"We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other." TED "Ideas Worth Spreading" Pretty Awesome right? This is why I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE TED talks and believe them to be one of the best sources on the web for learning, leadership, and personal development. Where else do you have access to the worlds most inspiring, informative, ingenious and innovative people talking about how they are going to do to change the world? Surfing the TED site is a like walking into a giant candy store, where everything looks and tastes delicious! You want to sample everything but know it will be too much all at once. Bite by bite you work your way through the possibilities until you discover the best of the best; the flavors you want to savor and take with you, celebrating the most amazing with all. So, without farther ado, I share with you my most cherished discoveries. Each and every one of these 12 Most Innovative, Inspiring, and Unmissable Ted Talks promises to tickle your taste buds and leave you with a sweet sense of excitement and possibility. Enjoy every morsel!  JR - Use Art To Turn the World Inside Out a semi-anonymous French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face, by pasting photos of the human face across massive canvases. At TED2011, he makes his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the world inside out. After enjoying the talk; make sure you check out the insideoutproject.net. Ben Zander - On Music and Passion  this talk will not only leave you with a new appreciation for classical music; it will renew in you with a beautiful sense of hope and optimism as watch Mr. Zander awakens the possibility in his students with the act of creating ‘shining eyes.’ One of my absolute favorites! Randy Paush - Really Achieiving Your Childhood Dream Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, delivers a one-of-a-kind last lecture that made the world stop and pay attention to what matters most in lives. He taped this moving talk just months before he passed away from pancreatic cancer. Unmissable indeed! Jill Bolte Taylor's - Stroke of Insight  In this moving talk, brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor provides a first-person account of her own stroke and the experience of losing control of her bodily functions as well the functions of the left side of her brain. Instead of it being a painful or frightening experience, she said the stroke put her in a intense state of bliss and nirvana. Sharing this experience became her motivation for recovery and our motivation to count our blessings. Sir Ken Robinson - Bring on the Learning Revolution  Sir Robinson explores what many believe to be true; formal education strangles rather than nurtures our students creative genius and potential.  This is his second TED talk about creativity in education; a follow up from his first TED appearance which has now been seen by over 4 million viewers. It is a must see for anyone who is passionate about changing our education system.  Tim Brown - On Creativity and Play  as one of founders of the award-winning design firm Ideo, Tim speaks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play. Tim argues that a playful environment which relaxes natural inhibitions is more conducive to creative and useful ideas than the very "serious" environment you find in most companies. He makes the case (and I agree); we must give one another permission to play more often! Brene Brown - The Power of Vulnerability  a key component of true intimacy is making yourself vulnerable to another person and letting them really see who you are. In this talk, you’ll learn how the ability to empathize, love, and share your personal vulnerabilities can not only bring you closer to another human but your humanity itself. Elizabeth Gilbert  author of Eat, Pray, Love, examines the way society looks at artists and the way artists look at themselves in this TED talk. She feels that the creative people should view their work as channeling God's creative gift to them rather than as their own personal creative genius. And she hopes such a shift might prevent some of the madness and self-destruction that occurs in so many of our modern artists. Loved this talk and presentation! Tony Robbins  Personal development author and speaker Anthony Robbins explains in his TED talk that when people fail to achieve something, the defining factor is a lack of resourcefulness. He adds that if people are resourceful enough-if they’re creative and determined enough-they’ll find a way to achieve what they’re after. A must watch! Steven Johnson one of my favorite writers delivered this fantastic talk at TED Global, based on his book Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of Innovation, exploring the cross-pollination essential to ideation and creative thinking. The talk was later animated by the RSA for an even more delicious treat. Chimamanda Adichie - The Danger of a Single Story  Novelist Chimamanda Adichie talks about the danger of only knowing a single story about a particular culture and relates it to events that have happened throughout her life.  Adichie tells the story of going to Mexico while the media was reporting on the immigration crisis and she embarrassed by her cultural bias and at the diversity of Mexican culture she saw. She encourages us all to seek out a variety of stories about cultures and not just adhere to the one definitive story that is often told by the powerful of one's own culture. Wise lessons for all to in this powerful talk. Dan Gilbert - Happiness Expert psychology professor at Harvard, and author of Stumbling on Happiness. demonstrates with wonderful stories, anecdotes, and research just how poor humans are at predicating and understanding happiness. This talk will surely make you think the next time you say to someone: Don't worry, be happy! Enjoy, Enjoy! And don't forget to check out the TEDx videos. TEDx was created in the spirit of TED's mission, "ideas worth spreading." The platform is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.I recently had the privilege of speaking at a TEDx and have loved the local and global impact of the conversations it sparked. Share your favorite TED experience below: Which talks do you savor? Which talks resonated? Which talks MUST be shared?        

