In an effort to boost achievement and better prepare students for the workforce, President Obama is spearheading a program that will bring high-speed Internet access to 99 percent of America's K-12 schools.
Dubbed ConnectED, the program aims to accomplish its goal in the next five years. In addition to bringing Internet speeds of at least 100 Mbps and as high as 1Gbps, the program will provide comprehensive training to teachers so that they are up-to-speed on best practices for using the Web in class.
A particular focus of ConnectED will be rural schools that have difficulty accessing the Internet. In a statement, Obama was clear that getting students connected and teachers trained is a priority. "We are living in a digital age, and to help our students get ahead, we must make sure they have access to cutting-edge technology," he said. "So today, I'm issuing a new challenge for America -- one that families, businesses, school districts and the federal government can rally around together -- to connect virtually every student in America's classrooms to high-speed broadband Internet within five years, and equip them with the tools to make the most of it."
It's no secret in the education world that gifted education training is not a priority for new teachers. In teacher preparation programs, if preservice teachers receive any kind of training, it's generally short discussions or readings in their existing education courses (Chamberlin and Chamberlin, 2010). As Troxclair (2013) writes, "[h]istorically, preservice teachers have had little exposure in their teacher training programs regarding the nature and needs of gifted learners, theories of...
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Sanni Grahn-Laasonen says her...
When an aspiring fighter visits a boxing gym, the potential coach does not start teaching him or her all the techniques. The first thing a wise coach will do is say, "get in the ring and show me what you got." The coach will carefully examine what the fighter can already do, then design a training regimen to build upon those strengths.
I'm interested in taking a similar strength-based approach with the emerging teachers I work with each week. I want to know what natural...
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This month in The Global Search for Education, William Gaudelli, George Rupp and Dana Mortenson shared...

Dr. Carter G. Woodson organized a two-week period in February 1926 to highlight contributions of African Americans. In 1976, the month of February was established as Black History Month. The month of February was selected because it was the month in which both Frederick Douglass (abolitionist) and Abraham Lincoln (president who...
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Groundhog Day is February 2nd. It's a time when people look to a groundhog to find out whether or not we will be having six more weeks of winter. The idea dates back hundreds of years when people looked to hibernating animals such as badgers, hedgehogs and bears to see when they might wake up from their winter sleep.
According to the tradition, if the animal saw its...
One of the activities my students (pre-service teachers) said they appreciated the most was providing them with an array of discussion/sharing out strategies that they could use with their own elementary students. What I really shared were protocols, many I had learned from my own professors, which could be easily adopted for various lessons and content.
Many came from the National School Reform Faculty's web...