In the interests of facilitating a sophisticated debate on educational reform I decided to do some research on the most influential living educational thinkers. Though there were many lists of important educators of the past I found that no such list existed for contemporary living ones. So I decided to compile one of my own. I don’t claim that this list is complete and I welcome readers to suggest other living educators that I am not familiar with.
Whenever possible I have tried to include the home pages, social media or Twitter accounts of educators if they existed. Here is my list in no particular order. Enjoy and don’t forget to comment!
Teaching history is notoriously difficult because most students don’t find it very relevant. A mediocre teacher will throw out the quote turned cliche that if you don’t know history you are doomed to repeat it. At best most good History teachers are just great entertainers telling amazing stories.
“I’ve got it! I’ll teach the word ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ to a bunch of first graders!” The thought just popped into my head. Five minutes later, after eyes bulged at the massive string of letters stretched across the board and desperate cries of “That’s impossible!” I had almost two dozen children excitedly chanting antidisestablishmentarianism one after the other waving their hands in the air wildly competing to be the next one to take a shot at it. 
Schools and teachers shouldn’t be fighting social media. They should embrace it. Here are six ways schools and teachers can use facebook, myspace and twitter for education instead of filtering social media, forums and message boards. 
It astounds me sometimes what teachers put up with. I have been in university classes where professors of 15 or 20 years spend at least a couple hours a semester answering the same questions year after year.