Mind-mapping software has been used very successfully in courses where creativity and idea generation are critical, and where one might wish to discover (or uncover) connections and patterns. Mind-mapping can be conducted independently or collaboratively; the collaborations can be synchronous or asynchronous. Mind-mapping software is often very helpful and can be used in conjunction with

This course began with a conversation in the back of a cab with my good friend, fellow blogger and consultant, Richard Byrne.  (Check out his award winning blog, Free Technology For Teachers) We were leaving the event we had both been presenting at, and were reflecting on our experiences over the past decade of making the transition from classroom teacher to independent consultants. As we compared tales from the road, it seemed as if every story finished with a statement like these:   I wish I would have known about.. I wish someone had told me… I would have, should have, could have… If I had only known then….   When we started this journey, there was no manual of what "not to do", and more importantly "what one must do" to ensure the greatest level of happiness and success. Hence our course was born, and with the help and support of the amazing Chris Dawson, we are bringing all of our tips and tricks to you. In this four week course, So You Wanna Be a Leader? we'll walk you through: How to create your personal brand Expand your influence Market your talents and skills Create a solid foundation Handle logistics of your new small business Throughout the course we'll share the lessons we've learned the hard way so that you can avoid making the same mistakes. And section of the course has clear action items to get you started on the road to building, expanding, and marketing your personal brand. You can see the course outline here.   A Bit of My Story When I left the classroom over a decade ago, I was not imagining that I would run my own business, make a living as a "consultant", and most certainly did not consider myself a leader in my field and industry. The emergence of new technologies and platforms, you can not only operate a consulting business from home, set your agenda, and make an impact in your field or industry; you can be a leader. And if you are thinking of taking the plunge and going into business for yourself as an independent consultant, but you’re uncertain about your chances; this course was written just for you. We are excited about the conversations to come, see you on Thursday night! (Space is filling up fast, so hurry on over and secure your spot now!!) REGISTER TODAY  

Technological breakthroughs which have enabled companies to recover oil and gas that was previously unrecoverable have transformed the U.S. energy industry, and have helped lower dependence on imported oil. Some economists have predicted energy independence by 2020 (Citigroup, 2013, Energy 2020: North America, the New Middle East?). We can already see a change: in 2005, the U.S. imported

The appropriate use of educational technology can be challenging, particularly in a time of rapid change and disruptive technologies. It can be difficult to find the best fit and to select the correct technology for a college, university, school, or organization. Further, while many feel they're in a constant game of "catch up," others are excited about the road ahead, and are looking at ways

