Wednesday, February 29, 2012

More with Evernote


What can I not say about Evernote......

I use Evernote on my iPhone 4S, MacBook Air, iPad2....I was actually in Lake Tahoe recently and had none of my devices with me. So, I used my wife's MacBook Pro and logged in to Evernote.com and accessed all my notes.

It's free, fast, collaborative, goes across all platforms, and they provide free professional development ideas. Evernote has a great blog, and twitter feed that I recommend everyone should subscribe too. They had a great article in the Education Series yesterday about a teacher in Oregon who has transformed his classroom with creating free portfolios for his entire class.

Read the article here and start your journey!

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Excerpts and Thoughts - Finnish Lessons


I tend to read three to four books at a time, so it's taken me a little longer than usual to get through 'Finnish Lesson' by Pasi Sahlberg. The books isn't finished, and I have some chapters/pages bookmarked to go back and read again.....the books is full of amazing examples and details about Finnish education and their school system. I write/read with some hesitation about the Finnish system, not wanting our Department of Education to find a 'fix' for what ails our schools, and paying money to send our officials across the Atlantic to study and replicate what the Fins are doing. With that being said, the Finnish system in my opinion is pretty organic and much different than ours, so I have little doubt that we'll be changing ours anytime soon.

Some thoughts and excerpts as I read.....

- The Finnish system has not been infected by market-based competition and high-stakes testing policies.

- The Finns have been able to reach broad consensus on most major issues concerning future directions for Finland as a nation...with Education always in the conversation.

- Schools have the opportunity to craft optimal learning environments and establish instructional content that will best help students to reach the general goals of schooling.

- An essential element of the Finnish comprehensive school is systematic attention to those students who have special education needs. (From what I can decipher, this is somewhat like our push to implement RTI on a larger scale)


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Horizon Report

Just checking out the newly released Horizon Report, check out the report here.....

Thursday, February 9, 2012

More on Finland

I've previously posted about Finnish Education and there has been an abundant amount of press in regards to their education system and many interviews with their Education Minister. The Mind Shift blog had another short article yesterday, with an accompanying video below.

There were many similarities throughout the video when I was thinking about our school system and different programs we have in place.

- RTI model
- SST and weekly group who discuss children