Alberta looks at the united states, does the opposite

Dangerously Irrelevant has an interesting article about the Alberta School System.  We know our school systems need improvement, but I think sometimes we forget to look at what is being successful in education before looking outside education for ideas to improve.

 A recent article inAlberta Views highlighted the differences between its system and America's, noting that the United States is an 'anti-model' for how to do school reform:

By contrast we can also learn what not to do from reform in the US, whose education system is in decline. Its elements, implemented over the past two decades, are largely ideological: "market-based" reforms (the application of "business insights" to the running of schools); an emphasis on standardization and narrowing of curriculum; extensive use of external standardized assessment; fostering choice and competition among schools, often with school vouchers; making judgements based on test data and closing "failing schools"; encouraging the growth of charter schools (which don't have teacher unions); "merit pay" and other incentives; faith that "technologically mediated instruction" will reduce costs; an overwhelming "top-down" approach which tells everyone what to do and holds them accountable for doing it.

Is The Achievement Gap a Middle Class Issue

An interesting article about the fact that the achievement gap is becoming a middle class issue.

A recent study (PDF) by Sean Reardon of Stanford University finds that the achievement gap between the upper and middle classes is bigger than the gap between the middle class and the working poor. This should give pause to those who dismiss education reform as something that affects other people. If you're middle class, you're on the losing side of the achievement gap.

Free Children's Books

Free Technology for Teachers has found a great resource for free children's books that are great for use on your smartboard.

Interesting Post about Improving Teacher Education

I really valued my teacher education, but I know that it didn't prepare me for teaching as well as it could have.  Here is an interesting post over at Huffington Post to suggest ways to improve teacher education.  I still think the number one thing that education needs to do is attract higher quality candidates to education.

How to Write Objectives using Bloom's Taxonomy

Edgalaxy has a great chart to help you write Objectives using Bloom's Taxonomy.

My new team is going to be writing objects for every lesson, so I'm glad to have this to help us write meaningful and high level objectives.

Reasons for having a Classroom Blog

I've become a big fan of blogging in the past year as it makes it much easier to maintain a web prescience and update resources that most other content management systems out there.  I plan on using a classroom blog this year instead of a newsletter.  Here's a post from Free Technology for Teachers that I found timely, as the author talks about why teachers should have classroom blogs.

Here are my plans for my classroom blog:

1. Link to Weekly reading log form that I created using google docs.  This way, I can quickly compute how many minutes kids are reading, what they are reading, and can even ask a quick question like what genre they are reading or where they like reading to help get a better sense of how I can support their reading.  If it works, I might do a math type log as well, as I did Math logs once, and the students really enjoyed keeping track of the number of math problems they completed.

2. Current and Upcoming Events in the classroom.  This will hopefully replace the newsletter.  For those parents who need a hardcopy, I can just print out the pertinent newsletters once a day.  I'm really excited about the prospect of putting up pictures of student work, possibly using the ELMO in my classroom to help with that.

3.  Homework.  I can just post homework to this page so that there never is a question of what the students' homework is or if they forgot to bring it home what they should do.

4.  Rubrics.  I'd love to get to the point where I have rubrics for units of study up on the blog.

One thing I will need to do is figure out a service that will email people with updates to the blog, as that is the manner in which most parents receive their newsletters from teachers.  I also need to find out the policy on student work on the internet, and what I should do with student names and the such.

Update to Great Webtools for Teachers

Wordsmyth: a dictionary that includes a simpler dictionary with pictures for younger readers.
Lexipedia: a theasaraus with some interesting word maps

Here's the latest updates to Great Webtools for Teachers.  I might need to reorganize that post to make it easier now that it has over 25 links in it!