Wikibooks takes on textbook industry
By Daniel Terdiman
If you found yourself needing an old biology textbook and couldn't locate your battered copy from college, you'd have a few options.
You could go to a university bookstore and snag a used copy; you could drop a few dollars on a new one at Amazon.com; or you could track down some old college chums and ask for their copies.
But if Jimmy Wales and his colleagues at the Wikimedia Foundation have anything to say about it, you could have another way to go--the Wikibooks project. It's their attempt to create a comprehensive, kindergarten-to-college curriculum of textbooks that are free and freely distributable, based on an open-source development model.


Supporting Student Success
A Governor’s Guide to Extra Learning Opportunities
Extra learning opportunities (ELOs) help to ensure that children are successful in school and in life.
Although before- and after-school programs have been around for decades, we are learning more about how the hours outside of school can be critical determinants of student achievement. With many forms and purposes, extra learning opportunities are a key part of many state policy efforts to support the long-term success of children, families, and communities. State policymakers increasingly recognize the important contributions that high-quality extralearning opportunities can make toward education, youth development, workforce, and prevention priorities.

Enviropedia
300+ topics about the Environment



It's not what it is, it's what it enables
The role of blogs, wikis, and RSS
Let me state the obvious: the real value of blogs and wikis is not the tool itself. It's what the tool enables. Sadly, many advocates overlook this simple fact.

To continue the over-simplification, it's the equivalent of viewing a hammer as only a means to hit nails. Obviously that is the task at its most basic. But what does it mean? In the case of the hammer, it means we can build a doghouse, a bookshelf, or a house. Until we look past the task and functionality of a tool - to what the tool enables - we largely miss the beauty of why it's so useful.

Primary pathways: an integrated approach to drug education
Written by a Primary School teacher, this easy-to-use education resource offers many quality learning activities for early, middle and later primary school drug education, integrating drug education with issues such as self-esteem, identity, problem solving and responsibility.

Interactive Whiteboards
“Colleagues, I am looking for evidence of the use of interactive whiteboards in classroom or school in K-12: lesson plans, tips how to use them in learning and/or teaching situations, software that works well on a whiteboard, whitepapers from suppliers, contact with teachers that use them regurally. In return this blog will keep you updated.”
His first contribution is a well researched overview.

Info Literacy Class Guide
Michael Stephens shares his lesson on Information Literacy

School district revisits at what age to teach 'keyboarding' to students
"When will they learn to type? On the first day of school, I had the fifth-graders open up Microsoft Word and write me a message. You could tell that some kids were ready to write a novel, and some were barely able to finish one sentence." Read the whole article

What Does It Mean To Be an Educated Person?
What does it mean to be an educated person? What should a high school graduate be able to do upon graduation? The answer guides instruction. The art of teaching is to challenge and encourage students toward this vision. Read the whole speech

New tool aims to ease academic file sharing
Researchers at Penn State and other universities have developed a tool to help educators and researchers search for and exchange large academic or scientific files more easily--using the principles most associated with trading music and movies illegally....Article continues