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A 7th grade teacher assigns her class a 2-week research project on art history. She challenges her students to use a variety of sources in their research. As she explains the project to her students, she is met with 30 blank stares. One student gasps, “You mean we have to look up the books at a library?” Another one asks if it’s okay to do all of his research online. A girl in the back raises her hand and asks, “Can I interview my Dad for the project? He works at the art museum.”

What do Coldplay, historian Stephen Ambrose, and Beatle George Harrison all have in common? They’ve all, at one time or another, been accused of plagiarism. Despite this dubious distinction and the scandal it brings, plagiarism is alive and thriving in our society, thank you very much. A recent Education Week survey found that 54% of students surveyed admitted to plagiarizing from the Internet for class assignments, while 47% of students believed that their teachers sometimes turned a blind eye to evidence that their students were cheating. In 1989, another survey found that 97.5% of American high school students admitted to allowing other students to copy their work.

Although classes are divided by grade level to ensure that the students are as similar as possible, there is often a challenging variety of ability levels, learning styles, and personalities in each classroom. Some students may come into your classroom with labels, IEP’s, and even instructional aids that are intended to help teachers best serve their needs. Other students will need special teaching techniques for their optimal learning, even though they haven’t been identified as a special education student. As I researched resources for special education, it got me thinking about the goal of this type of education. Successful special education is individualized for each learner’s needs.

In 1975, the U.S. Congress enacted Public Law 94-142, or the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. This landmark law required all publicly-funded schools to provide evaluations and equal access to education to physically and mentally disabled children. The Act was revised and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990. Other countries, such as Sweden, had already recognized the importance of promoting educational equality among students of varying intellectual capabilities, and soon other nations began to follow suit with new legislation to address special education.

Cell phones at each desk? An iPad for every student? Students solving math problems on computers instead of with paper and pencils? Classes going on virtual online field trips to all kinds of exotic locations? Technology in the classroom can look like all these scenarios and more. Implementing new technology in schools is a hot topic right now, but how important is it?

Over the past few weeks, Peggy and I have been writing about topics raised in an interview with NEA’s Executive Director, John Wilson. We discussed global literacy and methods to stretch school dollars in a challenging economy. This week, we’ve decided to focus on another of the issues raised by Wilson – the importance of technology in education.

As we enter the new calendar year, teachers at the midpoint of the school year are dreaming up ways to improve their teaching to make their classrooms even better during the second semester. By January, we have gotten to know our students and their learning habits really well, and we are learning what works best with each group. With this knowledge, we can come up with some great ideas to bring in the classroom, but many of these ideas will never be able to come to fruition without funding. Our posts this week are focusing on an important issue for teachers during tough economic times: how to get more money for your classroom.

It’s no secret that we’re in the midst of the worst recession since The Great Depression. While some news outlets have reported that the recession is, in fact, over, many people haven’t felt financial relief yet. The economic meltdown was years in the making, and it’s an unfortunate fact that recovery will likely take some years more. By now, we’re all pretty tired of the unpleasant – but necessary – financial belt-tightening demonstrated by our local communities. Town and city budgets are stretched thin, and all public departments have been hit hard.

This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. ~Barack Obama

There have been at least six well-documented mass extinctions on Earth over the past 500 million years, a phenomenon that has both puzzled and intrigued scientists for centuries. Various types of organisms on Earth become extinct fairly frequently, but mass extinctions are distinguished by the large numbers of species that become extinct over a relatively short period of time. The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago, is perhaps the most famous mass extinction. It’s forever branded into our brains from being the topic of feature films, artists’ paintings, and numerous books.