Ron Peck (@Ron_Peck on Twitter) teaches social studies at North Valley High School in Medford, OR. A self-proclaimed history and tech geek, he's the co-creator and co-moderator of #SSChat and #APChat on Twitter. Visit his blog at http://historygeek29.blogspot.com/.

Matt Hurst (@MullOverThings on Twitter) is a middle school ELL teacher at Claggett Creek Middle School in Keizer, Oregon. He enjoys sharing his teaching resources and collaborating on his blog MullOverThings.com.

Have you ever had a class where only a small portion of the children ask questions or make comments? Do you end up calling on the same students multiple times during the course of your class? One challenge teachers face is requiring and enabling every student an equal opportunity to ask and respond to questions during class.

Sarah Vaala, Ph.D. is a Research Fellow at Sesame Workshop's Joan Ganz Cooney Center. She recently completed her dissertation which examined mothers' perceptions and structural life circumstances as predictors for their infants' and toddlers' television and video viewing. Sarah is also an instructor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication.

The news media and blogosphere were abuzz last month with the news that Apple is "reinventing the textbook" through the introduction of digital textbooks available for the iPad. With the announcement has come a myriad of opinions and speculations regarding the possible repercussions of Apple's textbook reinvention for schools and for children's learning.

Joe Mazza (@Joe_Mazza on Twitter) is principal of Knapp Elementary in Lansdale, PA, a school where 20 languages are spoken at home. His blog eFACE Today offers ideas on connecting families using technology. Join #ptchat (parent-teacher chat), which Joe co-hosts on Wednesday nights at 9EST.

John Halligan provides us a much-needed sense of urgency to developing home-school partnerships: Saving lives.

Gaetan Pappalardo teaches third grade in West Deptford, NJ and is a regular blogger for Edutopia. His first children's book, Louie Licks and the Wicked Snakes, was released in Fall 2011. Follow him on Twitter @gaetanp.

I'm cranky. Are you? I've just been a downright Scrooge, though I really don't mean to. And I didn't know why until today. You see, for the last three months I've been aligning and adding the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to all of my lesson plans. And, like drinking wine tainted with an undetectable, scentless, tasteless, and usually in powder form, poison, it's been secretly making me ill.

Jim Berman (@ChefTalkJim on Twitter) is a Chef Instructor working with 10th, 11th and 12th graders at Delcastle Technical High School in Wilmington, Delaware. A member of FENI and the National Restaurant Association, he's a contributor to the Cooking Without Borders blog.

Career and technical education (CTE), formerly known as "shop class," is not limited to sawdust and greasy wrenches. It can be those things, but it can also be Biomedical Engineering, Food Science Theory and Application, Digital Media and Carpentry; all noble callings that are ripe with the potential of fruitful careers in the job market.