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We've all had a teacher who inspired us, who sparked our imagination. Please return the inspiration you received from your teachers by encouraging today's teachers to continue inspiring the thousands of children in their lives by sharing your tale here. Who is the teacher that inspired your imagination?

The term professional learning community has become quite commonplace in education circles. The term describes a collegial group who are united in their commitment to an outcome. In the case of education, the commitment would be to student learning. The community engages in a variety of activities including sharing a vision, working and learning collaboratively, visiting and observing other classrooms, and participating in shared decision making. The benefits of professional learning community to educators and students include reduced isolation of teachers, better informed and committed teachers, and academic gains for students. Shirley Hord of the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory says, that as an organizational arrangement, the professional learning community is seen as a powerful staff-development approach and a potent strategy for school change and improvement.

At Empire High School in Vail, Ariz., students use computers provided by the school to get their lessons, do their homework and hear podcasts of their teachers' science lectures. Down the road, at Cienega High School, students who own laptops can register for "digital sections" of several English, history and science classes. And throughout the district, a Beyond Textbooks initiative encourages teachers to create - and share - lessons that incorporate their own PowerPoint presentations, along with videos and research materials they find by sifting through reliable Internet sites.

This series really ticked my funny bone on a night when I really needed it -- sort of "My Way" teacher style.

one of the most profoundly important articles I have read recently. "For educators and the schools in which they teach, the challenges of this moment are significant. Our ability to learn whatever we want, whenever we want, from whomever we want is rendering the linear, age-grouped, teacher-guided curriculum less and less relevant. "

shared by a teacher commenting on Nedra's blog posting; very good effort to pull together the appropriate research for an effective technology rich school environment; the philosophy is that it starts with effective leadership; no bean counters here!

Designs for Assessing Foundational Data Literacy is written for the geosciences, BUT it is has applicability for all disciplines