If you have every listened to Sir Ken Robinson speak, you know he is passionate about education, especially encouraging creativity in our students.   His own Ted Talks are among the most viewed on the web.  He was recently asked to curate a list of his favorite 10 Ted Talks .... You might be interested to see what interests him.  Enjoy!

I came across this website today with several inspirational quotes for teachers.  What is you favorite of these and why?  Create a discussion by commenting to this blog post.

Another 21st Century theme is creativity.  Sir Ken Robinson has written and talked at length about the need to encourage and develop creativity in schools.  He talks about how children come to school with loads of creativity and how schools effectively eliminate that in this book (Out of Our Minds:  Learning to be Creative) and in the video below.  You can also find a great interview on the ASCD website.

One of the most common ways we can encourage creativity in our students is providing them with opportunities to write.  And with today's technology, that activity can go far beyond a simple pen and paper exercise.  This link provides some great iPad apps that are available to create full multimedia ebooks that can be easily be shared with each other, parents and grandparents, etc. 

One of the most "C's" of the 21st Century Classroom is Critical Thinking ... the the avalanche of information available on the web (described by David Weinberger in his book Too Big To Know) with little or no "gatekeeping" function requires the ability view this data with a critical eye.   One definition of critical thinking is "the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action."  (This definition appears on the website of The Critical Thinking Community.)

The definition above doesn't sound much like memorizing dates, terms, and responses to fill-in-the-blank questions.   You might find his link from the Educational Technology and Mobile Learning website  helpful as provides a number of resources for incorporating critical thinking in the classroom.