If you your job often has you bogged down doing the kind of small tasks that a well-designed web application could do, then I have found the perfect tool for you! The tool today is Iftt, which stands for "if this, then that." Iftt allows you to pick a simple trigger, such as getting tagged in a Facebook post, and automates a simple outcome, be it a text message so you can take action, or direct action like a Facebook status or a Twitter post. Iftt’s system is efficient and simple. Triggers, the "this" of the statement, can be chosen from a comprehensive list of channels. These triggers act as the starter that creates the action, or the "that" of the Iftt statement. Ifttt calls this a recipe - a recipe to quickly get your simple, everday webtasks done without even thinking about it! Ifttt has already become a hugely popular tool, with 1 million tasks created already! The Iftt team is fast and capable, now active on Twitter and Facebook. Try Ifttt to consolidate your small tasks and focus on your business! I tried out Ifttt myself, and found out just how easy it is. Here are some shots of my process! After I made my own account, ifttt made it easy to get started! Getting started with my trigger So many channels to choose from! Here are just a few! Activating the channel Choosing my action! Time to choose my action! I chose to make it put an event in my Google Calendar! I created my first task! And when I sent the email... It put an event in my calendar! Related articles Three Steps For Putting ifttt To Work For You(kaneconsulting.biz) Connecting Your Social Media with ifttt.com(epiphanysolutions.co.uk) Iffft Gets your Social Media Sites Talking (thetechpost.co.uk) 12 ways to use Ifttt for Social Media Management Magic (emoderation.com)

Understanding the needs that organizations have for eLearning is challenging, not only due to the rate of change of technology and the high level of uncertainty, but also because of emerging opportunities for careers and new industry directions. Companies and individuals who are in the front lines in satisfying needs are well positioned to provide important insights about the directions of change

Writer Mark Barnes was kind enough to send us an excerpt from his upcoming book! Enjoy! Not too long ago, after nearly two decades as a classroom teacher, I was ready to walk away from education. A particularly tough group of students made me feel like a failure. I knew most of them learned little or nothing in an entire school year, so I wondered why I should continue. That summer everything changed. I decided to return to my classroom the following year, but things were going to be different. I threw out literally every method I’d used in my career. Rules and consequences disappeared, along with homework, worksheets and number and letter grades. I created what I call a Results Only Learning Environment, or ROLE. The transformation was remarkably successful. Following is a brief excerpt from the book I’ve written on results-only learning, ROLE Reversal.   "The girl I’ll call Sasha was off to a rough start in her seventh grade year. The first grading period saw very little from Sasha. She completed roughly one-third of one major language arts project and did nothing on a second. Asked to review material covered on a web-based diagnostic tool, so she could retake it and improve her poor score, once again Sasha did not produce. In-class activities were done haphazardly, with little attention to detail. Feedback from the teacher, for the most part, was ignored. "At the end of the marking period, it was time for reflection, self-evaluation and a final grade. I met with Sasha, as I did with every student, and we discussed her production. When I asked Sasha for her thoughts, she admitted that the results were not what she had hoped for. She gave no excuses. Because the administration at the middle school where I teach mandates that teachers assign quarterly grades, I told Sasha that a formal grade had to go on the report card. This was a new concept, because there were no points, percentages or grades on any activity for the entire first nine weeks of school in our class. " ‘So put a grade on your production for Quarter One," I said. Tears rolled down Sasha’s face, a heart wrenching sight, as I hated to see her punished by a grade. In between sobs, her chin resting weakly on her chest, Sasha whispered, "I guess it has to be an F." When I asked if she was certain, Sasha nodded affirmatively. At this moment I realized that a Results Only Learning Environment would forever change how I taught and how my students learned. The roles were reversing. Students were assessing their own learning, and their self-evaluations were providing me with the information I needed to create better learning opportunities in my classroom. Education was changing into something truly revolutionary. "One grading period later, Sasha was up to a C, and she continued to progress throughout the year. She is one of dozens of examples of students who have thrived in a unique classroom that ignores the fundamental methods that teachers across America use daily - worksheets, homework, multiple-choice tests, rewards and punishments and a standard grading system. This book will share many examples of students like Sasha, who have taken charge of their own learning and assessment in what I call a Results Only Learning Environment. This transformative approach to teaching is based on research, theory and practice of people like, Daniel Pink, Alfie Kohn, Steven Krashen and Donalyn Miller. Although these authors and educators are referenced in several places throughout the book, most evidence of the effectiveness of results-only learning is based on my own practical experience and the almost uncanny success of my students." Later chapters of ROLE Reversal explain the student-centered, project-based learning approach of the ROLE. The complete elimination of rules and consequences is explored, and detailed examples of year-long projects and narrative feedback that accompanies them are supplied. Like Sasha, students grade themselves, and they do so with frightening accuracy.   If any of these concepts intrigue you, please feel free to chime in.   Related articles Books for Teachers: There Are No Shortcuts(enoughofthecattalk.com) Children’s books(daydreamsofahero.wordpress.com) "Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement" (cshmsfaculty.wordpress.com)

