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Seeking diverse perspectives, interpretations or new understandings of topicsand issues impacting our world? Join debategraph, a browser based, wiki-style site, where students can synthesize, evaluate, expand, collaborate, contribute and substantiate their own thoughts and ideas to both sides of the issues. Debategraph utilizes visual depiction to deepen and enrich student understanding for a continuous and robust debate.

This could be a great video to show at the beginning of your new school year to set the tone for class conversations. Julian Treasure's RASA framework for listening is one that could easily be used as the model in your classroom. In fact, I think that I'm going to introduce it to my new students in a few weeks.

Comic Creator in the classroom: The Boy's Life Comic Creator is a great little tool to help your boys connect with writing and story telling in a way that they enjoy and understand. The tool is simple enough to use as a writing station/center on classroom computers. The comic does need to be created in one sitting, there is no way to save and come back to a comic later. Completed comics can be printed off and shared. The Comic Creator is a great entry point into writing but could also be useful in math for creating and solving story problems. Students can create a short math comic strip that can be traded with other students to solve. Students taking a foreign language class could practice new words by creating a comic strip story in Comic Creator. Use Comic Creator the first week of school as a way for boys to tell all about themselves. Each student can create a comic strip that stars them as the main character. Invite other students to try to match the comic strip with the student as a fun interactive bulletin board activity (Think comics on one side, student pictures on the other and string to draw the "line" between matches).

Change begins with a no-excuse mentality. Don't waste one more minute pondering what could be. There is a revolution going on right now in learning, and it is up to us to lead the way. Please share any leadership strategies that are making a difference in your building.

Wolfram Alpha can be used for more than just numerical information. It can also be used to pull up a handy "fact sheet" on any number of topics. If students can quickly access these fact sheets of basic information they then have more time to delve deeper into research and or creating new things from the information they've found. Putting the desktop gadgets on your school's computers puts Wolfram Alpha at your students' disposal all the time.

Math Pickle is the most excellent mathematics inspiration I have come across. It approaches mathematics from the standpoint of a problem solver instead of from the standpoint of a rules follower. Already that shift in thinking makes my brain happy. Brilliant. Math Pickle has problems and videos for every grade kindergarten through twelfth. Use these videos to pump some inspiration into the way you approach and teach math or show them to your students and encourage them to continue solving the problems. Don't forget to film your students working through their own math pickles! The Inspired page of Math Pickle is a must see. Students can take a look at what mathematicians do in real life. They can also learn about the source of Math Pickle problems. Tips: Be sure to check out Muse, news and reviews for additional ideas, puzzles and reviews of math products, puzzles and games for the classroom.