Wait a minute.  Okay.  I have to be honest totally with you here.  As you read through the following links, I truly hope you find value.  65 submissions came in this month.  As you can see 14 made the cut.  And I probably could have easily shaved another 9 off, because–really, those last nine aren’t even teachers–I don’t think.  Heck I don’t even know if they’re real people.

Blog Carnivals, I’m learning, are not immune to spam.

I was literally bombarded this month with list-post spam.  But as you can see, I let a number through the filter because I thought that a good teacher–with a little imagination–just might find some of that information useful. I did.

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.

Oh, and if you are one of the six or so real people that did submit this month.  THANK YOU!!  So without further ado–enjoy.

Shelly Terrell presents Most Teachers Don’t Live There | Teacher Reboot Camp posted at Teacher Boot Camp.

Hadley Ferguson presents “Write a Comment” Challenge posted at Middle School Matrix.

Rachel Lynette presents 8 Ways Not to Say No posted at Minds in Bloom, saying, “I was going to choose a different post, but this one is getting some positive feedback so I thought I would submit it instead.”

Quirky Momma presents Ways for your Preschooler to Practice Penmanship (part 1) posted at quirkymomma.com, saying, “We use these DIY tactile “projects” (sticky sticks, gel packs, and mini-whiteboards) to help with letter recognition and early penmanship.”

Claudine presents ESL Lesson Plan Ideas for Winter Break posted at Korea-Diva.

Kaitlyn cole presents 50 Amazing Videos Every Educator Should Watch posted at Online Colleges.org.

Case Ernsting presents Teaching Web 2.0 Tools in the Classroom posted at MetaSpring Blog, saying, “College classrooms have been the traditional home of career prep courses. But they have become sluggish in their move to embrace technology and Web 2.0. Preparing students for their future is usually a number priority, but academia is lacking in this regard.”

Herbert Anderson presents 25 Tips for Students & Teachers Using Google Wave posted at Top Online University Reviews.

Tabitha Mcivers presents 50 Essential Web Tools to Search and Bookmark Open Courseware posted at Best Online Masters Degrees.

Mrs laughton presents 50 Free Web Apps to Make Beautiful Graphs posted at Construction management degree.

Redfire Atkinson presents 5 Free Online Web Apps to Show Off Your Artwork posted at Masters in Art Education.

swagat presents School humor….. posted at Its all in here,

Glory Scott presents How to: Research the Web Like a Librarian Does posted at Masters in History, saying, “One of the benefits of being naturally able to research, hunt down, compartmentalize and cubbyhole information is that you are a cinch for a librarian’s job.”

Angela Martin presents 50 Cool Search Engines for Serious Readers posted at Online Colleges.net.

And that about wraps it up . . .

Well, that concludes this edition of The Edge of Education. I hope you had as much fun as I did.

If you’d like to submit a blog article to the next edition using our carnival submission form, we think that would be swell.

Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Related posts:

1. The Edge of Education Carnival. Issue 2
2. The Edge of Education Carnival. Issue 1
3. The Edge of Education Carnival. Issue 3

People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: “If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I’m safe.”

When asked, resist.

Related posts:

1. Will Richardson
2. Daniel H. Pink

An Annotation

This is a book about globalization and how world economies, networks, and technology have converged to level the playing field of knowledge and power, creating huge shifts in the standards of living throughout the world.  His early chapters describe ten forces that have flattened the world:

•    11/9/89—Tearing down of the Berlin Wall
•    8/9/89—Netscape went public (launching the free internet revolution)
•    Work Flow Software
•    Open-Sourcing
•    Outsourcing
•    Offshoring
•    Supply Chaining
•    Insourcing
•    In-forming
•    The Steroids

He then goes on to sort out what all of this means for individuals, countries, economies, companies, and explains how this unprecedented historical change that sort of snuck up on everyone changes the whole landscape of values and skills needed to survive and compete in a global economy.  The bottom line is that if you are unwilling or unable to continue to learn new skills, your standard of living will suffer.  But he also describes a segment of skill sets that he calls, “The Untouchables—people whose jobs cannot be outsourced.”  He describes these types of workers as: special, specialized, anchored or really adaptable.

Friedman’s final chapter is titled Imagination, and he leads with a quote by Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”  From where I’m standing, that about says it all when it comes to what’s important in education.

Related posts:

1. Tom Friedman on education in the ‘flat world.’ Pink, D., Friedman, T.
2. Teaching English language arts in a “flat” world. Burke, J.
3. What knowledge has the most worth? Zhao, Y.

An Annotation

Another outstanding book explaining the power of emotions in the human experience.  The idea here is that a person’s ability to recognize, harness, and/or control their emotions play even a larger role in determining happiness and/or success than intelligence (whatever that is).

As emotional intelligence relates to motivation, Goldman wrote two excellent sections entitled, Flow: The Neurobiology of Excellence (90), and Learning and Flow: A New Model for Education.  The idea is that “flow” is a state of mind occurring when a person is able to forget everything and live in the pure moment of whatever activity they are engaged in.  A state of super-concentration when time bends and a person loses themselves.  The motivation for these types of activities and states are entirely intrinsic.

Goldman also touches on gender and emotion issues in a section entitled, His Marriage and Hers: Childhood Roots, in which he explains a bit about the differences between how boys and girls are able to articulate the emotions they are feeling based on girls greater verbal skills.  He also touches on aggression and how girls often feel threatened by “a rupture in their relationships,” and boys feel threatened by “anything that might challenge their independence.”

