Gifted & Talented, Web 2.0, Interdisciplinary, Grading and Data…

Providing “real-world relevant kinds of opportunities” for kids is a mission of many schools. In Cottage Grove, OR, a project-based learning model is working to flatten the walls of the school…and being successful. (Al and Sandy, you will like this one.)

LiveBinders are like a 3-ring binder, which lives in the cloud, where you can organize and store resources. Some public binders include resources for differentiation, high ability learners, gifted education and Common Core. There is even an app for LiveBinders. The Web 2.0 binders are of interest to me. It seems related to Pinterest only with more capabilities.

An interview with Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the world-wide web, talks about how personal data (online) could lead us to a new era of personalized services.

Just in case you missed it – here is the Time magazine list of the 100 most influential people in the world. It seems pretty interesting that two, young and highly respectful athletes are in the top 5 – Jeremy Lin and Tim Tebow…along with Salman Khan.

This article about planning interdisciplinary units in middle school reminds me of the challenge the first time I attempted this. Thank goodness for my colleague, Maureen, who embraced the idea.

Decades ago when I got my teaching license, states were beginning to require a certain amount of hours in specific areas for certification, for example special education. Now there is a move across states to require elementary teachers to take a licensing test focused on reading.

Sue Brookhart and Tom Guskey’s responses to this blog about grading systems are very interesting.

David Ginsburg’s blog about when to return tests and the very accurate cartoon about what happens when teachers do, make me think about the formative assessment practice of feedback. For me, it isn’t so much about when you return graded work – more about what students get to do with the work returned that matters.

I wish all recipes were this easy – a pancake recipe via Venn diagram.

Found an interesting blog by Leslie Graves from Ireland with great notes about gifted education.

The tagline on the web site for School Digger says, “The Web’s Easiest and Most Useful K-12 Search and Comparison Tool for Parents.” The site allows you to pull recent comparative data for schools across a state or locale, down to the level of ethnicity breakdowns, fulltime teachers, freed/reduced lunch, Title 1 funding and more. Thanks to Gervaise for this one.