What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart

High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of
homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no
valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is
little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids
don't start school until age 7.

Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the
smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by
15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens
finished among the world's C students even as U.S. educators piled on
more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S.
counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love
sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they're
way ahead in math, science and reading -- on track to keeping Finns
among the world's most productive workers.

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Going to School Online

When Janet Webber’s three youngest children head to school, they don’t meet up with the yellow buses rolling through their Cumming subdivision.

Instead Roni, the seventh-grader, spreads books across the kitchen table and logs onto the computer. Webber leads her other two children —- a first- and third-grader —- upstairs, to a sunny room with two desks, a laptop computer and bookcases filled with textbooks.

The three kids spend the next five hours or so completing lessons designed by the Georgia Virtual Academy. The online charter school started in 2007 and has quietly become one of the largest public schools in the state. It teaches about 4,400 elementary and middle school students from 163 of the state’s 180 school districts.

Internet-based: Georgia Virtual Academy

idea: Docs for Teachers

Google Docs uses Gears, an open source browser extension that enables web applications to run offline. When you aren't connected to the Internet, Google Docs uses information stored on your computer's hard drive rather than relying on information sent across the network. When you're offline, your edits are stored on your own computer until you re-connect, at which point your changes are synced with Google Docs' servers and made available to collaborators.

Click here for more detailed information.

Writing Tools

Huge link list of writing tools.




Writing Tools

Whiteboard Tools

This site contains tutorials and information about whiteboards.

Whiteboards

Flowgram -Creation of Visual & Audio Presentation

We are building a new communications platform that lets anyone package and share anything on the internet in ways never before possible.

A Flowgram combines the advantages of slide presentations and screencasts with an interactive user experience that fully exploits the fact that almost all the information we might ever need is already on the web.

FlowGram

Smartboard Blogs

This is a blog that is updated weekly and offers challenges, and links to interesting sites about technology and learning.

SMARTBoard

Inspire Youth

TakingITGlobal.org is an online community that connects youth to find inspiration, access information, get involved, and take action in their local and global communities. It's the world's most popular online community for young people interested in making a difference, with hundreds of thousands of unique visitors each month.

TIG's highly interactive website provides a platform for expression, connection to opportunities, and support for action. Join now and connect with thousands of other young people around the world!


Go to: TakingITGlobal!

Teaching Quality Learning

This is a video that applies theory to practice from a student learing perspective. It is a "You Tube" movie.

Go to: video

How to Accelerate Your Learning: Using Advanced Mind Mapping Techniques

How to Accelerate Your Learning: Using Advanced Mind Mapping Techniques
Published by Henrik Edberg August 18th, 2008 in Productivity, Personal Development, Career & Work and Success.

Study Matrix 101
Click this image to enlarge it.

Note: This is a guest post by Adam Sincinski of The Study Matrix blog. To assist you with understanding the concepts, techniques and strategies outlined within this article, please download the free Study Matrix 101 pdf and utilize it as a visual reference tool to help guide you through this process.

Go to: Mind Mapping

Google For Educators

he Google Teacher Academy is a FREE professional development experience designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies. Each Academy is an intensive, one-day event where participants get hands-on experience with Google\'s free products and other technologies, learn about innovative instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and immerse themselves in an innovative corporate environment. Upon completion, Academy participants become Google Certified Teachers who share what they learn with other K-12 educators in their local region.

Go to: Google Teacher Academy
http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html

Paperback Writer: Story By Name Game

Story By Name Game
This is a writing game I play with high school students to teach bare bones story plotting minus the usual headaches (teachers, it works best if you do it on the classroom chalk or white board with verbal participation from the class.)

Go to: Paper back writer

100 Web Tools for Elementary Teachers

The Internet can be a scary place for elementary teachers. On one hand, you want to share the Internet as a wonderful tool with your students, but on the other, you worry about safety and helping them find the most useful resources without getting lost on the information superhighway. Because of this, we’ve put together a listing of some of the best sites for elementary teachers and students online, plus a few tools to help you keep everything together.

Go there: 100 Tools

iEarn

iEARN students range from 5-19 and include students from the first grade to seniors in high school.iEARN also works with a number of college and university education programs and teacher training institutes.

Go to the site: iEarn

Google for Educators

Geo Education Home

Welcome to Google's Geo Education site, where you will find helpful information on using Google Earth, Maps, Sky, and SketchUp in your K-12 classroom. For years, this suite of products has been identified as a powerful learning toolkit that can help your students conceptualize, visualize, share, and communicate information about the world around them. The Google for Educators team hopes these tools will empower you to bring the world's geographic information to your students in a compelling, fresh, and fun way.

Go There

eLearning - Create your own course

The Learning Content Development System (LCDS) is a tool that enables you to create high quality, interactive, online courses. Virtually anyone can publish e-learning courses by completing the easy-to-use LCDS forms that seamlessly generate highly customized content, interactivities, quizzes, games, and assessments—as well as Silverlight-based animations, demos, and other multimedia. Register to download the free LCDS release, then start creating your own e-learning courses today!

