Category — Teaching and Learning

As another school year winds down those teachers with some time left in the school year have a golden opportunity to infuse real world excitement into what can often be a mundane end of the year countdown. With the successful landing of the NASA Mars Phoenix Lander spacecraft on Sunday, teachers have an incredible educational [...]

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Today we wrap up our four-part series on education in the Netherlands with a final look at the vocational training track available to students. Whereas in America we continue to try and force feed students of all abilities and interests through a high school program that is almost entirely academic-based, the Dutch school system has [...]

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In the third of our four part series discussing education in the Netherlands we take a look at the secondary school options available to students. In using the term options, we do not mean strictly a choice of which type of programming to attend. Instead, the option is determined by school performance at the elementary [...]

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When looking at the Dutch school system, there are some glaring differences between what takes place in the Netherlands and what takes place in America. However, while many educators have taken a look at high performing Finland for ideas, it should be noted that in the Netherlands the socioeconomic diversity is more in line with [...]

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A short time ago we took a brief look at Finland, the highest scoring country on the 2006 PISA Exams (Programme for International Student Assessment). The tiny country demonstrated extraordinary results taking the top spot in science, the number two slot in Reading (only trailing Korea), and the number two slot in Mathematics (trailing [...]

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Our good friend Chris Wilson over at “The Graphic Classroom” has some information about this Saturday’s “Free Comic Book Day (FCBD).” The program began six years ago and the give away is designed to promote comics among those who are not yet comic readers.
According to Wilson, thousands of comic book stores throughout the [...]

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In our continued quest to bring our readers information about the use of technology in the classroom, today we talk with David Sherman, the principal of South Park Elementary School in Deerfield, Illinois, about the role the school leader can play in classroom technology use. Sherman began his career 21 years ago teaching fifth [...]

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When we first became aware of the iWalkthough technology being utilized by several Maine school districts, we were intrigued by the possibilities of the device. There were two initial aspects that caught our eye.
First, we were impressed with the practical application of the PDA mobile technology. The device clearly represents another step into the [...]

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Today we offer an interview with David Ruff of the Great School Partnership, a nonprofit organization supporting the Senator George J. Mitchell Scholarship Research Institute, regarding the development of the iWalkthrough™ system. The Partnership “works to redesign and strengthen public and private education to improve the quality of learning for all students” and to help [...]

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One of the age-old questions in education is how to gather information about teaching practices in a practical, time effective manner. Often times, the feedback process begins with what is called a formal observation. In such an instance, an administrator or instructional leader observes a teacher for a full class period or for several such [...]

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