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We're really glad you've joined the new EducationWorld Community. I appreciate your loyal readership and hope you’ve enjoyed my blog, This Week's Online Find. This blog has wrapped up, but we will continue to serve educat ...

This Week's Online Find: The Google Art Project

Say what you will about Google -- and apparently a lot of people have a lot to say about Google (See Wikipedia's Criticism of Google) -- but, for me, Google's incredible tools have brought me the world, and I'm willing to put up with quite a lot ...

This Week's Online Find: Paper Cranes for Japan

While natural disasters, such as the recent earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan, impact all thinking people, children often are the ones most deeply affected by such tragedies. And I'm not talking only about children who live in areas direct ...

This Week's Online Find: Teachers' Domain

Are you feeling dull and depleted as the school year drags to a close? Are your lessons sounding lifeless and repetitive even to your own ears? Do you notice students dozing off as you try to elicit enthusiasm for the same old lesson types you've ...

This Week's Online Find: MathNerds

Remember when nerds were the super-smart, socially awkward kids no one else wanted to hang out with? Times sure have changed! Today's nerds are the super-smart, socially-sought-after kids who understand things that everyone else wants to know. An ...

This Week's Online Find: Mint.com

Do you want to make a mint? Save a mint? Begin planning to spend a mint? Or do you just feel as though you could use a little help tracking and managing your daily finances? Whatever your financial planning needs might be, Mint.com is a site you ...

This Week's Online Find: UJam

You've read about Teachers Who YouTube. You've heard, I'm sure, of the Rapping Mathematician, the Singing Science Teacher, the Harmonious Historians. And I'm sure you've thought, as have I, "If only...." "If only I could read music." "If only I c ...

This Week's Online Find: Teaching Resources

OK, I confess. This week's site selection isn't really a new find, but it's one that's growing so rapidly -- and so brilliantly -- that I felt I had to let everyone know what's going on at Laura Candler's Teaching Resources site.Laura isn't a st ...

This Week's Online Find: Guide to Going Google

Say what you will about Google, they are where they are because they do things right. And the latest thing they've done right is their Guide to Going Google for Google Apps for Education.For those of you unfamiliar with Google Apps for Education, ...

This Week's Online Find: Tweet About Acts of H ...

Now that you've read the recent Education World article Full Tweet Ahead: More Teachers Using Twitter, are you ready to use Twitter in your own classroom? Are you simply looking for just the right project -- one with demonstrable social and educa ...

This Week's Online Find: The My Hero Project

Who's your hero? Mother Theresa? John F. Kennedy? Paul Newman? Jackie Robinson? Michael Jordan? Oprah Winfrey? Who are your students' heroes? Do you know? Do they? Doesn't it seem as though heroes are becoming harder and harder to find?Fifteen y ...

This Week's Online Find: Ad*Access

"Poor Millicent. Her smile's the kind...that men leave behind." Do you know why? If you've forgotten Millicent, perhaps you recall Seaman Gregory Grumph, the meanest man in the Navy? Are you stumped over Grumph? Bemused about Millicent? Then you ...

This Week's Online Find: Kidblog

Kidblog.org is a blogging program for elementary- and middle-school teachers who want to provide their students with the benefits of blogging, without the safety issues associated with public blogging programs. Built by teachers, for teachers, Ki ...

This Week's Online Find: Scratch

Got an itch to get your students' creative juices flowing? Scratch it!Developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT's Media Lab, Scratch is a programming tool that allows users to easily create interactive media, including stories, animatio ...

This Week's Online Find: REDU

Remember your old school? Whatever happened to the great schools we attended when we were young? What happened to education in the United States? What went wrong?According to REDU, "We forgot about our schools. And now it's time to remember them. ...

This Week's Online Find: FreeRice

You might think you already know about FreeRice, a non-profit website that, since its launch in 2007, has helped improve the vocabulary of millions of English-speaking students, while feeding millions of hungry people around the world. But if you ...

This Week's Online Find: Cranberry Station

During Thanksgiving week, you and your students might enjoy wading through The Cranberry Station, the online version of The Cranberry Experiment Station, an outreach and research center charged with "maintaining and enhancing the economic viabili ...

