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Teaching Writing From 30,000 Feet Good writing is good thinking. Well written is well thought out–which is to say that it’s well planned, well organized, […]

The video’s a bit shaky (I had a student record it), but I think it’s a good illustration of the power of persuasive writing.  In […]

I’ve been teaching for three years at St. Croix Falls Middle School, but have recently had to relocate to Stanley-Boyd, where they feel that they’re a good school, but are ready to make the push to be great. They’ve got a lot of big ideas, with the PLC being the most prominent. So, as a new teacher, I was recently able to attend a PLC conference facilitated by Eric Twaddle to learn about some of the expectations of my new school.

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.

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.

Welcome to the third 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. With 17 outstanding submissions, this is by far our best issue yet.

Welcome to the second 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.

Again, thanks a ton for all those who took the time to contribute. There really are some amazing teachers out there doing amazing things.

This month’s edition has a wide range of topics from making literature more interesting, to the assumptions we make when teaching technology. But enough talk. Let’s get to the good stuff.

Welcome to the first issue of The Edge of Education Carnival. As will all the issues to follow, this carnival is devoted to all those teachers out there on the cutting edge of teaching and learning. There is a lot go good stuff going on out there. Our mission in creating The Edge of Education Carnival is to collect that frontier work that is leading the way in teaching and learning–in all it’s chaotic glory.

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?

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.