New technologies create opportunities. They can also destroy your business in the blink of an eye, and leave you without the resources needed to land on your feet.  Waves of disruptive technologies have been distinguishing features of industrial revolutions, and we can trace typical responses to them by taking a look at the first European industrial revolution. An early knee-jerk reaction

Podcast Special_ ISTE Newbie Project Winner @Cybraryman Congratulations to Jerry Blumengarten who has been named the Newbie for ISTE12. Many of you know him by his Twitter handle,@cybraryman1. I was not planning on doing theISTE Newbie Project this year.  I had organized and managed this project for the last three years and I simply needed a break. There is a lot of work that goes into making this project work that happens behind the scenes and I did not have the time to do it this year. But last week all of that week when I received an email from Suzie Nestico. She had been contacted by Jeff Bradbury who runsTeacherCast and Ron Peck who is one of the co-founders of #sschat and the SSChat Ning. They were looking for a way to get Jerry to San Diego so he could attend his very first ISTE. Jerry is one of those rare people who has found a way to give more than he takes from his personal learning network. He started out creating a website for his school in 1999, but by the next year had developed a site for all educators with hundreds of great resources and links. The website grew and now has over 500 pages and 30,000 links. It is considered the "go-to" website for information on just about anything. Many educators sing the praises of this wealth of information and sharing on a level that no one in education can come close to. In addition, this individual is an active member of several chats on Twitter. #Edchat, #ntchat, #gtchat, #elemchat, #engchat, #sschat and #ptchat are just a few of the chats he contributes to and moderates on a regular basis. This amazingly generous person deserves everything we can do for him and more. Please thank Jerry for all he has done by making a donation to get him to San Diego.  A ChipIn donation widget is located on the ISTE Newbie Site. Related articles Cybrary Man’s Update Education Twitter hashtags (newtrierlibrary.blogspot.com) Twitter Education List: Reflection (alettsportfolio.wordpress.com) Perspective Change With A Tweet (dimensionallearning.wordpress.com)

What was really great about your college experience? What would you tell someone who is considering going to your dear alma mater?  Tips? Tricks? Lessons Learned? Fill out the questionnaire here and share what you experienced. Then, take a free read of E-Learning Success: From Courses to Careers - free ebook! You may also win a free e-symposium from AAPG - just complete the survey and send an

