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By contrast, feedback that avoids needless comparisons among students can be very useful, and doesn’t require much time or money.

consumers of mass media can come to believe that the world is more dangerous than it actually is through constant exposure to violent imagery or commentary

That “off” switch is becoming more important in the social media age, experts say. Seeking out information to ascertain one’s personal safety is a biological imperative, but so is a tendency to overdo things. Much of the solution will depend on people becoming aware of their own satiation points, Hodson says.

My students learn about writing mostly as they are writing. They learn very little from a failing grade, except that they can’t write.

Because I have access to their documents so early, I learn much more about my students’ writing and the issues that they need to overcome. This positions me for better teaching. It positions the students for better learning. That’s a win-win.

Revision History feature, GDocs tracks and preserves all edits to a document

This experience can be—must be—much more than putting some lectures, worksheets, links or tests online. Blended learning opens up unlimited resources, makes daily student collaboration more practical and lets teachers respond to students instantly from across town.

Embrace a culture of change and instability, and adapt

Get students active in learning:

You hear two opinions from experts on the topic of what happens when kids are perpetually exposed to technology. One: Constant multitasking makes teens work harder, reduces their focus, and screws up their sleep. Two: Using technology as a youth helps students adapt to a changing world in a way that will benefit them when they eventually have to live and work in it. Either of these might be true. More likely, they both are. But it is certainly the case that these kids are different—fundamentally and permanently different—from previous generations in ways that are sometimes surreal, as if you'd walked into a room where everyone is eating with his feet.

It's as if Beatlemania junkies in 1966 had had the ability to demand "Rain" be given as much radio time as "Paperback Writer," and John Lennon thought to tell everyone what a good idea that was. The fan–celebrity relationship has been so radically transformed that even sending reams of obsessive fan mail seems impersonal.

The teens' brains move just as quickly as teenage brains have always moved, constructing real human personalities, managing them, reaching out to meet others who might feel the same way or want the same things. Only, and here's the part that starts to seem very strange—they do all this virtually. Sitting next to friends, staring at screens, waiting for the return on investment. Everyone so together that they're actually all apart.

Our classrooms still look so much like they did when we (the readers of this blog post) were in school; maybe even when our parents were in school. The children we are preparing to enter the world are not entering at a 1985 ideal–they are entering at 2025. What are we doing with our content that is preparing them for the world they live in (or the world they will graduate into?)?

Earlier isn’t necessarily better; and likewise, more isn’t better if it’s too much.

what would happen if we didn’t focus so much on college, if we deemphasized grades, or if we assigned less homework, etc. Here are some of the answers Gleason got:

children learn values and norms by watching their parents and other caregivers.

Once you begin saying out loud every time you look at technology, you also realize how much you’re looking at technology. And what you’re normalizing for your kids.

Teenagers loathe hypocrisy. It’s the biggest thing that I’ve seen to undermine trust between a parent and a child.

We have access to so much information that our capacity to filter, process and respond is overwhelmed. We live in bubbles and rely on others to filter our world view by means we little understand.

Too much volume leads to testing fatigue for both students and teachers and can inadvertently cause the quality of the testing to suffer

. Variety This factor has perhaps the largest impact on student success in summative assessment.

Wolfram Programming Lab has a step-by-step introductory programming course built right in. Written by Stephen Wolfram himself, An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language teaches you the basics of the Wolfram Language in a straightforward, accessible way—even if you've never coded before

The Wolfram Language concept: make the language do the work, not you! Automate as much as possible, so you write a tiny piece of code, and the computer figures out everything else.