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 What tools are we still using that are already outdated?

It’s June, and your class is not asking questions about last night’s reading assignment. They read it, but they sit, cold stares hitting you from every direction, and there’s just a week of school left. Don’t just stand there! Put up a parking lot! Read more for an effective (and simple) way to engage your students in discussion – any time of the year!

In recent months, the Library of Congress has piloted a new photo series on the photo-intensive website, Flickr. If you’ve never been to Flickr, it’s essentially a website where photographers from around the world are uploading and sharing their photos, and commenting on the photographs other people post.

In this case, Flickr has teamed up with an unlikely photographer (or should I say archive of American historical photography), and the results are literally breathtaking. One example alone is Jack Delano’s “In the waiting room of Union Station”, taken in Chicago, Illinois. The photo features two officers who create shadows in spotlight-like beams of sunshine coming in from the gothic windows above.