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"If you are teaching in a Project-Based Learning (PBL) classroom or aspire to bring high quality PBL to your classroom or school, we bring you nine resolutions to follow for creating engaging and effective projects in the new year. Follow these resolutions and you will be on your way to activating students' interests and building a strong culture to support high quality, gold standard PBL in your classroom or school."

As the educational community is moving toward implementing the Common Core Standards, I have been publishing tools and strategies to support that effort (see below). Recently, I published the Top 10 Characteristics of Effective Vocabulary Instruction and The Top 10 Characteristics of a Literacy-Rich Classroom. Both support the Common Core State Standards since the requirement to use more nonfiction and informational text in our teaching will result in increased demands for effective vocabulary instruction and a literacy-rich classroom to support and enrich student learning.

Lately educators are bringing social networks, interactive whiteboards, mobile devices and other technology into the classroom, with mixed results. Do these technologies benefit students? What are the downsides?

Here are some of the strategies educators there use to help promote collaboration and empower student-centered learning in their classrooms:

This Minnesota high school's planning team started from scratch and created a 21st century facility that turns the traditional classroom model inside out. Instead of waiting for students to come to class, teachers move about the school equipped with their laptops and other teaching tools.

"Edutopia is pleased to premiere the first blog in a new series designed to showcase compelling examples of how students are developing 21st century skills through a deeper-level of learning. Through this blog series, we hope to increase awareness and encourage replication of successful models."