Oceanographer touts deep sea web surfing
Classroom Innovations
K-12 Curriculum news
Personalizing history for more impactful student learning
Social studies teachers can help students personalize history by embracing individualized pathways and oral or local history projects
Superstition Springs Elementary leverages teacher’s vision to design high-tech classrooms
When Scottsdale, Ariz.-based CCS Presentation Systems offered a $20,000 technology grant for teachers to design their ideal classroom, first grade teacher Valerie Gresser of Superstition Springs Elementary School…
Microsoft’s Philly high school traveled rocky road
When the Microsoft-designed School of the Future opened, the facility was a paragon of contemporary architecture, with a green roof, light-filled corridors and the latest classroom technology, all…
Speech recognition, mobile apps help build reading skills
Students’ scores on a national reading assessment have remained relatively flat for nearly 40 years. As educators work hard to bring that average up, many are excited about…
Studying engineering before they can spell it
In a class full of aspiring engineers, the big bad wolf had to do more than just huff and puff to blow down the three little pigs’ house,…
Global firm to pay Montgomery, Md., schools millions for elementary curriculum
Montgomery County Public Schools could soon become a global brand, the Washington Post reports.
Wisconsin agency aims to transform education’s core
With support from all of its 45 superintendents, a Wisconsin regional service agency is determined to reinvent the very nature of public education so that all students are…
Internet-enabled ‘flexbooks’ replacing traditional textbooks
At Brandon Valley High School in South Dakota, bulky science textbooks soon might be replaced with slimmer science "flexbooks," a new model of textbook creation in which teachers…
Final common standards in English, math released
A year-long effort to define a common set of academic standards for English and math culminated on June 2 with the release of the final version of the…
Editorial: Media illiteracy
President Obama caused quite a stir among the technorati with his commencement address at Hampton University last month.
ASU’s education technology program top-ranked for productivity
With only a few graduate faculty members, the educational technology program at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College might be small, but according to a recent…
Web site of the week: NationalLabDay.org
May 12 was the first celebration of National Lab Day, a nationwide initiative seeking to encourage student learning in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through…
New computer games promote civics education
An "unintended consequence" of the No Child Left Behind initiative has been a decrease in civics knowledge, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said May 26 in…
Opinion: Texas textbook change can’t blot out Internet
The Daily News Journal columnist Jim Leonhirth writes that while the dust still is settling in the revisions of Texas Board of Education curriculum standards, the real winner…
Texas moves emphasize need to open source education
ZDNet writer Dana Blankenhorn writes that Texas’s controversial decision to change its history curriculum has created an enormous opportunity for states, for communities, for publishers, and for authors…
Arizona law worries non-native educators
Many Arizona teachers who learned English as a second language or who speak in accented English, and who are educating English language learners, are worried about their job…
The 21st century classroom
Imagine a classroom where the teacher can evaluate and analyze student performance in "real-time." Envision collaborative instruction on one side of a metropolitan area, using team teaching, with…
Texas board adopts new social studies curriculum
The Texas State Board of Education adopted a social studies and history curriculum May 21 that amends or waters down the teaching of the civil rights movement, religious…
Vote on social studies standards likely today
The Dallas News reports that social conservatives on the State Board of Education were poised on May 20 to push for a curriculum standard that would encourage high…
Reading instruction: Getting it right the first time
In his sweeping 2004 article, Preventing Early Reading Failure, Joseph Torgesen established that the reading skills students acquire in their earliest elementary years are critical predictors of their…
Teaching in a socially networked classroom
Let’s face it: Social networking is here to stay. Whether it's Facebook, Twitter, or the next application to come along, social networking is a part of students' lives.…
Texas board swamped with criticism over curriculum plan
Conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education were defiant May 19 as a parade of critics came before them, most urging a fresh rewrite of new classroom…
Texas college teams up with digital signage industry
Students enrolled in Texas State Technical College’s Digital Signage Technology program will be able to network with digital signage professionals and stay up to date with the latest…
Arizona gov. signs bill targeting ethnic studies
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a bill targeting a school district's ethnic studies program, hours after a report by United Nations human rights experts condemned the measure,…
Augmented reality takes hold in classrooms
A small but growing number of schools across the nation are turning classroom lessons into engaging experiences with augmented reality (AR), a technology that overlays digital information on…
New language learning systems target K-12 schools
Recorded Books, a publisher of K-12 curriculum and independent producer of audio books, has teamed up with Transparent Language, a provider of language-learning software, to introduce three foreign…
Guest-teaching Chinese, and learning America
The New York Times reports that Zheng Yue, a young woman from China who is teaching her native language to students in this town on the Oklahoma grasslands,…
Free online curriculum expanding to middle grades
An online instructional resource for students in grades 8-12 that has been available to schools free of charge since December 2008 soon will include content for sixth and…
First lady: Math, science important to nation
First lady Michelle Obama told middle and high school science teams May 3 that the nation will need their skills and enthusiasm to prosper, reports the Associated Press.
Teacher of the Year: Education ‘must be learner-centered’
Facebook and digital video are among the many technology-based tools that Sarah Brown Wessling uses to engage her students—but just as important as that, it was her passion…
Like Facebook, but for learning
Aiming to engage students who are multitasking with different forms of technology, companies are creating collaborative learning spaces online where students can help one another solve homework problems…
McGraw-Hill moves beyond electronic textbooks, but obstacles remain
McGraw-Hill Cos.’ McGraw Hill Education unit is venturing further into digital learning with the release of a new internet-based elementary-school ... Read more
In a world of ads, teaching students how to read them
government campaign, built around a new web site called Admongo, will try to teach children from the fourth to the sixth grades how to think critically about advertising,…
A Harlem middle school bets on technology
Attendance, the bane of many schools that serve a community of mostly poor minority kids, is not a problem at Global Technology Preparatory, a new middle school in…
Every child needed to boost economy
At a time when the global workforce demands more science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professionals, education stakeholders worry that today’s students aren’t answering the call.
Disney turns its focus to curriculum
Readers might associate Disney with its slew of animated features over the years. Now, the company is hoping educators will think of it as a provider of educational…
Texting poetry inspires kids to learn
New York’s Chester School District is one of several districts that are taking bold steps in the use of new media technology in classrooms, reports the Times Herald-Record.
Computer forensics clicks with cops, colleges
Computer forensics is not a new field, but it is receiving a lot more attention in light of a slew of television shows—and now college programs are responding…
Panel: Cell phones have much potential in classrooms
