"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
"I've had some amazing discussions with some colleagues recently about QR Codes and how we can use them. When I got over the initial "huh?" response as to what they are, and they understood that the code can contain type of data, we started to get somewhere really quite quickly.
So, this post is really to consolidate my previous posts and to make it slightly more graphical - images are often easier to follow."
IDroo is a free online whiteboard that is
"FREE for non-commercial use
# Collaborative meetings with many participants (10 or even more)
# Insert simple and complex mathematical equations
# Draw and write your ideas
# Express your mind through images
# Take advantage of high quality calls over Skype
# All drawings are easily editable vector graphics
# Works with Wacom Bamboo, Wacom Intuos and other digital tablets"
Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.
Venice Backstage is an interesting seventeen minute video about how the city of Venice works. The video, produced by the municipality of Venice, shows viewers how the water is contained, how the buildings stay upright, and how residents of Venice travel about the city. The website Venice Backstage offers additional articles and graphics to support the information presented in the video.
The success of his story of the Holocaust in graphic form has followed him since its publication. His latest book, 'MetaMaus,' deconstructs the original work.
Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.
"Post by Steve Saville, deputy principal at Alfriston College in South Auckland. For four years, Steve has championed the use of comics in the classroom through a series of innovative workshops which have allowed students to develop and publish their own high quality comic books. In the first of a two-part guest post, Steve tells the story of Alfriston's unique comic book education project."
Piktochart offers 5 free templates, but many more options for paid accounts. There is a variety of pre-created shapes and images on Piktochart; you are able to upload a limited amount of customized images with a free account.