You don’t need to be a Dickens scholar to understand that for many teachers it is both the best of times and the worst of times.
Let’s start with the good stuff. Digital innovation is inspiring imagination. Educators from all over the world are learning how to responsibly blend technology into their teaching, while sharing resource suggestions and best practices with colleagues and their growing professional learning networks.
The freedom to choose an assortment of apps, videos and open educational resources that can augment – if not replace – traditional curriculum for any given unit or lesson plan is empowering. Learning how other teachers put these tools into their own practice via Twitter Chats, EdCamps and other collaborative environments is exhilarating.
In The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream, Tyler Cowen argues that more Americans are living comfortably and contently with what life has handed them. By sheltering ourselves from the new and different, it’s hard to see what is lost by standing still. But if you look at the data, we’re seeing…
The world feels more dangerous. Our streets seem less safe. The assault on our values is constant. The threats feel real. The enemy is out there — just check your feed. Source: This Is How Your Fear and Outrage Are Being Sold for Profit This would be a great article to discuss with students on…
You can’t use everything you find on the web on your website. Most of the laws and rules that cover fair use and education were written well before the invention of the web. They don’t appl… Source: The Educator’s Guide to Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons – The Edublogger If you have any questions…
In 1999, an English solicitor named Sally Clark went on trial for the murder of her two infant sons. She claimed both succumbed to sudden infant death syndrome. An expert witness for the prosecution, Sir Roy Meadow, argued that the odds of SIDS claiming two children from such an affluent family were 1 in 73…
Maryland’s legislature is considering a bill to allow computer coding courses to fulfill the foreign language graduation requirement for high school. A similar bill passed the Florida State Senate in 2017 (but was ultimately rejected by the full Legislature), and a federal version proposed by Senators Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, and Maria Cantwell, Democrat…
Two young women, together with parents like themselves, had a dream to build a school for their children so they could be educated at their will. Gudrun, one of the teachers at the school then, worked in a normal primary school before. When it was time for her second son to go to school, “My son…