Related posts:

1. Emotional Intelligence: Anatomy of an Emotional Hijacking
2. Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Csikszentmihalyi, M.
3. With boys and girls in mind. Gurian, M., Stevens, K.

An Annotation

This article is actually an interview or conversation between Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, and Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat.  It is a great discussion about the importance of “mashing” the left brain (rule-based SAT style thinking) and right brain (artistic, empathetic, story-telling, synthesizing) together to nurture curiosity, creativity, and passion.  They also discussed the growing importance of parenting and the burden the schools are bearing by trying to solve all of societies problems.

Related posts:

1. The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. Friedman, T.
2. Teaching English language arts in a “flat” world. Burke, J.
3. Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

An Annotation

An outstanding article relating how America can and should continue to flourish in a global economy—by continuing to nurture more right-brained thinkers—in short to breed creativity.  Clearly, based on the fact that much of East Asian development has been done on the backs of Western invented and developed technology, America has historically been a world leader in creativity.  Zhao then compares Asian and American education systems to show how, despite excelling on standardized tests, Asians continue to lag behind the west in creativity, “ . . .not because American schools teach creativity more or better than their Asian counterparts.  They just do not kill it as much as the Asians.”

A couple of favorite quotes from this insightful article:

“Performance on the First International Mathematics Study, as study of 13-year-olds in 11 countries conducted in 1964 (in which the United States finished second to last), was found to have either insignificant or negative correlation with the nation’s economic growth, productivity, democracy, livability or creativity—what really matters—40 years later.  ‘In short, the higher a nation’s test score 40 years ago, the worse its economic performance,’ writes Baker.”

And:

“Instead of becoming more like others who are eager to be more like Americans, American education needs to be more American—to preserve flexibility, protect individuality and promote multiple intelligences.  American education also needs to become more global—adopt a global perspective–, add foreign languages and cultures and advocate global citizenship.”

Related posts:

1. Tom Friedman on education in the ‘flat world.’ Pink, D., Friedman, T.
2. The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. Friedman, T.
3. Sir Ken Robinson

An Annotation

A good article relating relevant literacy skills in the 21st century and how today’s students are going to have to think and appreciate a lifelong learning approach in order to be successful adults.  In addition Burke goes beyond the typical “21st century literacy skills” of information and communication, thinking and problem solving, and interpersonal and self-directional by introducing a new model based on Tom Friedman’s idea of a flat earth and the new roles that successful people will play on it.  They are: collaborators and orchestrators, synthesizers, explainers, leveragers, adapters, green people, personalizers, and localizers.

Related posts:

1. Tom Friedman on education in the ‘flat world.’ Pink, D., Friedman, T.
2. The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. Friedman, T.
3. Girl power in a digital world. Williams, B.

An Annotation

A great essay on the change in her students when the author moved to more “meaningful” assignments—particularly related to writing.  The big hurdle for many writing teachers is moving students from creating a piece to be checked off (a hoop to jump through), to a level of caring where they take part in what T.S. Eliot called, “the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings.”  Fox’s argument is that when we, as teachers, strive to make assignments meaningful for students, students care more and wrestle more.

A great essay on the change in her students when the author moved to more “meaningful” assignments—particularly related to writing.  The big hurdle for many writing teachers is moving students from creating a piece to be checked off (a hoop to jump through), to a level of caring where they take part in what T.S. Eliot called, “the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings.”  Fox’s argument is that when we, as teachers, strive to make assignments meaningful for students, students care more and wrestle more.

Related posts:

1. Odd girl speaks out: Girls write about bullies, cliques, popularity, and jealousy. Simmons, R.
2. Relationship-driven teaching. Rogers, S., Renard, L.
3. Wordle: The Anti-Muddle

http://www.thebiggestideas.com/cgi-bin/viewps.cgi?you_have_three_brainsps.txt

An Annotation

A great metaphorical explanation of the anatomy of the brain from an evolutionary perspective and how the brain’s evolution allowed for more complex and higher order thinking skills.

Related posts:

1. Emotional Intelligence: Anatomy of an Emotional Hijacking
2. Teaching English language arts in a “flat” world. Burke, J.
3. Tom Friedman on education in the ‘flat world.’ Pink, D., Friedman, T.

An Annotation

This article related some very interesting data about some AP test scores in the Dallas, Texas area.  The bottom line is that while girls are outscoring (and out-taking) boys in most AP tests, not only are fewer girls taking fewer physics and computer science tests—a lower percentage rate are passing.  This despite being measured to be equal in ability by a different test (PSAT).  For example, all boys scoring 70 or higher on the PSAT math exam also passed the AP chemistry exam.  But the same was true for only 50 percent of the girls.

So in 2003, the Dallas Gender Equity Project set out to figure out what was going on.  Working in collaboration with teachers, they found some fascinating gender inequalities (unknown to the teachers) related to things like female encouragement, participation, and confidence.  Many teachers then voluntarily changed their teaching styles and got a higher percentage of female AP test takers.

An interesting comment by a physics teacher:
“The most important lesson I took away for my female students was this:  Each student needs to feel that she is competent, important, and talented.  The number one thing we can do for a student is to sit her down, look her in the eye, and tell her that she’s good at this subject.”

Related posts:

1. Sax, L. Why Gender Matters
2. Reading, writing and gender: Instructional strategies and classroom activities that work for boys and girls. Goldberg, G., Roswell, B
3. Odd girl out: The hidden culture of aggression in girls. Simmons, R.