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Man. Silver bullets stink. Literature circles, for the uninitiated, have the curse-like blessing of being effective. This nearly guarantees them being

Skitch is designed for creating sketches and marking-up images. Using Skitch students can snap a picture of outlines they wrote by hand then circle or highlight the most important aspects. Skitch is available for iPad and Android. (Was bought by Evernote late last year.)

This WIKI was created through a collabroative effort in Dr. Kist's Language, Literacy, and Learning course at Kent State University as part of a literature circle project. We had a lot of fun reading the novel and creating the WIKI so please enjoy!

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

"Well the iPad has really hit the news in education circles since it's release last year. I'm sure lots of teachers are wondering whether it's hype and what the true potential of these devices are as tools for learners. I've had my iPad for about 8 months now, so I've decided to share my reflections so far on what I like about the iPad, what potential I feel it offers for developing course books and course materials and some of the problems."

Good iPad review listing some pros and cons. The time is ripe to get staff thinking of how to use these in their classroom.

Constructivism is one of those ideas we throw around in educational circles without stopping to think about what we mean by it. They are the terms that have multiple meanings, are at once highly technical and common usage and are likely to cause debate and disagreements. Constructivism in particular carries a quantity of baggage with it. It is a term that is appropriated by supporters of educational approaches that are in stark contrast to the opposing view; constructivism vs didactic methods or direct instruction. The question is what are the origins of constructivism and does a belief in this as an approach to understanding learning necessitate an abandonment of direct instruction or is this a false dichotomy?

In technology circles the importance of the 'platform' is important and well understood. The companies that have had the most success in recent times are those that have become the platforms upon which great ideas are built. But what would it look like if a school imagined itself as a 'platform' in this model?

What impact is digital interactive technology having on education? And what will the classroom of the future look like? These are just some of the questions that were raised at the 2010 Australian Council for Computer Education conference.