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    Stories of Growth

    The Edge of Education Carnival. Issue 4 Welcome to the fourth issue of the Edge of Education Carnival, a collection of links to the most innovative teachers using and sharing tips and techniques on the cutting edge of teaching and learning. And now, before I get out of the way so you can click around, I'm going to make a shameless plea: If you are a real person . . .better yet, if you are a real teacher (or know one), gosh I'd be honored if you'd consider sharing some of the cool stuff that you do. Please consider submitting to next month's Edge of Education Carnival. [continue reading...]

Secrets of the Masters

featuredimage Listen up! Boys and girls hear, read, learn differently

New research is proving that gender differences are real. Boys and girls are different. From the way their brains are organized to the types of cells in their eyes, groundbreaking studies are showing us just how different the genders really are. In this article, Chris Wondra explains how boys and girls hear differently, and what this means for the way our children and students learn to speak and read.

featuredimage The Future: Where “winging it” becomes best practice

The problem with blind spots is that you don’t know you’ve got them. I mean, it’s obvious to us today that students weren’t going to need a slate or homemade ink in order to be successful. But imagine living in that time. There was no way those people could have foreseen the changes that make us snicker at those statements today. Might we also be clinging to faulty beliefs about what will make our students successful? But how do we identify them? What beliefs do we throw out? Which ones do we keep? What skills and content are we teaching that will be irrelevant in five years? What tools are we still using that are already outdated?

featuredimage Preparing students for the new media

Clay Shirky, a leading authority on the Internet’s effects, argues that emerging technologies enabling loose collaboration will change the way our society works. In this video, he notes that we are living through "the largest increase in expressive capability in human history." If this is true, how do we prepare our students for this new, emerging and ever-changing media landscape?

Quote of the Day

Bertrand Russell
"It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man (WTWL interjects, "or student") who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go."

Technology in the Classroom

Online literacy and new literacy
Before I was introduced to wikis in April 2008, I never would have envisioned how much my teaching could use these new technologies. More importantly, my students could not be more ready to take their education to a new level that I sincerely hope will better connect them to the world and prepare them to participate in a digital world. The time is now, and while students have been hungry for this opportunity, the reinforcing research is thorough enough to justify using wikis,blogs, podcasts, Flickr, Moodle, and online writing technologies that I feel can significantly improve students’ writing, and perhaps more importantly, prepare them for digital citizenship. This series, based on action research I collected while studying ...

The Toolbox

Step away from the textbook
Do you need to re energize your classroom and get the students involved in their educations again? Try stepping away from those textbooks for a moment with this easy to implement Meyers-Briggs Personality Type activity.

Got Brains?

3 Techniques for Brain Based Differentiation
I had accepted a job as a 7th grade language arts teacher, and I was ecstatic to have a job where I could share my love for reading. However, I had no idea how to best teach these early adolescents who everyone seemed to be scared of. This lead me to the action research project I undertook for my Master's Degree: brain based differentiation. This series of articles outlines what I learned.

Video of the Day

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation
Having explored the scientific research of the last 40 years, Dan Pink has deeply examined what really motivates people. What he's found is that there is a mismatch between what social scientists know and what business (and education) does. This is a fascinating TED talk that relates some surprising (yet deeply intuitive) facts about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivators. This is a must for teachers, leaders and builders of in all career fields.