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"Great teachers know that learning doesn't stop as soon as you graduate from college. Teachers learn from their experience, from their colleagues, from their students, and any number of other resources. If you are a teacher looking for ways to expand your knowledge base, here are 100 free lectures you can watch to help facilitate some of that learning." This great collection of some of the best recent lectures has been selected by Heidi Taylor. It contains sections on Creative Learning Environments, Technology, Information for New Teachers, Information for All Teachers, Teaching Specific Subjects, Special Needs, Arts, PE & Health and Lectures From Influential Professors. This is the perfect site for a rainy afternoon.

"We don't often stop and ask students - or their parents - what they think their technology needs are. But the newly-released Speak Up 2010 survey has done just that .. The results are pretty fascinating, as they show great adoption of technology among even very young students, but lingering resistance on the part of school administrators to sanction some of those tools into the classroom."

Sometimes it is worth stating the obvious, giving time and thought to what we easily take for granted. In doing so we name the things we value most and give them the value they deserve. The value of teams is one such ideal, we know that teams have value, we probably even know what it feels like to be a part of a great team but too often we take this feeling as understood and don't stop to consider what makes it worth chasing.

Constructivism is one of those ideas we throw around in educational circles without stopping to think about what we mean by it. They are the terms that have multiple meanings, are at once highly technical and common usage and are likely to cause debate and disagreements. Constructivism in particular carries a quantity of baggage with it. It is a term that is appropriated by supporters of educational approaches that are in stark contrast to the opposing view; constructivism vs didactic methods or direct instruction. The question is what are the origins of constructivism and does a belief in this as an approach to understanding learning necessitate an abandonment of direct instruction or is this a false dichotomy?

Destinationitis is the tendency to focus more on where you are going than where you are. You will frequently see groups of trekkers suffering from destinationitis. So focused are they on making it to the end of the trek or the next rest stop that they storm through the wilderness oblivious to the beauty that surrounds them. Destinationitis similarly afflicts educators but here the consequences are borne by the students.

THE backpacks at Albert Park College look a little small. But then everything at the school, which is entering its second year, is a little different. Students helped design the bags and point out that they do not need many books. Nor any calculators, notebooks, atlases and diaries. Instead each student has what the principal calls an "electronic pencil box": an iPad.

110 responses in this conversation about the tall poppy syndrome. I thought it was just in Australia

Gates says his foundation is currently focusing on using private funds to inform and redirect how public education dollars are spent, specifically in the form of research.- my note "agreeable findings" concern as "research" can then rapidly influence policy.