Are We Teaching Our Teachers Well?

This week (November 14-20) is American Education Week. According to the NEA (National Education Association) web site, the week's theme, Great Public Schools: A Basic Right and Our Responsibility, is a reminder that "all students deserve an educa ...

Tech Babies

The other day, I read an article in USAToday about technology use -- specifically the use of iPods, smartphones, and iPads -- among the very young. According to the author, many of today's tots "start waving their pudgy little hands over those gl ...

This Week's Online Find: DocsTeach

According to DocsTeach, "The National Archives has been encouraging teachers to use primary sources in the classroom since the late 1970s." One assumes with limited success -- until now. Because with the launch of DocsTeach, an online tool create ...

This Week's Online Find: Dipity

Do you love timelines as much as I do? Maybe it's the orderly Virgo in me, but for me there's nothing quite like the steady visual progression of chronological events to bring an entire concept into focus. In fact, the only thing I've ever dislik ...

A Failure to Communicate

I received an email this week from the parent of perhaps one of your students. The email said (with minor edits for clarity and appropriate language): "I am the mother of a student whose teacher has a weekly blog. I am informed every Friday that ...

Lies, Half-Truths, and Misdirection

Election Day 2010 is fast approaching and I still don't know which candidates I'm voting for this year -- or should I say which candidates I'm voting against? Because truely, based on the campaign ads I've seen and heard and read this election ye ...

Waiting for Superman

It isn't the cute little kids in Davis Guggenheim's Waiting for Superman that will tug at your heartstrings; it's the parents. It's Daisy's unemployed father who believes his 10-year-old can do and be anything -- if she only gets the chance. It's ...

This Week's Online Find:60second Recap

If you're a bookophile...a reluctant reader...the parent of teens...a middle- or high-school teacher (of any subject)...a teen who loves books...a teen who "hates" to read...a student struggling to understand your assigned reading...really, whoev ...

This Week's Online Find:Benchmark Grading

Benchmark Grading is a secure, flexible, standards-based online gradebook application created by a team of parents and teachers. The tool, preloaded with Common Core and some state standards (more are on the way), allows teachers to record assign ...

This Week's Online Find: Google for Educators

Google was busy this summer, introducing three new tools that are sure to be useful for educators. You can check out Google News, Google Page Creator, Google Groups -- and many more cool Google tools -- at Google for Educators. Not listed on that ...

October Is Bullying Prevention Month

Last spring, I bought a paperback version of the Jeffery Deaver novel Roadside Crosses to take with me on a trans-Atlantic cruise. My traveling companion absconded with the novel, however, and only returned it to me last week. Consequently, I'm ...

Contests and Competitions

If the ancient proverb is correct and "Competition is the whetstone of talent," then there appears to be much opportunity for honing talent this fall; my mailbox is brimming with announcements for contests and competitions. Whether you're a teach ...

No More Pencils...

Ah, the smell of impending summer! Although it's not so much a smell, is it, as a feeling...an aura...a vague lightness of spirit that seems to expand and swell like a deep cleansing breath as the month progresses? Whatever it is, there's nothing ...

I Love it on the Internet

I love the Internet. I don't know how I lived so much of my life without it. All that information -- vital information; trivial information; useless information; misinformation; fabulous, fascinating, conversation starting (and stopping!) informa ...

It's a Mystery

Who doesn't love a mystery book? Only readers who haven't yet discovered the fun. This year, Gallopade International is introducing mysteries to young people by declaring 2010 The Year of the Children's Mystery Book and offering parents and teach ...

Trends in Teaching?

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Raise Your Hand if You're a Teacher

A recent study conducted by researchers at Florida State University's Center for Reading Research evaluated the oral literacy of more than 800 pairs of racially and ethnically diverse twins in first and second grade classrooms across the state. T ...

Is Teaching a Profession or a Craft?

This morning, I received an invitation to the college graduation of the daughter of a friend. Melanie is a brilliant and bubbly girl with great enthusiasm for life. Her dream, for as long as I've known her, has been to study the relics of early c ...

Free Stuff

You might have noticed that Education World has begun running a new advertising campaign recently. We're always running advertising campaigns, of course. It's the only way free sites like ours can survive. This one caught my eye in particular, ho ...