Guest Post by: Lisa Cooley What is passion? Why does it deserve a place in our classrooms? The root of the word passion is not love or lust or overwhelming emotion. It is suffering. It is the thing that you love and need to do so much that you are willing to go through anything to learn it. (Kind of like me and this thing I have about changing education.) Maybe it’s stretching the point to think that five-year-olds entering Kindergarten have passions, but for my money, they are the most passionate people I know! For five years they have been following their passions, and adults have marveled at how cute they are while doing it. Then they enter school. This series examines the problems that can be solved by making students’ passions the first priority in the classroom, the school, the district. What does it mean to make passion the first priority? Here’s the first problem on my list. 1. Most adults don’t understand what it means to respect children. Kids need to understand from their very first day of school that who they are, what is inside them, what they value about themselves, is held to be important by grownups-so school really is a place for them. This scenario comes from the book, The Passion-Driven Classroom, by Angela Maiers and Amy Sandvold (now available on Kindle!) Houston is passionate about trucks, cars, and super heroes, struggles a bit with reading, and has an average I.Q. Interestingly, he barely meets minimum requirements for frst grade. He comes to school and plays the game. He sits through calendar time getting the big idea that it’s about the days of the week, counting and patterns, yet the truth is he really doesn’t care. He thinks, "What’s the big deal? It’s Wednesday. I can look at the calendar myself. The teacher-lady will tell me what day it is anyway." He goes through the motions of "sounding-out" the short vowels and reading the guided book of the week, Dan Can Fan his Tan Can. He memorizes the code, yet scores in the lower middle stanine on his developmental assessment. Next, the students are directed to follow the usual writing routine: Write your name frst, then copy and respond to the writing prompt of the day. Today’s prompt reads, "The best thing ever about school is…" Houston gets excited and draws a picture of a car. He thinks it’s the best writing work he’s completed so far this year. He thinks, "Finally, something I’m interested in and know a lot about!" Proud of his work, he hopes to publish it in his classroom library. He writes his rendition of the prompt at the top, "The frst car I ever made." remembering that he was supposed to write his name frst, he draws an arrow from his name to the beginning of his writing. He gets his paper back, a couple days later with the directions to do it over, this time, following the directions. Houston is confused. He did the best diagram with the best writing ever, and he didn’t do it right. And this happens again and again, day after day, until his passion for learning is lost As far back as elementary school, a disregard of who kids are enters and takes hold of them. But kids don’t generally take this rejection and turn it outward, where it belongs. They turn it inward, and it becomes part of them. They feel separate and apart; they try to fit in better, but kids can’t be other than who they are. Who can? We need to respect kids, not for who we want them to be, or who they are as long as they follow our rules. To get respect, you have to give respect. In this area, we as adults, the people in control, need to be very self-critical, all the time. The needs and desires of kids are so completely neglected that I give myself this thought experiment: what would happen if the feelings of kids were to beelevated above adults? Who has the more uncorrupted mind? Who is this school for, anyway? To find the passions of children is to demonstrate to them them that, in the words of Angela Maiers, they matter. And they matter not only to other kids, but those people in charge: adults. I currently have four more items on my list of problems that the passion-driven classroom would solve. Please add yours! Without passion, any kind of school change is just the same ol’ same ol’. This post was original published on http://waldo.villagesoup.com/blog/blogpost/passion-solves-problems-first-in-a-series/813623

Game-based learning continues to be one of the most engaging methods of learning for childing (as for adults), and fun, engaging learning apps can be very effective as well. Welcome to an interview with Lindsey Hill, Lead for Reading Engagement Innovation at Evanced Solutions and Evanced Games. 1.    What is your name and your relation to elearning?   Hello, Susan. My name is Lindsey Hill. I’m

Guest post by Lisa Cooley "Kids don’t want to learn. They don’t put in the work. They don’t fulfill their potential." Why not? In too many schoolchildren, the hunger to learn that we saw when they were toddlers is gone. Toddlers seize their education with both hands, stumble and run and fall and get up, ready to learn more. But inside our schools there are kids who don’t seem to care about learning at all. Some kids care but have no confidence in their abilities; some kids stress out about homework and grades and adult approval. Few kids seem motivated, ignited, by something deep inside them, which is fulfilled by hard work and achievement of mastery which school is helping them to accomplish. Where’s the love of learning? What’s been lost? How did we lose it? How can we get it back? Too many kids in the public school system are bringing passivity to school with them, and I’m going to give very short shrift to all the particulars of why and how and whose fault it is (well, ok, here’s a little more shrift: it’s the fault of the system that we all have given our tacit approval to, by our inability to stand up and change it. It’s not the teachers. It’s not the parents. It’s not the administrators. That’s too easy. I place a lot of blame, but we allshoulder it, including myself.*) Some teachers are better at it than others, this business of getting kids interested in stuff they don’t care about. Lots of professional development has been devoted to it. There are whole libraries of books on the subject. How do you teach kids to love math? How do you make history come alive? How do you turn kids on to the mysteries of science? So many strategies, so many methods, while kids shrug, look out the window, fingers itching for the keypad to their phones. We have convinced ourselves that we know, much better than children do, what’s important, what they need to learn, and why, and when. The possibility of "doing school" differently can be scary. Better the devil we know. Right? Wouldn’t it have just made sense to pay close attention to who these kids are instead of being in such an all-afire hurry to teach them stuff? I mean, not only having an "Identity Day," although I like the idea. How about an Identity Year? If the public school system was a book, then the first page, the page that said: "First find their passions," was left out. Adults have been floundering about ever since, trying to find it, that piece that would make kids love learning. Start with passion and see where children will lead you. Respect what they need to learn right now, give them time and space to do what drives them, and see what doors it opens. Have faith in them. Let’s stop making end-runs around the problem of motivating kids to learn. Go to the source, find out what’s inside kids and how we can help them make pursue their dreams of who they need to be. Without passion, any kind of school change is just the same ol’ same ol’. This post was original published at  The Minds of Kids

