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Guidance and Support for Ongoing Improvement How does the MILE Guide help states, districts and schools implement and support 21st century skills initiatives? * Generate broad-based support for 21st century skills initiatives through step-by-step establishment of a compelling vision for 21st century teaching and learning. * Set benchmarks and goals with assessments to help administrators, teachers, and policy leaders to identify current progress on 21st century skills initiatives and define next steps. * Generate successful grant applications through identifying and prioritizing objectives as they seek funding via grants and other sources. * Ensure continuous progress through providing improvement rubrics to monitor activities and accomplishments. A Comprehensive, Coherent Toolkit for Progress Offering a variety of tools all designed to work together, the new MILE GUIDE includes: * The MILE Guide Self-Assessment Tool A visual mapping and self-assessment tool that allows districts to plot where they are today and set a course for future integration of 21st century skills into systems of learning. * Implementation Guiding Recommendations A set of district-relevant recommendations and promising practices to help local districts move from assessment of 21st century skills integration to concrete action. * P21 Framework Definitions The most up-to-date P21 Framework definitions that spell out expectations for 21st century student outcomes and the necessary support systems at the state and local levels.

Most parents and educators are always encouraging our youth to get off the couch and do something! DoSomething.org is an organization that helps teens with social causes they care about. This is the generation of "doers" and this organization provides an avenue for young adults to make a difference in the community they live. They have 3 rules: No money, no car, and no adults! The organization provides tons of resources on their website including a directory of clubs in each state that are already setup, but teens are encouraged to start their own project as well. I came across a video online on "How to Use Social Media for Good" by Monique Coleman, in a section called DoSomething U, which helps people starting not-for-profit organizations or social enterprises. That got me to their site and from there I found all these amazing clubs our youth is organizing and most importantly, doing. They also have the Do Something Awards which were earlier this year on VH1. They select 5 nominees that receive a $1,000 towards their cause and the Grand Prize Winner receives a $100,000 grant for funding for their project. The 2010 Grand Prize winner is Jessica Posner who started a community center in the second largest slum in the world, which is in Kibera Africa where 66% of girls there trade sex for food as early as 6 years old. But not everyone needs to cure cancer or fight AIDS to participate; any student can start a project they care about in their own community or simply search for volunteering opportunities near them. Since one of the rules is no adults, I would suggest sharing the site with your students and letting them run with the ball from there.

BrainNook is an online multiplayer game that helps kids ages 6-11 develop Math and English skills. It contains over 100 educational games based on Math and English concepts. The games help kids to practice important skills such as mental arithmetic, spatial visualization, vocabulary and grammar. They cover topics as simple as recognizing 3-letter words and adding single-digit numbers, to more advanced concepts like counting syllables and manipulating fractions.

"The We Do Listen Foundation offers free animated stories, games, and lessons for children. The books and their corresponding lessons are designed to help young children learn about things like how to be a good listener, what to do about bullies, and good sportsmanship. All of the books feature the character Howard B. Wigglebottom. The We Do Listen Foundation's games are a mix of matching activities, spelling games, and pattern recognition games. Children can create their own Howard B. Wigglebottom stories on the We Do Listen Foundation's website. The foundation provides online tools and templates for writing and coloring their stories. You will also find templates that you can print out and have students color offline too."

EASY: Set it up and let your members sign up at their convenience FLEXIBLE: Sign up creators can also sign people up themselves EFFICIENT: Store an address book of your group for future sign ups POWERFUL: Export your sign up data to a spreadsheet for use offline SMART: Automated email reminders make sure no one forgets HELPFUL: Send emails to those who signed up or those who didn't

"Rubrics are great tools to help assess student learning. Teachers everywhere are using rubrics to guide teaching and learning. Yet even the most experienced teachers commonly misinterpret rubric scores! Unknowingly, they are short-changing their students. So, are you using rubrics properly?"

You can find them in the most innocent settings. The dinner table, the classroom, during evening homework hour or an otherwise quiet family walk. Clicking, clacking, beeping, buzzing and whirring. This maneuvering marauder? Mobile phones equipped with text messaging. These devices are exploding in use among the current generation and teens seem programmed to use them constantly. A happy medium exists. Commonsense and responsible use of technology is within reach. To many parents the mobile culture is unfamiliar. We're hosting a Generation Mobile forum next Tuesday bringing together teens, parents, educators and experts. During this event we'll do our best to help parents navigate these challenging issues. We'll discuss cyberbullying, sexting, over use, privacy, and texting-while-driving. The Pew Internet and American Life project will present their findings from a landmark study, "Kids and Mobile Phones."

"For over a decade, TeAchnology has been providing free and easy to use resources for teachers dedicated to improving the education of today's generation of students. We feature 42,000+ lesson plans, 9,000 free printable worksheets, rubrics, teaching tips, worksheet makers, web quests, math worksheets, and thousands of other great teacher resources. We are the online teacher resource that is designed to help busy Kindergarten through High School teachers."

This page will inform you about the nature of group work, about what you should expect and the expectations teachers have of you in group learning situations. Learning and working effectively as part of a team or group is an extremely important skill, and one that you will refine and use throughout your working life. Group projects should be among the most valuable and rewarding learning experiences. For many students, however, they are also among the most frustrating. Here are some pointers to help you work effectively on your group tasks and assignments. These are mostly general principles that you should apply to group work here, in other courses and in the workplace.