Go there!

Classroom Tools and Tips - Biography

Welcome to Classroom Tools & Tips, an EduHound newsletter! You'll find things you've enjoyed from EduHound Weekly -- plus exciting new offerings that provide valuable ed tech resources to incorporate into K-12 curriculum. Educational topics, preformatted templates, technology tutorials, and practical tips are featured. As always, I'm here to help, so please let me know what topics you'd like me to cover. -- judi

Go to Web Page:

Lift Conference

Kushtrim Xhakli works at the IPKO Institute in Kosovo. He speaks about how innovative projects can transform education.

Go to Lift Conference

"You Take" - Problem Solving

The new site, Your Take, provides resources for students, parents, and educators to help instill the skills students need to make better decisions. It includes blogs that pose problems for students to solve and a tool called SCAN that walks students through a four-step process for making decisions. Other features include:

• A library of more than 120 lessons;
• The ability for teachers to upload their own lessons;
• Downloadable materials for use in the classroom; and
• Various customization features for lessons and other materials.

Your Take operates on an annual license, which runs $299 for unlimited site access. District subscriptions are also available. A free trial can also be accessed on the site.

YacaPaca

Quizzes, tests, ePortfolios, web pages, for students and teachers - Completely FREE

Go to Yacapaca

Jotspot Google Sites

Google Sites, a new offering from Google, makes creating a team site as easy as editing a document. Use Google Sites to centralize all types of information — from videos to presentations — and share your site with just a few people, your entire organization, or the world.

Check out the video

Go to Google Sites (Jotspot)

How to Speak

In this skillful lecture, Professor Patrick Winston of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers tips on how to give an effective talk, cleverly illustrating his suggestions by using them himself. He emphasizes how to start a lecture, cycling in on the material, using verbal punctuation to indicate transitions, describing "near misses" that strengthen the intended concept, and asking questions. He also talks about using the blackboard, overhead projections, props, and "how to stop."
Running time: 45 minutes.

Go to videos: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58703/winston1.html

Digital Plan Book for Teachers

Gone are the days of a traditional paper lesson plan book. This software enables teachers to maintain their paper plan book in a digital form. Planbook allows you to enter information about your lesson plans, attach files used in class directly to your lessons, print nicely formatted user-defined reports, publish lessons directly to the web and search for topics taught in class. Planbook will let you reclaim all those hours spent pushing bits of paper from file folder to file folder, preparing assignments for absentee students and searching for long lost handouts and will help you do what you love: Teach! (and maybe, just maybe, get home by 6pm on a weeknight!)

Go to Helmansoft Planbook for Teachers Software

10 Free University Writing Courses

Whether you are a current writer or looking to break into the craft, formal writing courses can help you hone your skills. If you don't have the money or the time for a campus-based course, there are plenty of universities that offer free writing courses online.

Go to Writing Courses

Teachers Network - Podcasts

Teachers Network is a non-profit organization—by teachers, for teachers—with a 26-year track record of success, dedicated to improving student learning in public schools nationally and internationally. Teachers Network is unique in its focus on professional development as the key to improving student achievement. Using the power of an award-winning web site, videos, and print resources, Teachers Network leverages the creativity and expertise of a national and international community of outstanding educators to transform public schools into creative learning communities. Over the years, Teachers Network has directly impacted over 1.5 million teachers and nearly 40 million students.

Go to Teacher Podcasts site

Social Network for Scholars

Pronetos is a home to communities and scholars of every academic discipline: a global think-tank of the leaders in your field.

We are the social network for scholars.

We are the home for Faculty, Students, and Researchers of every academic discipline who want to be recognized as leaders in their field.

We give you a platform to network and collaborate with your colleagues all over the world. We are the forum for building ideas, keeping up with the latest in your field, and nurturing your professional legacy.

Go to Pronetos

Yahoo for Teachers - free

Yahoo! Teachers is free for all teachers, administrators, and education specialists.Yahoo! Teachers hasn't been released yet, but here's a sneak peek!

Go to Yahoo! Teachers - sneek peek

Yahoo Teachers

Interactive Whiteboards

"Interactive whiteboards are used in many schools as replacements for traditional whiteboards or flipcharts. They provide ways to show students any thing which can be presented on a computer's desktop (educational software, web sites, and others). In addition, interactive whiteboards allow teachers to record their instruction and post the material for review by students at a later time. This can be a very effective instructional strategy for students who benefit from repetition, who need to see the material presented again, for students who are absent from school, for struggling learners, and for review for examinations.

Go to interactive whiteboaards

Social Sites in Education

Table of Contents

Ning-based:

General:

Art:

Classroom Networks:

Conferences:

Course Material:

English as a Foreign Language:

English as a Second Language:

Language Learning:

Leadership:

Libraries:

Professional Development:

Regional:

Second Life in Higher Ed:

Spanish as a Foreign Language:

Student Organizations:

Technology:

Vocational:

Non-Ning Based:

General:

Facebook-based:

A listing of social networks used in educational environments.