Blogs on Five-Minute Film Festival

With all the media chatter about test scores, merit pay, failing schools, and teacher quality, it's sometimes easy for those outside the school system to forget that it's people -- just everyday people with a calling for education -- who make up that system. Enter the Go Public Project, a labor of love by filmmakers and public school parents Jim and Dawn O'Keeffe. Jim and Dawn sent fifty film crews, both pro and student, into the twenty-eight schools in Pasadena, California to paint an intimate, and very human, portrait of a day in the life of an American public school district.

It's easy to be jaded when there's buzz about a new social network. Who has time to keep up with them all? And how many will explode on the scene with a bang, the hottest new thing, and then fizzle like Friendster? But I have to say that the eye-candy on the visual social bookmarking site Pinterest has caught my attention.

I really enjoyed Mary Beth Hertz's excellent blog published earlier this week, "The Flipped Classroom: Pro and Con" -- one of the most concise and balanced views I've read on the buzz-wordy concept of flipping the classroom. Advocates say that "flipped classrooms" help overburdened teachers differentiate their instruction to reach more learners, provide an avenue into more hands-on and student-driven learning during classtime, and shift the teacher's role from "sage on the stage" to learning coach and facilitator. Critics say it's just a fad, relies too heavily on rote instruction, and doesn't go far enough in making the needed changes for teaching and learning reform. I've rounded up this list of videos so you can learn more about the challenges and benefits of flipped classrooms.

While many of you may be heading for the beach this week, it won't be long before you're ready to start exploring some new tools to help your students be better creators and collaborators when you go back to school in the fall. This week we published a new video on Nicole Dalesio, a fifth-grade teacher who uses all kinds of free technology tools in her class to keep her kids engaged, and it inspired me to go hunt down the best tutorials for all these great, free Web 2.0 tools. Did I mention most of them are free?

While screen-cast tutorials may not be the most edge-of-your-seat viewing, once you've got the basics, you can start digging in to the tool itself. And the best part is, learning to use these tools is as fun for you as it is for your students. What are you waiting for? Try something new in ten minutes or less!