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...why are Finnish students succeeding and ours are failing?  The difference is not the instruction. Good teaching is good teaching and it can be found in both Finland and in the US.   (The same can be said for bad teaching.)  The difference is less tangible and more fundamental.  Finland truly believes "Less is More."  This national mantra is deeply engrained into the Finnish mindset and is the guiding principal to Finland's educational philosophy.

hHelping students learn how to learn: That's what most educators strive for, and that's the goal of inquiry learning. That skill transfers to other academic subject areas and even to the workplace where employers have consistently said that they want creative, innovative and adaptive thinkers. Inquiry learning is an integrated approach that includes kinds of learning: content, literacy, information literacy, learning how to learn, and social or collaborative skills. Students think about the choices they make throughout the process and the way they feel as they learn. Those observations are as important as the content they learn or the projects they create.

"The problem is my age. It relentlessly advances while the faces staring back at me in the classroom remain the same, fixed between late adolescence and early adulthood. In short, I grow old while my students do not. And the increasing gap between our ages causes me some concern, pedagogically speaking." Perhaps figuring out how to honor the two perspectives in the classroom can offer us the best of both worlds: a learner-centered classroom for both teacher and student.

"But in an increasingly connected and digital world, the things a student needs to know are indeed changing-fundamental human needs sometimes drastically redressed for an alien modern world. Just as salt allowed for the keeping of meats, the advent of antibiotics made deadly viruses and diseases simply inconvenient, and electricity completely altered when and where we slept and work and played, technology is again changing the kind of "stuff" a student needs to know."

Scannable bar codes may be just what you need to spark some student interest in your classroom - read on to learn how to use them to showcase your student work and give some life to your classroom's infographics.

"Below are some of the top web apps for students looking for helpful tools to focus while online, as selected by Google's Chrome Web Apps Guru, Rahul Roy-Chowdhury. StayFocusd - StayFocusd is a productivity extension that helps you focus on work by restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites.  You can restrict entire sites or just parts of them for as long or short of a time as necessary. Todo.ly- Todo.ly is an intuitive and easy to use online to-do list and task manager. It helps you get organized and get things done by organizing your tasks into projects and subprojects, adding customized icons and labels, and assigning due dates to your tasks. Read Later Fast - This app lets you save pages to read later - online or offline, and fast. All you have to do is right click and save the page for later to avoid having too many open tabs on your browser. Write Space - Write Space is a customizable, full-screen text editor that lives in your browser. It is designed to minimize the distractions that come between you and your writing.  This app also auto saves your work and works offline. StudyStack - StudyStack helps students memorize anything with millions of flashcards that have already been added to the site or the ability to create your own.  There are dozens of flashcard categories including foreign languages, math, LSAT and GRE. Graph.tk - An app for math majors, Graph.tk is an app that brings the graphing capabilities of your calculator to the browser. It's easy to use and good for plotting graphs based on equations. WordReference - For anyone taking a foreign language course or studying abroad, this extension gets you the translations you need in a fast and easy way.  Since it's an extension and placed right next to the address bar, you don't even have to leave the site you're on for a quick translation. BONUS APP: Panic Button - Ok, this app won't help you pass your class, but it might just come in handy during

The American Association for the Advancement of Science's Project 2061 (an imitative to improve science, math and technology literacy) -- "A new Web site is taking aim at this challenge, providing educators with quick lists of scientific statements broken down by subject matter, highlighting concepts that tend to be misunderstood by students.... The site (which is accessible after free registration) also provides teachers with some 600 multiple choice questions for tests that could help pinpoint conceptual sticking points. Multiple-choice tests have drawn criticism for being too reductive, and DeBoer acknowledges that "too often test questions are not linked explicitly to the ideas and skills that the students are expected to learn." So to figure out just what kids know-or think they know-researchers involved in the seven-year-long project tested more than 150,000 students in some 1,000 classrooms and conducted interviews with many of them to try to figure out how well the questions were getting at the underlying understandings."

Great Article via Ali F. The lecture has its place. Asking students to close their laptops has its place. But, failing to explore new possibilities for education prompted by emerging technologies does not serve the interests of either group.

Web search can be a remarkable tool for students, and a bit of instruction in how to search for academic sources will help your students become critical thinkers and independent learners. With the materials on this site, you can help your students become skilled searchers- whether they're just starting out with search, or ready for more advanced training.

