NL research team

For every job, though, the No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it's not IQ. It's learning ability. It's the ability to process on the fly. It's the ability to pull together disparate bits of information." The second, he added, "is leadership - in particular emergent leadership as opposed to traditional leadership. Traditional leadership is, were you president of the chess club? ... We don't care. What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you're a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? Because what's critical to be an effective leader in this environment is you have to be willing to relinquish power." What else? Humility and ownership. "It's feeling the sense of responsibility, the sense of ownership, to step in," he said, to try to solve any problem - and the humility to step back and embrace the better ideas of others. "Your end goal," explained Bock, "is what can we do together to problem-solve. I've contributed my piece, and then I step back."

""The reality is that to survive in a fast-changing world you need to be creative," says Gerard J. Puccio, chairman of the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College, which has the nation's oldest creative studies program, having offered courses in it since 1967. "That is why you are seeing more attention to creativity at universities," he says. "The marketplace is demanding it." Critical thinking has long been regarded as the essential skill for success, but it's not enough, says Dr. Puccio. Creativity moves beyond mere synthesis and evaluation and is, he says, "the higher order skill." This has not been a sudden development. Nearly 20 years ago "creating" replaced "evaluation" at the top of Bloom's Taxonomy of learning objectives. In 2010 "creativity" was the factor most crucial for success found in an I.B.M. survey of 1,500 chief executives in 33 industries."

"As this happens, certain mental skills will become less valuable because computers will take over. Having a great memory will probably be less valuable. Being able to be a straight-A student will be less valuable - gathering masses of information and regurgitating it back on tests. So will being able to do any mental activity that involves following a set of rules. But what human skills will be more valuable?" 5 Triats...

edWeb.net is a highly-acclaimed professional social and learning network that has become a vibrant online community for exceptional educators, decision-makers, and influencers who are on the leading edge of innovation in education. edWeb members are teachers, faculty, administrators, and librarians at K12 and post-secondary institutions. edWeb is a place where educators who are looking for ways to improve teaching and learning can gather and share information and ideas with peers and thought leaders in the industry. Any educator can use edWeb for free to create a personal learning network or professional learning community to make it easier to collaborate, share ideas, and move forward faster with new ideas and initiatives, particularly those than leverage technology to accelerate improvement.

"The iPad is not a PC. As obvious as that sounds, if the only computer you've ever used was mainly a box on a desk, or ran a desktop operating system with a physical keyboard attached, its only natural that the ways you attempt to use a new device will be dictated by the old paradigm. Instead of just sticking with such an approach, this book looks at the different ways that the PC and iPad have been designed to work, and then detail new ways that the iPad can be used for workflows not work. "

"direct my energy and attention on what worked, what went well, and what I feel was successful. I've discovered that this strategy is critical to build my emotional resilience. One of the only things in life that I have control over is how I tell my story -- how I interpret my experiences and make sense of them. If I create a story that is one of learning, growth, and empowerment, I feel better. So how are you telling the story of this school year? "

"Timothy Shanahan defined the practice of close reading more succinctly, explaining that close reading "is an intensive analysis of a text in order to come to terms with what it says, how it says it, and what it means." So is it a rereading of text? Yes, but with a clearly defined purpose. Those of us who teach novels in the classroom know it can't be a rereading of the entire text; instead, it's a concentrated look at a selected excerpt in order to study a limited number of text attributes such as organization, sentence structure, vocabulary, symbolism, character development, plot advancement, etc. The purpose and focus of each close reading depends upon the text itself, thus leading to the CCSS push for more complex selections. Below I've provided six suggestions for making the most of close reading experiences with students."

"My concern, mind you, is not with the passive viewers, but with the pseudo-participants-those who may equate appreciating and recalling the accomplishments of others with doing something meaningful themselves. I worry that, in our classrooms, we have become focused on celebrating the lives of others, at the expense of the act of creation."

"if responding personally to text isn't leading students to deeper understanding, then where should teachers turn to help students improve their comprehension? We should turn to the text itself. Enter close reading."

