However talented, no one is a natural-born teacher. Honing the craft takes significant care and effort, not just by the individual, but also by the school at large. Though experience does matter, it matters only to the extent that a teacher — regardless of how long he or she has been in the classroom — commits to continued professional development to refresh his or her status as a transformational teacher. Along those lines, even after a decade in the classroom, I don’t claim to be beyond criticism — not in the least. Still, I wish to offer some advice on constantly striving toward perfection, however elusive that goal will always remain.
When a student tweets at their school’s Twitter handle, chances are they don’t expect a response–it’s like tweeting at Starbucks, or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency—you feel like you’re talking to an entity that’s far too busy and important to ever respond to you. That’s why students in Georgia’s Cherokee County School…
In an open letter to Apple, two of its major shareholders, Jana Partners and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, have raised concerns about research that suggests young people are becoming “addicted” to high-tech devices like the iPhone and iPad, and the software that runs on them. It asks the company to take a number of…
We recently spoke with three inspirational educators about their experience in the Innovator Program and the ideas they brought to life: Charlie Shryock, who created eThanks, an online gratitude site for teachers; Matt Wigdahl who designed a makerspace project called SolverSpace; and Carrie Anne Philbin who created Geek Gurl Diaries to inspire girls to pursue…
Most of us claim we want to be happy—to have meaningful lives, enjoy ourselves, experience fulfillment, and share love and friendship with other people and maybe other species, like dogs, cats, birds, and whatnot. Strangely enough, however, some people act as if they just want to be miserable, and they succeed remarkably at inviting misery…
The teacher is just as important in a virtual learning environment as in a normal classroom, but a new study shows that boys and girls differ greatly in terms of how they learn best: Boys learn best when their virtual teacher comes in the form of a drone, while girls get more knowledge from VR-teaching…
The dinosaurs pair over Bluetooth to a new Jurassic World companion iOS / Android app, and kids can drag and drop code to make them do things. The robots can move, light up, make noise, or engage in different interactions. I particularly loved their dancing mode. Source: Dancing dinosaurs will teach your kid to code –…
