is actually trying to do is increase the amount of open spectrum that is available for WiFi networks of all sorts-and for other "unlicensed" uses. This is a very good idea."

This was a downloadable doc, so I put it into my public Evernote notebook of permission forms and other things about flattening the classroom, this link links to that notecard. This is a permission form for students who are using advanced Web 2 tools, collaborating online, and a media release. If you are in a conservative district, this permission from 2009 may help you.

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

There continues to be a problem that not all books in the Amazon kindle store have real page numbers. If students are expected to cite sources and not allowed to use location numbers, then Amazon can expect the pushback seen on this forum post. Meanwhile, a helpful person on the forum has noted how you can know what to read on the Kindle if your professor or teacher says "read page 80-92" - you can dive into the table of contents on the website and save a copy. This is the only solution. It is time for Amazon to get their act together and have all Kindle ebooks display page numbers if there is a printed copy of the book. If there is not a printed copy of the book, there needs to be a consistent reference point or "page" that all can use for sourcing and citing content. "1. Look up the book in the in the Amazon Kindle store (where you purchased it). 2. Click on the book where it says "Look Inside." You want to look at the table of contents, which will have the pages numbers for each chapter. 3. It defaults to the "kindle edition," which does not have the page numbers in the table of contents. However, there is a tab above that says "Print Book." Click on that. 4. Once you're on the "Print Book" display, it shows the page numbers in the TOC. By doing the above, I was able to determine that "the first 26 pages" = Chapters 1 & 2. I used Evernote to take a screen capture of the entire TOC, which I'll refer back to."

Help your students understand equivalence between fractions, decimals and percentages with this visual number line flash resource. Peg the value to the correct position. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

helpful for elementary school research projects

An amazing language learning site which helps learners of MFL remember words for over 200 languages by associating them with visual clues/mnemonics and score points by showing you remember the language in a variety of ways. You can listen to audio of the words you are learning. The site tracks your progress and analyses where you need improvement and it will adjust the words you are shown accordingly. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Languages%2C+Culture+%26+International+Projects

Mastering the art of teaching appears to be easier for some colleagues than others. Some teachers just seem to have a presence, gaining respect and credibility from students, colleagues and parents alike. Did they undergo some mysterious, magical training that wasn't covered during your teacher training course?  Well, no. They just have mastered how to manage their working relationships, using their personalities to generate rapport, which is respected by students of all age. It's not rocket science - it's far more complicated than that. Personality and behaviour clashes in classrooms are inevitable, but looking at all the different elements of daily interactions can help you gain respect from students and colleagues alike...

Following on from the results of our online poll, #UKEdChat this week will focus on Good Behaviour Strategies used in schools. Whether in the Early Years, Primary, Secondary or beyond, the behaviour of students can positively or negatively impact the rest of the class as well as interfere with teaching and learning. The session will release six questions (see below), so join the session on Twitter from 8pm via the #UKEdChat hash-tag. Questions: What student behaviours to you find to be the most annoying when teaching? Where do you go for support when you are finding student behaviour a problem? What has been the most positive intervention made in helping build a positive classroom behaviour? What are the foundations in ensuring positive pupils behaviour in any classroom? What are the most effective consequences used when dealing with disruptive behaviour? Think back to when you were a school pupil. What was the worst behaviour you displayed?

"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."

Yay, another new year! Where does the time go? Being a teacher is a stressful job, but one of the most rewarding vocations available. Sometimes, it is possible to lose sight of the important things in life, as the stress of the job takes over your life. We all make resolutions with good intentions, but reducing work stress is critical for ensuring that the job doesn't absorb every waking moment in your life. Below are 12 suggestions on how teachers (and school leaders) can reduce stress, for themselves, for colleagues, and for pupils. Some of the suggestions might seem obvious, but it's nice to be reminded, and to allow you to reflect on opportunities you have to reduce some of the stress in your life.