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Guest post by: Lisa Cooley  Before I talk about how kids will work with independence and enthusiasm when they are pursuing their passions, here is a video of a young woman talking about her senior project. This video is from the What Kids Can Do: Just Listen project. [youtube clip_id="EyxFD4wwNWc"] If you want kids to work independently, if you want to stop having to keep after them, if you want to see them move ahead on the momentum their work without constantly having to tell them why it’s important, then let them decide what they want to study. If it’s important to them to show the world this topic that they love, they will pursue it. If it’s about who they are, they’ll go after it. Give them the chance to study something that is part of them, and accept that topic, whatever it is. Dennis Littkey, in The Big Picture, talks of a student who wanted to do a presentation/gallery exhibit on death. She interviewed funeral directors, toured cemeteries, examined different death rituals. Another student wanted to do a project on Tupac Shakur: his music, his life and murder, and the various posthumous sightings. The teachers didn’t bat an eyelash. For their own reasons, these kids needed to study and present on these topics; each of them found that these interests led them to another, and another. They grew to respect themselves because their teachers respected their need to pursue what they did. In another post I talk about the concept of ignition as a critical factor in learning. Pursuing mastery is difficult; it requires hard work, focus, and nearly always involves some level of frustration. The only thing that can really carry a student through the required work is ignition. With no ignition, no spark, no deeply-felt desire (or in other words, no passion) learning is rote, learning is boring, learning is stupid (let’s face it…it’s not even learning.) Yet the ignition needed to pursue mastery can’t be planned; it comes from within or not at all. I could never have ignited my daughter to want to put on pointe shoes and make her feet hurt on a bi-weekly basis! Hey, they’re not my toes, they’re HER toes! But she loves it, and tells me that her feet are emotionally happy, even if they are not physically happy. She practices at home as often as I let her — and I only limit it out of concern for those poor toes and ankles. She’d practice constantly, if not for that. Those who are skeptical of what I’m saying will (and often have) immediately jump to the conclusion that I don’t think kids should learn anything unless they are passionate about it. No, it’s not what I’m saying; I do think that motivation is complicated and comes from a lot of different directions for kids. They are motivated by what their friends like to do; by a teacher they admire; by a movie about a topic; simple enjoyment; and on and on. But how about this: let’s bring about motivation by allowing kids to know what they are capable of. Let them experience difficulty on their own terms: because they were ignited. I remember being told that the development of a writer is the process of finishing a piece and moving on to the next one; evaluating, judging, criticizing oneself, then starting something new. It’s similar in education; in a sense, learning happens when you complete something and stand back to see what it was you were able to accomplish, take a moment to be proud, then start the next thing. If a student is truly passionate about what she is doing, her momentum pushes her through the difficulties; in the end, she’s done something to be proud of and is ready for the next thing. If motivation is the problem, let passion be the solution. Any other kind of school change is just the same ol’ same ol’. This post was original published The Minds of Kids