So Prensky was right the first time - there really is digital native generation? No, certainly not - and that's what's important about this study. It shows that while those differences exist, they are not lined up on each side of any kind of well-defined discontinuity. The change is gradual, age group to age group. The researchers regard their results as confirming those who have doubted the existence of a coherent 'net generation'. "We found no evidence for any discontinuity in technology use around the age of 30 as would be predicted by the Net Generation and Digital Natives hypothesis," says the report. What the reseachers do find interesting and worthy of further study is the correlation - which is independent of age -- between attitudes to technology and approaches to studying. In short, students who more readily use technology for their studies are more likely than others to be deeply engaged with their work. "Those students who had more positive attitudes to technology were more likely to adopt a deep approach to studying, more likely to adopt a strategic approach to studying and less likely to adopt a surface approach to studying."

StudyBlue recently surveyed 500 students about what study habits got them through finals. The picture of the modern student that emerged from student responses highlights the importance of digital devices, especially mobile technology.

"If you have ever tried to get all of your students to the same set of websites at the same time, you know that just a couple of mistyped characters can create a frustrating experience. One solution is to post all of the links on your course blog. Another solution is to use a link bundling service that will group all of your links together into one package. Then instead of sending out a bunch of individual links you can just send one link that will open all of the bundled links for your students. Here are three services that you can use for just that purpose."

Summary via The Scout Report (May 2012): "Fashion Institute of Technology: Teaching & Learning Resources ---- Located in New York City, the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is known for its excellent programs in fashion design, marketing, and related fields. What people may not know is that FIT also has a great collection of materials for teachers, courtesy of its Center for Excellence in Teaching. The site includes sections such as Printable Resources, Syllabus and Student Learning Outcomes, and Podcasts, Videos and Powerpoints. In the Printable Resources area, visitors can view 15 different handouts, including "Good Teaching Practices for Software" and "Classroom Feedback Questionnaire." Moving on, the Syllabus and Student Learning Outcomes area includes sample syllabi and information on evaluating student learning. Finally, the site also includes helpful videos titles "First-day Icebreakers" and "Tips for Teachers." [KMG]"

Brain based and constructivist learning is a huge area to learn about but basically it's the theory behind inquiry learning. Brain based learning put simply means using what scientists know about the brain to understand how students learn best.  Constructivist learning is the means by which we construct learning. It is based on students participating in constructing their own learning and the teacher facilitating this rather than teaching it to students as in the traditional chalk and talk model.  

Cooperative learning requires positive independence which boosts atmosphere of trust among students and helps them accomplish the task in result oriented and timely manner. The team will suffer if one of the students does not manage to do his/her part. The next important factor is that this type of learning encourages face to face interaction. Students must challenge and compromise one another. Team members must periodically identify the changes to achieve better results in their work.

"Economically disadvantaged students, who often use the computer for remediation and basic skills, learn to do what the computer tells them, while more affluent students, who use it to learn programming and tool applications, learn to tell the computer what to do. Those who cannot claim computers as their own tool for exploring the world never grasp the power of technology...They are controlled by technology as adults--just as drill-and-practice routines controlled them as students."Source: Toward Digital Equity: Bridging the Divide in Education

Providing a wealth of resources for K-12 science educators, Science NetLinks is your guide to meaningful standards-based Internet experiences for students.

Lure of the Labyrinth is a digital game for middle-school pre-algebra students. It includes a wealth of intriguing math-based puzzles wrapped into an exciting narrative game in which students work to find their lost pet - and save the world from monsters! Linked to both national and state mathematics standards, the game gives students a chance to actually think like mathematicians.

"Monster Exchange is designed to encourage the development of reading and writing skills while integrating Internet technology into the classroom curriculum. Classrooms from a variety of schools worldwide are paired together; the students in each classroom are split into groups, each of which designs an original picture of a monster. The students must then write a description of the monster. The partnered classes then exchange their descriptions via e-mail and the Internet. These students are then challenged to use reading comprehension skills to read the descriptions and translate them into a monster picture. The true challenge involves creating a redrawn picture as close to the original picture as possible without looking at the original and using only the written description of the monster."

"The main YIS website is, and will continue to be, a place to display important information about the school. The learning hub is different, it is a collaborative space intended to host communication and dialogue. Therefore at the centre of the learning hub are the students' own individual websites . These websites are a place for the students to host their projects and ideas. They serve as weblogs (blogs) and digital portfolios. The students will design and adapt their own sites to suit these different functions and will be encouraged to explore and experiment with a variety of digital tools as this project develops."