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"School culture should be collegial, said Sagor, where there is a focus on continuous improvement, shared responsibility, valuing contributions, and the acceptance that conflict is inevitable. "Working in teams needs to be exciting and attractive to bring the best and the brightest into our profession," he said. "When people say 'just tell us what to do,' the battle is nearly lost.""

What we need to do to prepare students for college.

Jason Bedell is an instructional technology consultant and a library media specialist at Belmar Elementary School in New Jersey. In his columns, Jason explores how effectively integrating technology can deepen student learning and make the school environment more student-centered.

"if responding personally to text isn't leading students to deeper understanding, then where should teachers turn to help students improve their comprehension? We should turn to the text itself. Enter close reading."

"My concern, mind you, is not with the passive viewers, but with the pseudo-participants-those who may equate appreciating and recalling the accomplishments of others with doing something meaningful themselves. I worry that, in our classrooms, we have become focused on celebrating the lives of others, at the expense of the act of creation."

Starting with the known and moving to the unknown sounds relatively simple-if everyone in the group has a similar level of existing knowledge. But everyone in a given audience or classroom brings a different set of experiences and thus a different body of existing knowledge. In some cases the difference is relatively small; in other cases it is immense.

"Every child needs to encounter frustration and failure to learn to step back, reassess, and try again."

"We want a team to think about action research as a collaborative endeavor, where principals and teachers work together to improve something over time. It's not just about gathering data, it's about working hard to improve something. Maybe you see a need to improve writing in the building, and you're going to figure out whether there's a way to take a techno-constructivist approach to strengthening students' writing skills. Maybe you feel the culture of your school is very mired in antiquated approaches to teaching and learning, and you want to build a new culture of innovation and collaboration, so you're going to develop your project around that goal."

"Ever wish you could create a personalized, customized search engine that searches only across sites that you specify and displays results that you know will be right for you or your students? Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) allows you do do just that. All you need to do is choose the websites and pages you'd like to search, then follow a few simple steps to create a CSE. Think of it as putting the power of Google web search to work for you."