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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

Some useful guides to creating useful lesson plans for teaching study 9research) skills. Linked to US Common core standards but easily fit with Aus ones.

"Classrooms are infused with technology. Many lessons ask students to use for online or digital tools. Accomplishing this so it serves educational goals isn't as much about knowing how to use the tools as constructing knowledge in an organic, scalable way. To prepare students to make the cerebral leap between tools used for a particular project and tools available as-needed requires preparation in eight areas discussed in this post."

"Finland is planning to phase out handwriting classes in favour of keyboard skills, a recognition that this generation will never write a letter, birthday card or love letter. Instead, they'll text, tap and tweet."

"Finland is planning to phase out handwriting classes in favour of keyboard skills, a recognition that this generation will never write a letter, birthday card or love letter. Instead, they'll text, tap and tweet."

As teachers we hope our lessons are engaging and that our students are engaged. We understand that positive learning experiences are more likely to occur when we are engaged cognitively and affectively by what we are doing and that when we are, new ideas and skills are more likely to stick. Engagement is an important consideration in learning and as such it is worth taking time to consider what it means to be engaged and perhaps how we bring the benefits of engagement to our teaching and our learning. 

"The flipped classroom allows the class to dig a little deeper into active learning. It's a big misconception that the flipped classroom is about making videos and placing them online, sure that's one part of it. It's an important part of the puzzle as its forces you to focus on the explicit content you would like students to know. Making a 5 - 8 minute lesson isn't easy, but it certainly makes you consider what your learning objectives are . The real power of the flipped classroom is what happens the next day in class. The flipped classroom opens up opportunities. My main goal is to go deeper and have students participate in a richer active learning experience where I become more of a coach to guide their learning. The classes become much more collaborative in nature where students are solving complex problems with an emphasis on higher order and critical thinking skills."

There is little interest in understanding the pedagogical foundation of higher education as a deeply civic and political project that provides the conditions for individual autonomy and takes liberation and the practice of freedom as a collective goal

Welcome to the morguefile classroom. Do you want to learn the basics of photography or improve certain camera skills? Do you wish to contribute to a growing knowledge base for photo enthusiast. With the morguefile photography classroom you can begin to take better photos of any subject and get more enjoyment from your photography.

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.