Hewing to a new standard: are your lessons fit for 21st-century learning?(The NEXT BIG Thing)

Spring is for research papers and, not to mention, those endless rounds of testing. So in schools, spring cleaning is often relegated to the summer. This year, with the release of the common core standards (www.corestandards.org) and increasing pressure to prove our worth in the face of budget cuts, it's critical that we attend to the dust bunnies and cobwebs in our curriculum.

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Setting aside the bigger issues for a moment, consider a few of the changes we saw this year in technology.

Those 3.5-inch floppy disks have finally being laid to rest (bit.ly/bbBMA4); time to make sure they've been fully weeded from lessons and library …