My new book, Self-Driven Learning: Teaching Strategies For Student Motivation, was published in mid-March. Since that time, several excerpts from it have been published in various publications. Here are links to all of them:

Five ways to get kids to want to read and write, Washington Post

Cultivating a Positive Environment for Students, Education Week Teacher

Ethical and Effective Test Prep, Middleweb

Positive, Not Punitive, Classroom Management Tips, Edutopia

More Positive, Not Punitive, Classroom Management Tips, Edutopia

Here are two infographics on English Language Learners that I learned about through Amy Erin Borovoy:

How to learn English via Kaplan Blog

How to learn English via Kaplan Blog

Love learning English with Kaplan

Lingo Hut seems like a pretty impressive site for beginning learners of many different languages, including English.

Using a drop-down menu, you can easily select your native language and the language you want to learn, and then progress through a well-designed series of exercises including reading, listening and speaking.

I’m adding it to multiple “The Best…” lists, including:

The Best Sites For Learning Spanish Online

The Best Multilingual & Bilingual Sites For Learning English

The Best Beginner, Intermediate & Advanced English Language Learner Sites

Wonderville just became available to the public and lets teachers (or parents) create virtual classrooms (for free) with content and multiple choice questions where children’s progress can be monitored. It’s focusing on K-5 content now.

It looks like it might be one of the better sites of its kind, though it’s perplexing to me why they’d include a YouTube video as a key part of each lesson — since YouTube is blocked by most schools, that means students won’t be able to view them there.

And it also seems strange they would pick a name — Wonderville — that’s already been used for years for a highly-respected science website.

You can read more about this new Wonderville at TechCrunch.

I’m adding it to The Best Sites That Students Can Use Independently And Let Teachers Check On Progress.

Here are some additions to The Best Sources Of Advice For Teachers (And Others!) On How To Be Better Bloggers:

A Short Guide to Terms Commonly Used in Blogging is from Richard Byrne.

Learning through blogging is from Sue Waters.

I have many free resources, including excerpts and student hand-outs, available from all my books. Clicking on the covers will lead you to them:

Here are some new additions to The Best Posts & Articles On MOOC’s:

The Plusses and Pitfalls of Teaching Online is by Dan Ariely.

MOOCs of Hazard Will online education dampen the college experience? Yes. Will it be worth it? Well… is from The New Republic.

Here’s an interesting infographic:

How To Save Our Educators infographic

I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Articles About The Importance Of Teacher (& Student) Working Conditions.

National Teacher Day is May 7th in the United States.

You might find The Best Resources To Learn About World Teachers Day useful.

PBS is airing a special TED Talks Education program on May 7th. It’s an interesting line-up of speakers, and I thought I’d list a few of them along with previous posts in this blog that readers might find helpful:

Bill Gates will be speaking about, among other things, his big new $5 billion initiative to videotape teachers. You might find these posts useful:

Videotaping teachers the right way (not the Gates way)

The Best Posts & Articles About Videotaping Teachers In The Classroom

Many of my previous posts about Gates, along with his MET Project.

Professor Angela Duckworth will be speaking about “grit.” Check out her work at The Best Resources For Learning About The Importance Of “Grit.”

Geoffrey Canada from the Harlem Children’s Zone. You can find a link to my many posts — both positive and critical — here.

Sir Ken Robinson. Check out a previous post and video titled “You Cannot Make A Plant Grow — You Can Provide The Conditions For Growth.”

You might also be interested in The Best Teacher Resources For “TED Talks” (& Similar Presentations).

Today’s New York Times has an op-ed piece from two university educators who have done surveys of immigrant youth in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s titled Immigrant Kids, Adrift.

The column doesn’t paint a completely negative picture, but it is pretty depressing. Here’s what I think is the worst part:

I’m sure that this is not the case at our school. However, we are also divided into Small Learning Communities, where 300 students and 20 teachers stay together for multiple years.

Do you think this statistic is truly representative of schools generally?

Jossey-Bass, the publisher of our book, The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide, just told us that our book has been selected by Walden University for their Canter Read4Credit™ Courses.

You can read more about it here.