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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

That it is necessary to shift away from ICT-skills centred PD, towards reflective, pedagogically focused learning, is clear. Unless we, as teachers, can justify using ICT and make pedagogical changes to enhance student outcomes, then efforts to 'teach' ICT will be superficial. Embracing a Communities of Practice model for ICT PD incorporates the ubiquitous recommendations; that ICT PD should be collaborative; ongoing; focused on teacher needs;and facilitate critical discussion amongst colleagues.

The 'SIF AU' project is introducing the Systems Interoperability Framework (SIF) into Australia. It represents a joint effort and commitment by all Australian school systems to develop an Australian implementation. The SIF Association AU will deliver a practical solution to allow vendor products to work together at the school and school system level and make it easier for schools, teachers and education authorities to access the data that they need.

Advice about as practical as you can get: how to create a tag and how to check on how unique they are - for your project or event

teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards. Underlying these transformations are a number of forces eager to privatize schools, substitute vocational training for education and reduce teaching and learning to reductive modes of testing and evaluation.

Mashpedia is a real-time, multimedia and social encyclopedia with millions of articles providing dynamic, fresh information; it's free to use and open for public participation, allowing users to discuss specific topics, post and answer questions, share relevant links or contribute in new creative ways. Mashpedia presents an organized mashup of results from Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Google News, Books, Blog Posts, and further contextual information, thus providing a quick, practical outlook for every topic.

"Even if the technological progress gap between 2000 and 2010 was enormous, there is almost zero evidence that it has made an impact on education. Yeah, I know. "Blogging changed your life. Your PLN saved you from social isolation…" Social media just doesn't feel that new to me and I challenge you to argue that it has had more than an infinitesimal impact on classroom practice."

Nice blog article that reflects on the past decade, without getting lost in the next.

This is an interesting study into the process of evaluating and developing teachers in Australia. The article backs up claims with research and clearly indicates our current review practices are not meeting the needs of teachers.

The aim of this survey was to illustrate effective approaches that might help others to improve their practice in literacy. Inspectors visited providers of childcare, education and post-16 learning. The providers were selected because previous inspection evidence and data on achievement and attainment showed that they were particularly successful in enabling children and learners from disadvantaged backgrounds to make better than average progress and to achieve good standards of literacy.

Practice using an SLR camera... Experiment with the lighting, ISO, aperture, shutter, and distance settings while observing the readings in the camera viewfinder Click the "Snap photo!" button Review your photo!

A google custom search engine that returns results under a range of tabs including lesson plans, printables, practice, videos and games.

The purpose of this Resource Sheet is to provide information on resources available for parents regarding online safety for their children. For another NCPC Resource Sheet relating to online practices see: Images of Children and Young People Online (Horsfall, 2010).

Inform is a design system for interactive fiction based on natural language. It is a radical reinvention of the way interactive fiction is designed, guided by contemporary work in semantics and by the practical experience of some of the world's best-known writers of IF.

A University of Toronto professor who got students to grade their peers' work has seen the practice blocked by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

ACMA site. Cybersmart provides activities, resources and practical advice to help young kids, kids, teens and parents safely enjoy the online world. Cybersmart also offers training and resources for schools and materials for library staff. Developed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, Cybersmart is part of the Australian Government's cybersafety program

Are you thinking about using web2tools for research, administration or teaching? If so, make a quick start with the web2practice user guides. The web2practice guides explain how emergent web technologies like RSS, microblogging, podcasting and social media can enhance your working practice. Each guide consists of a short animated video explaining the key concepts (such as microblogging in the example below), supported by a more in-depth guide covering potential uses, risks and how to get started.

Math-Drills.Com includes over 6000 free math worksheets with answer keys. Classroom teachers use the free math worksheets on this website to assess students' mastery of basic math facts, to give students extra practice, to teach new math strategies, and to save precious planning time.