"teacher-ready tips for stimulating curiosity in others. First, she suggests starting with the question, rather than the answer-which teachers will recognize as the foundation of inquiry-based or discovery learning (see: math teacher Dan Meyer's take on how to make math "irresistible" to students). She then suggests offering some initial knowledge on the subject. "We're not curious about something we know absolutely nothing about," she writes. Again, teachers may know this as "activating prior knowledge" or "setting the stage" before a lesson. Finally, she says it helps to require communication, or "open an information gap and then require learners to communicate with each other in order to fill it." The think-pair-share technique and vocabulary activities that require students to teach each other their words both exemplify this. What would you add to the list? How does stimulating curiosity gel with other motivation tactics-or should teachers think of curiosity and motivation as one and the same?"

"a shared close reading of a complex text in which students propose emerging understandings, supported by textual evidence, with occasional reminders and re-direction by teacher-facilitators."

"The Common Core State Standards call students to actively analyze texts of all kinds (CCSS: RL.9-10.1). Why not film? The first part of analysis is pulling things apart to see how they work. But students must also be able to evaluate these workings or interpret why the audience should care about them. I teach students to interact with texts in three ways:"

Nearly 20 years old: "school technologyA common question that we hear from teachers about integrating technology into their classrooms is, "how do I know if I'm doing it right?" We love to hear this question because that tells us that the teacher is starting to analyze and evaluate how they are integrating technology and are looking for a way to gauge their effectiveness. We feel that the Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) best addresses the question of "doing it right.""

"As I design a lesson or assessment, I ask myself if what I've designed, or what the students must master, correlates to the important skills of: Collaboration Communication Critical Thinking Creativity My lessons and tests must incorporate one or more of of the four Cs to, in my opinion, be worthy of spending precious instructional time in the classroom. On another note, the other short rubric I keep in my head is related to differentiating my lessons. Looking at teacher and education author Dr. Carol Tomlinson's list of ways to differentiate in the classroom, you'll notice that this aligns nicely with the four Cs above. Tomlinson explains that the four elements that lend themselves naturally to differentiation are: Process Environment Content Product"

"Can ICT redefine the way we learn in the Networked Society? Technology has enabled us to interact, innovate and share in whole new ways. This dynamic shift in mindset is creating profound change throughout our society. The Future of Learning looks at one part of that change, the potential to redefine how we learn and educate. Watch as we talk with world renowned experts and educators about its potential to shift away from traditional methods of learning based on memorization and repetition to more holistic approaches that focus on individual students' needs and self expression."

"Pedagogical, even andragogical, educational methods are no longer fully sufficient in preparing learners for thriving in the workplace, and a more self-directed and self-determined approach is needed, one in which the learner reflects upon what is learned and how it is learned and in which educators teach learners how to teach themselves (Peters, 2001, 2004; Kamenetz, 2010)."

"Coming up with the right question involves vigorously thinking through the problem, investigating it from various angles, turning closed questions into open-ended ones and prioritizing which are the most important questions to get at the heart of the matter. "We've been underestimating how well our kids can think." "We've been underestimating how well our kids can think." Rothstein said in a recent discussion on the talk show Forum. "We see consistently that there are three outcomes. One is that students are more engaged. Second, they take more ownership, which for teachers, this is a huge thing. And the third outcome is they learn more - we see better quality work.""

"The problem is not technical. Nor is it motivational. Nor is it moral. The problem inheres in your unreflective acceptance of assumptions and axioms that seem so obviously right, natural, and proper that to question them is to question your reality. Therefore, faced with failure after failure, having tried this, that, and almost everything else, you don't examine your bedrock assumptions. Instead, you come up with variations on past themes?now with more desperation and anger, but less hope."[8] As we work to bring about meaningful change in education, let us enlarge our focus beyond the externals --books, the curriculum, teaching methodologies, assessment. Only by including the internal processes through which those externals are filtered will we gain a more complete perspective -- one that holds great promise as we seek out new horizons for learning."

Response to Andrew Hacker's New York Times Op-Ed essay "Is Algebra Necessary?" Includes examples and links to CCSS