There are times when you must make presentations online, but you face a number of challenges: no time, limited budget, limited connectivity, and limited experience / skills. So, what are some quick

Guest post by Lisa Cooley The final problem solved by passion — until I think of more — is about discipline and behavior. As I said in my previous post, adult respect for students, their embracing of who each of them is, is the prerequisite for the best learning environment. Showing this respect and even personal liking for every student is the most effective way to help them build on their strengths, bring out their passions and develop their self-respect. In short, if the learning that students are engaged in is their idea in the first place,supported and encouraged by peers and adults, why would they misbehave? I can hear the scoffs and laughter from here, so go blow your noses and settle yourselves down. Discipline and behavior issues, classroom management, all these things will ever be with us, even in a passion-driven classroom. I do require that weimagine a classroom that we may never before have seen and find it hard to imagine. Consider the happiness in that room, and I challenge you to seek it out. Misbehavior as we currently imagine it should be redefined anyway. Boredom and frustration, indifference and resentment all live within the system that is built to support not kids but bureaucracy (and a bad one at that, if you consider it as responsible for the tests that take the life out of schools). Kids talk when they shouldn’t; but if they are involved in collaboration and mutual help, it works. Eating in class is OK too if kids feel they need to and clean up after themselves. Taking a break from the work to go to the restroom or even, heaven forbid, lean up against the hallway wall to talk to a friend from another class for two minutes, is that a crime? The minor misdemeanors of school are at least half kids just being who they are, and the other half because…when kids walk into class now, they leave their spirit and passion (along with their cell phones) at the door. The scenarios described in this series of blog posts cannot and will not take place as long as we continue as stewards of the industrial model of education. It might take place even if we never get rid of high stakes testing, but it would be a whole lot easier if they went away, replaced by a model of accountability that doesn’t stand directly in the way of real learning. So if you have trouble imagining this classroom, and think I am living in a dream world, you might be right — if you also imagine that it can be overlayed on top of the traditional model of education. Without passion, any school change is just the same ol’ same ol’. This post was original publish on Minds of Kids

It is always useful to have viable options to Photoshop and other expensive image editing software. However, which web-based and mobile friendly image / photo editors really work? This article reviews a few popular (and largely free) image editing software. PicMonkey Picmonkey.com Free version (which has numerous enhancements), which allows photo editing, creating icons, badges, and

[youtube clip_id="uLCLBP_XKwQ"]   Related articles Permission to Play, Please? The Sandbox Manifesto: Life, Learning and Success on the Social Web  Lessons from the Sandbox

I'd like to start by confessing that I am a huge audio quality offender, but I'm trying to reform. I've recorded hundreds of podcasts and videocasts, and have cheerfully distributed them, thinking that pops, stumbles, background noise, and long pauses did not matter. After all, they were just going to be listened to via smartphone from a podcast or cloud-hosted file (SoundCloud or YouTube, for

Passion says, "I believe in this. I own this. I think about it even when I’m not on the clock. I know we can do this better than anyone else can." This sense of ownership becomes a responsibility- the mission to pursue excellent work. The Passion Driven Classroom, 2011 Summer is a perfect time to reflect on, revive, and reclaim your passion. Consider the questions in this free study guide as a jumpstart to your upcoming passion-driven conversations. Enjoy! Study Guide The Passion Driven Classroom pdf Found at ebookbrowse.com Go to Study-Guide_The-Passion-Driven-Classroom.pdf Related articles Exercising the Mind(teachthrutech.com) "People are more creative when they feel passionate about their work. Whether they are driven by…"(digital-diva.co.uk) Visionkeeper - Finding What Works For You - 11 June 2012(lucas2012infos.wordpress.com) Passion Solves Problems! First in a series(angelamaiers.com) Passion Solves Problems! #5: Kids can’t behave themselves.(angelamaiers.com)