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IN Australia, primary school teachers receive, on average, 17 hours of mandatory music education in their teacher education courses. In South Australia it is even less. In Finland it is 270 hours. What is 17 hours of music education supposed to achieve? One has to ask: Why bother?

"Most of what we do is for the students. The focus of this and many other blogs and websites is about learning, and rightly so, but there are also apps that will make our jobs easier too. I am talking about that catergory of apps that are designed specifically for the classroom teacher. There are plenty and I am sure as more and more teachers gain the confidence to design their own apps, there will be more suitable one to come. Here is a list of apps that you can use to make your job easier."

"Every teacher is taught that back up plans are a must. Things change constantly in education and there are a variety of factors that can make plans change - computer breaks, internet goes out, file is corrupted, forgot your flash drive at home, you finish a lesson early with a class, your class has very low attendance due to a school activity or event (like AP testing, prom, etc), lesson runs long, students don't understand the material, class is interrupted by a fire drill. To deal with these issues, teachers must have back up plans ready to go and be flexible and organized. Here are some tips and resources for backup plans."

Ray & Coulter (2010) supports this stating that currently, teachers as a collective, do not see the potential for technologies to aid in the development of new knowledge, active engagement and linkage of knowledge to a real-world setting.

LearntobeHealthy.org is an online health science education center designed to help parents, teachers and educators communicate important health concepts to students though educational resources such as games, activities, and lesson plans.

"In order to convince teachers of the possible benefits of using a new technology, such as Twitter, we decided to look for evidence of its qualities. What in particular, does Twitter offer educators? Is it worth getting involved?" 30 leading educators (with an interest in educational technology) were identified. They were the ones who were currently using Twitter. The study analysed samples of their tweets in order to determine their purpose and the possible benefits of the tweets to their followers. Also examined were a sample of tweets from the twitter streams of two popular educational hashtags: #edchat and #edtech, in order to determine what 'followers' may gain."

blog meant to help teachers create and maintain paperless classrooms. In addition, our community regularly posts and comments on all aspects of paperless, digital, and technological culture as it relates to education.

This blog is styled as a site for history teachers and anyone who enjoys reading about history and history education. Though written by an elementary or primary school teacher, the blog has numerous posts and links to information that should be of interest to all teachers of history.

an invaluable teachers' resource used for assessment within the VCE (Victoria) and the HSC (NSW). Developed by experienced teachers .. for internal assessment and end of year examinations. Professionally designed and delivered by email .. they save teachers time and effort while providing confidence that assessment is reliable, accurate and consistent with requirements specified by education authorities.

"Microsoft, which bought the game's developer Mojang for $2.5bn in 2014, has launched a site aimed at teachers, aiming to foster a community of educators swapping lesson plans and other tips based on Minecraft. This site was announced (2015) by Microsoft's vice president of worldwide education Anthony Salcito, complete with a list of some of the ways schools are already incorporating Minecraft into their lessons"

This guide is designed to equip teachers and teacher educators with the competencies and resources to use ICT to transform their practices and practices of their schools and education system.

Today, thousands of public school teachers are on strike after the Victorian Government reneged on its election promise to substantially increase their salaries. The inconvenience to families is regrettable, but the reality is that attacks on teachers' working conditions ultimately hurt students.

The shift away from teaching for the rote memorisation of prescribed methods requires teachers to rethink their approach to the discipline. With this new pedagogy comes a need to understand the processes of mathematical thinking in ways not previously required. When we require our students to be able to reason and problem-solve through unique challenges we also require our teachers to have an understanding of the mathematical moves that their learners are likely to call upon.

With good reason, much is made of learner agency but the concept of teacher agency is important too. If we hope to build a profession in which we are all self-navigating life-long learners, we must acknowledge the role that teacher agency plays. 

Listing the traits that make an the ideal 21st teacher. Post tries to answer What does an educational professional need to be or do to tune in and synchronize with the new realities silently emerging inside schools and educational environments?

Not that long ago I was a writer of interesting and engaging educational programmes. Fortunately, that is no longer the case. The programmes that I wrote and shared with a team of teachers were generally well accepted and the feedback offered was always politely positive. I enjoyed writing these programmes but in recent times I have enjoyed even more stepping away from this process and in doing so empowering the team of teachers that I learn with. The programmes that this team produces far exceed the quality I could ever have hoped to produce but more importantly the students are benefiting from their experience of highly engaged and thus engaging teachers.

Student-centered classrooms include students in planning, implementation, and assessments. Involving the learners in these decisions will place more work on them, which can be a good thing. Teachers must become comfortable with changing their leadership style from directive to consultative -- from "Do as I say" to "Based on your needs, let's co-develop and implement a plan of action." This first of three posts on student-centered classrooms starts with the educator. As the authority, teachers decide if they will "share" power by empowering learners"

Pre-service and in-service teacher and employee digital literacy evaluation tool. Educational Testing Services' iCriticalThinking (TM) Certification program is endorsed by the Global Digital Literacy Council and aligned with standards from the US's Association of Colleges and Research Libraries. "The core of the iCritical Thinking™ certification program is an outcomes-based examination that can  be incorporated into pre-service training and in-service development programs and used by administrators and education officials for consideration in teacher evaluation,training, placement, and advancement."

SCHOOLS have options to make new teachers permanent rather than offering them only short-term contracts, according to the head of a prominent secondary college.

"Teachers have always held the key to student success. But their role is changing. The ISTE Standards·T define the new skills and pedagogical insights educators need to teach, work and learn in the digital age."