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It is not uncommon for true visionaries to perform poorly in the constraints of a classroom. No matter how progressive the teacher, a classroom has a certain level of restriction. Teachers have preconceived notions about what students need to learn and how they should learn it. The most forward-thinking, creative students often tend to be frustrated by those restrictions. As a result, they are limited by instructors who cannot accept, or do not want to accept, new possibilities. Shortly after Sir John Gurdon won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine this year, a report circulated that had been written by one of his high-school biology teachers. The report lambasted the young scientist, stating: "Several times he has been in trouble, because he will not listen, but will insist on doing his work in his own way." This perfectly illustrates how teachers can fail to recognize a new way of thinking. In our most obstinate moments, the mere suggestion that a student can do something contrary to the way we teach it and still become successful is inconceivable.

"Classroom of 2020: The future is very different than you think ERIN MILLAR"

How can you transform a classroom full of students into a community of learners? Betsy Page Sigman, a distinguished teaching professor in the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has tried over the years to add new types of technology to her database and e-commerce classes to engage her students.

"EDMONTON - These days, online literacy is part of classroom learning. However, for one Alberta school division, navigating social media isn't enough. It's making sure students are using the medium for good. In Parkland School Division, teachers and children are encouraged to learn about social media. "As adults, we really need to understand this world, and help the kids navigate it as opposed to just saying, 'hey just do whatever, we're too old to do this,'" explains Division Principal George Couros. "

"A recent blog by Grant Wiggins affirmed what I have long believed about creativity: it is a 21st-century skill we can teach and assess. Creativity fosters deeper learning, builds confidence and creates a student ready for college and career. However, many teachers don't know how to implement the teaching and assessment of creativity in their classrooms. While we may have the tools to teach and assess content, creativity is another matter, especially if we want to be intentional about teaching it as a 21st-century skill. In a PBL project, some teachers focus on just one skill, while others focus on many. Here are some strategies educators can use tomorrow to get started teaching and assessing creativity -- just one more highly necessary skill in that 21st-century toolkit. "

"Nanoogo is an online platform used by kids to write stories, create original artwork, and express their unique talents! It is meant to be fun, but we are serious about its educational value. Teachers are using Nanoogo in many ways to enhance classroom engagement while addressing the core curriculum. "

"Race To The Top Innovates Backwards, Education Venture Nonprofit Says When U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan opened the Race to the Top competition to individual school districts two weeks ago, he said he wanted to spur innovation "at the classroom level and the all-important relationship among teachers and students." Now, a coalition of 16 education startups and policy organizations, herded by the nonprofit NewSchools Venture Fund, are saying the competition gets innovation wrong. They're planning to send Duncan a letter Friday."

"The EdUmatics project aims to provide teachers of secondary mathematics with support to learn to use and integrate technology within their classrooms. The resources for professional development, whilst aimed at teachers, include a range of tasks for students to enable them to use technology within modelling and problem-solving activities. These are available in the different project languages. The resources include links to free and trial software, applications and animations in addition to tasksheets and helpsheets that can be adapted for different scenarios. If you are a teacher trainer, there is additional guidance to support you to use the professional development modules with teachers and trainee teachers."

"In his new book To Sell is Human, author Daniel Pink reports that education is one of the fastest growing job categories in the country. And with this growth comes the opportunity to change the way educators envision their roles and their classrooms. Guided by findings in educational research and neuroscience, the emphasis on cognitive skills like computation and memorization is evolving to include less tangible, non-cognitive skills, like collaboration and improvisation. Jobs in education, Pink said in a recent interview, are all about moving other people, changing their behavior, like getting kids to pay attention in class; getting teens to understand they need to look at their future and to therefore study harder. At the center of all this persuasion is selling: educators are sellers of ideas."

The Worst Consequence of Your Best Ideas You have to wonder why desks in rows and textbooks on the desks have survived as long as they have as the dominant instructional model when so few people think that it's actually a good way to teach and learn. And then you realize that while it never goes all that right, it rarely goes all that wrong either. Teachers don't usually get in trouble when administrators walk into their classroom and see kids with books open, doing work, even if the work isn't worth doing. And all those other ideas that we love so much - inquiry, project-based learning, technology, real world application of student work - they get so… messy. And something always seems to go wrong. And we have to face that education is a somewhat reactionary field to work in. The death of so many good ideas is when something goes wrong and someone decides that we should never do that again.