Are You Teaching Cybersafety?

Remember "To Catch a Predator" -- the Dateline NBC reality show that dragged purported pedophiles out of the woodwork (or the Web-world) and exposed them to the television-watching world through hidden camera confrontations at what the predators ...

Read On, America

Read To MeBy Jane Yolen Read to me riddles and read to me rhymes, Read to me stories of magical times. Read to me tales about castles and kings. Read to me stories of fabulous things. Read to me pirates and read to me knights, Read to me dragons ...

The 30-Day Total Body Transformation

This morning, I closed my eyes, held my breath, pulled in my stomach as far as I possibly could, and submitted to a "preliminary body assessment," a procedure -- accomplished with a tape measure and a scale -- that essentially provided a numerica ...

Why I Love the Web

My mother always claimed (with evident exasperation) that the very first -- and by far most frequent -- word I spoke as a child was "why?" "Why do cows sleep standing up?" "Why do clouds float?" "Why does c-a-t spell cat?" "Why don't hurricanes h ...

Cool Contests for Cold Weather Kicks

"Loud are the thunder drums in the tents of the mountains.Oh, long, longHave we eaten chia seeds and dried deer's flesh of the summer killing.We are tired of our huts and the smoky smell of our clothing. We are sick with the desire for the sunAnd ...

Sticks and Stones

The other day, I was watching Momisms, Anita Renfroe's breathless three-minute riff on things Moms say to their kids -- set to the William Tell Overture. And as I listened, I heard in her words the words of my mom -- and of my daughter. It's fasc ...

Helping Kids Help Haiti

Like all of you, I'm sure, I've been horrified this past week by the images of death and destruction coming out of Haiti. Even my grown children are finding those images hard to deal with; their reactions range from tears to "turn it off -- now!" ...

A Question of Quality

Every day, I spend a little time searching a variety of news sources for important or interesting -- or funky -- education news articles. Most of the articles wind up featured on Education World's EDscoops page. Every once in a while, an article ...

The Most Important Child in the World

Welcome back...to a new year...a new semester...a new start...with a not-so-new -- but hopefully newly motivated -- group of students.I begin this new year as a new -- a first time -- grandmother. My grandson's name is Gavin Chase and he's absolu ...

The Gift of Giving

My Favorite Book

I recently attended a baby shower at which we were asked to bring the expectant mother a favorite children's book instead of a greeting card. As a mother of four and a former kindergarten and first grade teacher (with a fabulous college Kiddy Lit ...

Who's Your Family?

A Teacher's Prayer of Thanksgiving

Thank you, God, for I am a teacher. As a teacher, I have the power to educate, to inspire, to challenge, to comfort, to reassure, to ennoble. The scope of my influence is incalculable; each of my students leaves my classroom changed in some way b ...

November is a busy month for all of us, I know. But some things are worth making time for. I received an e-mail this week from the people at My Teacher, My Hero announcing that anyone who uploads a teacher-tribute video to the My Teacher, My Hero ...

The Best and the Brightest?

Strategic Management of Human Resources, an education task force whose goal is to improve student achievement, recently issued a report containing 20 recommendations that task force members believe will help state and local education agencies ach ...

Why Our Education System Is Failing

I recently read a blog entry written by a high-school senior just weeks away from graduation. The essay, from the blog A Boundless World, was called Why Our Current Education System Is Failing. In it, this clearly thoughtful young man said, "It's ...

Disheartened and Disappointed?

According to a recently released survey, 40% of U.S. teachers are disheartened and disappointed about their jobs. (37% are content, and 23% are idealistic.)Only 40% of teachers are disappointed with their jobs? The state of our education system m ...

No Excuses!

Last week, I posted a question to the Education World Facebook page asking whether Ed World fans think U.S. kids need more time in school. Most of those who responded said "no." Apparently, very few teachers believe that lack of instructional tim ...

Zero Tolerance vs. Common Sense

In 2002, I wrote a Starr Points column called "Stop Tolerating Zero Tolerance," in which I exhorted educators to replace zero tolerance with common sense and "keep our children safe -- safe from weapons, safe from violence, and safe from zero-tol ...

Bargain Shopping -- and Surfing