“Never write more than two pages on any subject.” How is your new year’s resolution to read more and write better holding up? After tracing the fascinating story of the most influential writing style guide of all time and absorbing advice on writing from some of modern history’s most legendary writers, here comes some priceless and pricelessly uncompromising wisdom from a very different kind of cultural legend: iconic businessman and original “Mad Man” David Ogilvy. On September 7th, 1982, Ogi...  show all text

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Every week, Steve Hargadon and I sit down (virtually) to talk about the latest ed-tech news. I always find our conversation to be one of the most thought-provoking exchanges I have all week. You can listen to last week's episode (in which we discuss our thoughts on Educon, on another online learning startup out of Stanford, and on Mark Zuckerberg, the "Hacker Way" and the implications of the Facebook IPO) below.   You can subscribe to the podcast feed here. February 3, 2012 podcast

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The project was created in 2010 with a simple goal in mind; one book to connect the world.  Now with two years under our belt and more than 2,000 connections made, we realize we are on to something larger than us so we look forward to continuing the global connections. The premise is simple; we pick a book to read aloud to our students during a set 4-week period and during that time we try to make as many global connections as possible.  Each teacher decides how much time they would like to d...  show all text

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The Dutch are bicycle fanatics. Almost half of daily travel in the Netherlands is by bicycle, while the country’s bike fleet comfortably outnumbers its 16 million people. Devotees of the national obsession have taken the next logical step by launching what is likely the first bicycle school bus. Built by Tolkamp Metaalspecials, and sold by the De Cafe Racer company, the bicycle school bus (BCO in Dutch) is powered entirely by children and the one adult driver (although there is an electric motor  show all text

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For the past year, my Tuesday nights have been filled with insights and  inspiration from the worlds top leaders who faithfully gather on Twitter for one of the most powerful and productive chat streams on Twitter:  #leadershipchat The chat is co-hosted by author and CEO of C-Level Strategies, Inc, Lisa Petrilli (@LisaPetrilli) and The Connection Agent,  Steve Woodruff (@swoodruff) , and each week  they challenge and guide us through the questions that challenge us to be the best leaders in our...  show all text

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Today, we released an update to Evernote for iOS (4.1.8) that comes full of great additions and improvements. We enhanced our note editing capabilities, added smart note titles, made sharing easier, and much more. Let’s take a look. Get Evernote for iOS Predictive Note Titles Gone are the days of Untitled Notes. Now, when you create a new note and save it without giving the note a title, the app will assign a contextual title using calendar events, your location, note contents, and other inform...  show all text

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Scientists have recently explored whether comprehending common metaphors can activate parts of the brain that provide sensory experiences. For example, do your fingers feel rough if someone is said to have a gritty style? Prior research on metaphors, such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors we live by, suggests that our daily language is so full of metaphors, some of which are so familiar (like “rough day”), that they may not seem especially novel or striking. They argued that metaphor  show all text

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The story so far – when I turned up for my third German class, Dora the teacher asked me for some feedback. We had only five minutes so I made the following quick recommendations: stop asking for responses one by one in the order we’re sitting ask for some kind of productive feedback after pair work give us clearer models of new chunks of language Part 4 – Rays of light One of the things Dora does very well is that she asks us all to sit in different places and work with different people every ...  show all text

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Flickr: Nazareth College By Erica Perez, California Watch California State University and University of California campuses are taking new steps to limit what students can do with their class notes: At least one CSU Chico student recently was reported to judicial affairs for selling notes to a website, while a newly updated UC Berkeley policy restricts how students share their notes with others. The policies raise questions about whether instructors or students have copyrights to the notes stu...  show all text

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Inspired by recent hashtag fatigue, we've decided to help out our readers with this helpful guide on the proper use of hashtags...

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The Republican education commissioner of Texas, Robert Scott, might not be the first person you’d think would find common ground with California’s Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, but Scott has spoken against high-stakes testing in a way that would make Brown smile.

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Even if you haven’t ever visited popular visual bookmarking site Pinterest, you might recognize its design elements — which have been popping up everywhere since the startup burst onto the mainstream scene in 2011. The site doesn’t use traditional web building blocks. “It’s almost like a window-shopping mode,” says Khoi Vinh, the former design director for NYTimes.com. “It puts the ball back in the user’s court,” muses Andrew Beck, a web designer at Blue Fountain Media. “It flattens the informa...  show all text

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I've featured some resources from the Encyclopedia of Life in the past (here and here) and today I'd like to point out a couple of new things from EOL that I learned about through the Google Earth Blog. The Encyclopedia of Life has offered Google Earth files for a while. Two new (to me anyway) files that could be useful for science teachers are tours of Bluefin Tuna and Arctic Tern migration patterns. The video below is of the Bluefin Tuna tour. Applications for Education The Encyclopedia of...  show all text

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I'm a huge fan and user of Evernote for, well, everything. I use it for my lesson plans, lesson resources, lesson schedule, meeting notes, class notes, student notes, research, web clippings, recipes, to do lists, project management, and so much more. I share notes with colleagues and students. I can access my notes anywhere on any web enabled device. I created an Evernote for Education resource page to collect great resources and to use when I do training on using Evernote in education. I just  show all text

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Any teacher who has assigned group projects to students has at some point had to help those students organize and equitably distribute work. (Or has had to listen to students complaints about other group members not pulling their weight). Here are some tools that you can have students use to manage their responsibilities when working on group projects. Pegby is a good website for organizing the tasks that you and or your team need to get done. Pegby is set up like a corkboard with index cards...  show all text

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Flickr: Loren Kahle Imagine you’re a senior manager at a leading videogame company. Your job is to devise the company’s competitive strategy in a rapidly growing and dynamic industry. What prices will you set for the consoles? How many games will be available for your platform? This is the premise of Platform Wars, an epistemic game, or management simulator, developed by MIT’s Sloan School of Management. The game’s learning objectives are to allow students to interactively experience the challe...  show all text

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Sponge Lab Biology recently won a National Science Foundation award for its interactive Build a Body activity. Spend a few minutes using Build a Body and it is easy to understand why it was recognized by the NSF. In Sponge Lab Biology's Build a Body students construct a human body system-by-system. To build a body students drag and drop into place the organs and bones of a human body. Each organ and bone is accompanied by a description of the purpose of that bone or organ. The systems that stu...  show all text

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The medium is the message. The medium defines, changes, and distorts the message. The words "I love you" mean one hundred different things spoken by one hundred different people. Those words convey different meanings spoken on the phone, written on a fogged-over bathroom mirror, and whispered bedside in a hospital. YouTube videos, digital photos, MP3s, PDFs, blog posts, spoken words, and printed text are all different media and they are all suited for different messages. When you attempt to dis...  show all text

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