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"ur Best Practices in Virtual Worlds Teaching Guide produced by University of Derby and Aston University in collaboration and funding from the Higher Education Academy Psychology Network and JISC is now available in soft and hard copy. The guide features tips and advice on setting up teaching in virtual worlds using problem-based learning methods. It's designed primarily for those teaching Psychology, humanities and the social sciences but will be useful to anyone starting out teaching using virtual worlds. "

"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

Teachers taking the Victorian Certificate of Education Psychology units can share resources via this Diigo group

"Theories and Models of Learning for Educational Research and Practice. This knowledge base features learning theories that address how people learn. A resource useful for scholars of various fields such as educational psychology, instructional design, and human-computer interaction. Below is the index of learning theories, grouped in somewhat arbitrary categories. Note that this website is an iterative project and these entries are a work in progress;"

"Hara Estroff Marano is Editor-at-Large of Psychology Today in the US. She argues that modern attitudes to parenting mean anxious mums and dads are crowding out the unsupervised play that kids used to enjoy. As a result children don't get much opportunity to solve their own problems, to practise co-operation and to test their leadership skills."

Asks the provocative question, are we raising a nation of wimps?

Stacks of great resources for Business Management, Psychology, Team Building

Ever noticed that folk using Twitter seem to fit into patterns according to what they share? Have you found that over time you begin to review your incoming twitter stream according to some sort of inbuilt filter that you devise according to this pattern? The Innovation Diaries has pondered on this and the needs that folk bring to their Tweeps. Relating this to the work of Abraham Maslow the diaries have come up with a Hierarchy of Tweets. Not only informative but quite amusing it is interesting to try to place ones self in the hierarchy and even more so your twitter friends :).

"Policy makers and researchers have long focused on trying to combat 'disengaged' behaviours, rather than on understanding and promoting engagement among students. This focus only captures part of the issue - engagement is a complex cognitive process, including a student's psychological investment in their own learning and personal learning strategies.1 The internal nature of much engagement means that it is difficult to define and measure. As such, it has been hard for researchers and policy makers to determine which solutions can aid engagement and the impact student engagement can have on learning outcomes."

It's interesting how threads emerge from the books we read. An idea springs out at you from one book and then occurs again in another or a link is found between the two. When it turns up a third time in a different place and from an alternate perspective you really take notice. I have had this experience with the concept of emotional or psychological safety.

Learning styles are a way to help improve your quality of learning. By understanding your own personal styles, you can adapt the learning process and techniques you use. This site is dedicated to helping you better understand learning styles, as well as providing an easy way to discover your own styles.

"A new study co-authored by MIT researchers documents the existence of collective intelligence among groups of people who cooperate well, showing that such intelligence extends beyond the cognitive abilities of the groups' individual members, and that the tendency to cooperate effectively is linked to the number of women in a group."

Some interesting implications here for teams at schools including their composition and providing training to develop social skills.

Terrific infographic on this question.