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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 Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e.reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells.

In some colleges professors realize that most students don't really learn well via lectures; they are using strategies involving active learning and problem-solving to ensure that students really learn and understand complex ideas.

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.

"The U.S. Department of Education has declared August Connected Educator Month, and since we'd be nothing without the teachers we've connected with over the years, we're enthusiastically on board. To celebrate, we asked every educator who has written a guest post for us, been featured in a Reader Idea, or collaborated on one of our features to answer two simple questions: What is one important thing you've learned from someone in your Personal Learning Network (P.L.N.), however you define that network? What one person, group or organization would you recommend every educator add to his or her P.L.N.?"

"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."

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

"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."

The modern workplace and lifestyle demand that students balance cognitive, personal, and interpersonal abilities, but current education policy discussions have not defined those abilities well, according to a special report released this afternoon by the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science in Washington. A "who's who" team of experts from the National Academies' division of behavioral and social sciences and education and its boards on testing and on science education collaborated for more than a year on the report, intended to define just what researchers, educators, and policymakers mean when they talk about "deeper learning" and "21st-century skills."

"When reading on screens, people seem less inclined to engage in what psychologists call metacognitive learning regulation - strategies such as setting specific goals, rereading difficult sections and checking how much one has understood along the way."

The Teacher's Guide to Project Based Learning

New Hampshire schools are now required to create alternatives to any lesson that a parent dislikes - whether it's about the Holocaust, contraception, gravity or anything else. Does this "à la carte" approach turn school into a private right instead of a public good? Do such accommodations benefit students?

"EL Education has named three key attributes of high-quality work: complexity, craftsmanship, and authenticity. The descriptions are intended to provide educators with common vision and terminology as they engage in using student work to improve teaching and learning, be it shorter task work or products that are the result of long-term projects."

When Have You Ever Failed at Something? What Happened as a Result? We pose these questions for students to answer as part of thinking about the broad theme of "failure": how it is defined, what it means and what it can lead to.