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Alisa MIller's short TED talk about the dearth of world news coverage and some of the causes for that. Great for showing the how and why of our news stories.

You should all take 5 minutes and watch this. It's worth it.

this would work well for some of the units, especially in 8th grade, that deal with the pros and cons of technology.

Done by students in conjunction with a local museum. Not a bad idea.

This is a project that students in Maine did in partnership with the local historical society and museum. Vicki Davis pointed to this and asked why we don't see more of this. I agree.

Mr. Mayo's student podcasts. Why aren't more people providing audiences for their students like George?

William Cole's rationale on why laptops are not allowed in his law classes.

This one might make for a good discussion.

Re-arrange your classroom, or, better yet, have your students do so and argue why theirs is the best layout for learning.

Handout for digital writing workshops

I really like the piece she infuses here about the limits on student writing--there shouldn't be. Too often we only allow students to write that which we can grade. Why?

You should all read this from the pen of a 17 year old.

What do you think of this?

Danielle, That's precisely the question I want everyone thinking about. We truly focus so much of our energies on getting the format down and getting the "i's" dotted and "t's" crossed, and for many of the students we teach, that is completely necessary; however, as we begin to look at the next phase of what we'd like to do in the district which includes more than just being "proficient" on some state test, can we blend some of the thinking in this post into what we are doing. And as for making people angry, my advice is that you don't get the results you really want without making a few people angry along the way. Not that you try to, but when you know that what you are doing will make your students better, you just go with it.

Pat - I'd love to share this post with the kids or incorporate parts of it. I have to say that the best writing that the kids have done is usually the writing they do when we're in class and they just write. One of the hardest parts of teaching English is having to read 130 well constructed essays that follow the rubric but are so dry and boring that I have to restrain myself from stabbing my eyes out with my pen. It all goes back to the fact that in our H.S. the kids can write a great 5 paragraph essay or write persuasively but they have NO VOICE and I feel that the stress on structure and grammar could be why they have no voice. Interesting - we should discuss this a bit at our next Connections meeting!