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"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

And to a large degree, creativity is a learned behavior. It's a matter of how you approach things, how you act or react to new circumstances, your proclivity to look at things in different ways, your willingness to question, experiment, and take chances. In other words, creativity is not "what you are" as much as "what you do." Think of creativity as a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. To increase your creativity, you simply need to "act" like a creative person. Not surprisingly, people recognized as creative tend to share common traits.

If you're an Australian teacher then you should definitely have this page in your Bookmarks/Favorites. As they say: "Through its Copyright Advisory Group, the Australian Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) has published a Creative Commons information pack online, a bundle of eight documents that distills the basics of CC licensing and the philosophy behind it. This pack is a great resource for educators and students, and we encourage you to use it in your schools by adapting it however you like. The info pack includes concise and concrete answers to simple questions, like: What is Creative Commons? How to Find Creative Commons Licensed Material How to Attribute Creative Commons Licensed Material and more. Find all documents at their Smartcopying website, "The Official Guide to Copyright Issues for Australian Schools and TAFE." All of them are licensed CC BY, the most effective and open license for open educational resources."

From the Executive Summary quote; "The Horizon Report series is the product of the New Media Consortium's Horizon Project, an ongoing research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within education around the globe. This volume, the Horizon Report: 2009 K-12 Edition, is the second in a new series of regional and sector-based reports, and examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative expression within the environment of pre-college education. The hope is that the report is useful to educators worldwide, and the international composition of the Advisory Board reflects the care with which a global perspective was assembled. While there are many local factors affecting the practice of education, there are also issues that transcend regional boundaries, questions we all face in K-12 education, and it was with these in mind that this report was created."

The Horizon Report is a product of the international not for profit New Media Consortium. Since 2002 they have been presenting a series of reports under the title Horizon reports generated by a dialog between an international group of educational leaders. "This volume, the Horizon Report: 2009 K-12 Edition, is the second in a new series of regional and sector-based reports, and examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative expression within the environment of pre-college education. The hope is that the report is useful to educators worldwide, and the international composition of the Advisory Board reflects the care with which a global perspective was assembled. While there are many local factors affecting the practice of education, there are also issues that transcend regional boundaries, questions we all face in K-12 education, and it was with these in mind that this report was created." A must read for all teachers.

The difficulty with creativity is it is not easy and perhaps thanks to our experience of schooling not a natural attribute of many adults. What creativity needs is a process and/or a structure that allows us to bring our intellect to the development of creative solutions.

The Creativity Post is a non-profit web platform committed to sharing the very best content on creativity, in all of its forms: from scientific discovery to philosophical debate, from entrepreneurial ventures to educational reform, from artistic expression to technological innovation - in short, to all the varieties of the human experience that creativity brings to life.

The Future of Education is a topic often discussed, and at the recent gathering of educators in Florence, it was the title and theme for the conference. Now in its ninth year, The Future of Education is an international conference that attracts educators from around the world and across all domains touched by education. The conference is an inspiring two days of discussion and sharing, with the city of Florence, the centre of the Renaissance, providing a constant reminder of what might be possible when creativity and critical thinking combine. Here are my key takeaways from this event.

"There are a few possibilities discussed here that help to create that culture of free creativity and innovation. Educators need to build this culture at a young age and when challenges arise students will have what it takes to innovate. How will we bring about opportunities for students to explore their creativity and innovate?"

Understanding and identifying the barriers to creativity and the conditions which are essential for it to thrive is an important step in the process of ensuring our students leave school with a capacity for creativity at least equal to that which they arrive with.

A very appealing introduction to the concept of Creative Commons suitable for students as well as teachers.

An article by Andrea Kuszewski in Scientific American. It's a research based look at why traditional teaching methods suck the creativity out of us and the hard work each of us needs to do to escape the effects as we grow into adulthood.

Creativity is often said to be the key to the future. The essentially human attribute that will ensure our utility in a world dominated by automation. It is said to be an essential ingredient in education but it will not be truly learned unless we provide students with opportunities to dive fully into its waters. 

"A good infographic here that clearly and simply explains Creative Commons and how it works, It visually captures the main concepts of CC for better student understanding.

Our collective ability to learn and by doing so, adapt to changing circumstances through the acquisition of new skills and dispositions is what Edward de Bono refers to as EBNE; Essential But Not Enough. - What then might education need as it develops a response to times of rapid change?

Darren Draper's take on how to implement the Creative Commons into the classroom curriculum.

A cross-sectoral podcast on e-learning tools, technologies and issues. Copyright and Creative Commons: Episode 22 (E-learning Insights)

Open content licensing for educators is a free online workshop designed for educators who want to learn more about open education resources, copyright, and creative commons licenses.

Scratch, a free iconic programming language and active learning community provided by MIT, is a learning platform EVERYONE involved in education should know how to use. This is a bold claim, but I'm ready to defend it more than ever after spending four weeks working with Scratch this past semester with my UNT pre-service education students.

The intersections of curriculum development: music, ICT and Australian music education

What should collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking look like in a modern classroom? How can parents help educators accomplish their goals? We hope this guide helps bring more parents into the conversation about improving education