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"The American school year has been largely unchanged for decades, despite evolutions in culture, demographics, technology, and a wide range of other social and economic factors. In our increasingly global economy, this is starting to become a disadvantage, especially as students in many school districts are struggling to meet national standards and are simply unable to keep up with their international counterparts, many of whom spend many more hours in the classroom than they do. While there is no one magic solution to reforming schools, many districts around the nation have sought to level the playing field by adding more time to the school day or school year to more closely match those of other nations. While some changes have been more successful than others, what is clear is that the school year that worked for students decades ago simply isn't practical for today's students. Read on to find out some of the biggest reasons many are moving to extend or rearrange the school year for American students."

NBC Learn presents a 10-part video series relating STEM topics behind golf. Lesson plans aligned with the standards are available. Other topics are also available.

ReadWorks' lesson plans draw on proven research and are aligned to Common Core and State Standards. Browse our full list of free lessons and comprehension worksheets below.

"In this poignant, funny follow-up to his fabled 2006 talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning -- creating conditions where kids' natural talents can flourish."

GIMP is a an attempt at answering the call for freely distributed image editing software. While Photoshop is widely regarded as the industry standard for all kinds of image manipulation, it's costly and overblown for the average photographers use (ok, so I let in a *little* comparison). Yes, Photoshop has a ton of useful tools, support and plugins available, but it was never available for Linux operating system users until the introduction of Wine. And it was those users of Linux who initially requested something to run on their operating system to manipulate photographs.

Technology Proficiency License: Do you think all schools should have teachers licensed to meet teacher technology competency standards? It would require them to complete coursework and pass a test. I know 21 schools in the states already do this.

The motivation behind Math Mov!es At 13, Ngoc moved to Australia and experienced a different education system, in which people are afraid of mathematics, in contrast to her class in Vietnam, where people love mathematics! After Ngoc graduated from university as a mathematician, Ngoc decided to demystify mathematics. Why are people so afraid of mathematics? How can we apply mathematics thinking to everyday life? Is mathematics really that important and useful? Those are some questions we seek to answer with this website. How the crew was formed Ngoc dragged her computer science friend, Viet Anh, to join the team as the animation expert. Viet Anh called on Son, a student in New York, to split the work, since movie making sure requires a lot of animations! Through Krithika, a friend and relative of one of our coaches, we found Punit, our HTML designer, and Krishna, our graphics designer. And thanks to facebook, Ngoc and Viet Anh found another graphic producer, Linh. So the team was completed! As for the coaches, we can't remember how Salwa and Nagi were drawn into the team. it feels like they have always been with us since day one. Where the Mov!es idea came from First we intended it to be a conventional website, but our coaches require very high standard, pushing our imagination to the max. How can we be different? A team discussion was conducted. Websites so far have been mimicking the tabloid / newspaper format, emphasizing on texts as the main content, but why plain text? Why not use another media, such as pictures and animations? Moving pictures? Movies... Movies!!! There we go! From then on, we became the official movie crew.

"Multiple measures of student performance, more school innovation among their suggestions From staff and wire reports Mar 3rd, 2010 Print this article Teachers also said administrative support, not more money, motivate them to succeed. Teachers say administrative support, not more money, will motivate them to succeed. In one of the largest national surveys of public school teachers, thousands of educators agreed that today's students aren't college-ready when they graduate from high school. Teachers' suggestions for solving this problem include clear, common standards; multiple measures of student performance; and greater innovation, including differentiated instruction and more use of digital resources."

"Ever wonder what it would be like if we let our students pick the tools we use in class? This collection of web 2.0 tools is just that- a list of tools and ideas for what students see as being useful for their learning in and out of school. To begin the project, 8th grade students were engaged in a conversation about what school would look like if all of the rules we currently had were disbanded. They were no longer bound by walls, schedules, age restrictions or standardized tests. No technology was outlawed. It was a bit of a hurdle for them...after eight years of the current school arrangement, it was difficult for them to imagine anything else. With a little encouragement and a push they rose to the occasion, and here are the tools they think we ought to consider using. As this is a dynamic site, there may be some entries in need of editing. We will get to them! We left the duplicates in for emphasis as well as different points of view. Enjoy!"

"TRAILS is a knowledge assessment with multiple-choice questions targeting a variety of information literacy skills based on sixth and ninth grade standards. This Web-based system was developed to provide an easily accessible and flexible tool for library media specialists and teachers to identify strengths and weaknesses in the information-seeking skills of their students."

"Introducing the new standard of Mac guides and tutorials. Just pick an article from the list to your left or search for it."

"Twitter etiquette? Is there such a thing? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on who you ask and since there's no Twitter Board of Etiquette (hmmm… might that domain name be available?), you can do pretty much what you want. And, because it's so easy for any of your followers to unfollow you should you not meet their standards of etiquette, it's kind of a self-policing thing anyway."

When we talk about teaching, we are never just talking about a profession, but a passion. Unfortunately, while dodging the bullets of criticism and shielding ourselves behind the mediocrity of the standardization movement, we have found our eagerness to teach being chipped away. Educator Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach challenges us to rediscover our own passion for teaching by helping our students become passionate seekers of knowledge and understanding.

This is another great thought and debate provoking article. It brings up the point of how cursive handwriting is not part of Common Core standards and may have little impact on future jobs.

"iPads have been purchased and have arrived for this 2011/2012 school year. It is always our intention of providing the necessary professional development for new and innovative technologies. This wiki is the plan for just that. Ideally we would buy an iPad for every student. Well, unfortunately that is not financially possible at this time. Therefore, we've ordered just a few here and there. Our goal this year is to form a research and development group that is willing to learn all about the iPads and how they can be effectively used in the classrooms. This group will research apps that match the Common Core Standards, try the apps out with their students, then record their reflections. The research of this group will be available online via a Google Presentation similar to the one linked here. "

"Zoom In is a free web-based platform that helps students build literacy and historical thinking skills through "deep dives" into primary and secondary sources. Choose from 18 content-rich US history units designed to supplement your regular instruction and help students practice skills required by the new, higher standards: reading documents closely and critically, identifying point of view and purpose, engaging in text-based discussions, and writing explanatory and argumentative essays grounded in evidence."

From PBS Learning Media, this 5 minute video relates the history behind single women homesteaders and the 1862 Homesteading Act. You can opt to stream or download the video. You can also see the standards tied to this content.

This site comes highly recommended by some of the great minds in education.