Finnish Education is Monopolizing the Twitter Feed

While I was scrolling down my feed this afternoon looking for an interesting tweet to blog about,  I was hit with this barrage of tweets and re-tweets about Finnish education system which came out of the free online education conference that's happening this weekend:

timbuckteeth Steve Wheeler

Finnish teachers act as 'humble servants' of the students. The students are seen as their customers. #RSCON3

 

kstef2 Karen Steffensen

#RSCON3 Finnish Education:learning is active; teachers think students are like customers- they are in service to them as learners

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RSCON3 RSCON3

 Trust is the main thing to the Finnish education system! Wow! #rscon3 Live now http://bit.ly/pBGHKs #edreform #edchat

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amberjudge Amber Judge

 Free Education in Finland because education is seen as a wealth for the nation. Educators have a high place in society. That speaks! #RSCON3   

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timbuckteeth Steve Wheeler

 Everyone in Finland respects teachers. They are held in high esteem. #RSCON3

»

wellmichelle Michelle Hughes

 Wow, everything in Finnish education is free, equal opportunities for everyone and everyone goes to state schools #RSCON3

»

kstef2 Karen Steffensen

 #RSCON3 Finnish Ed: Elementary education-- thinking skills, cooperative teaching, multi aged groupings

 

 

This made me think:

1. Hurray, a lot of people are attending this education conference and apparently having really productive conversations about a model that appears to be utilizing many of the traits that reformers (and ourselves within the AUSL program) are working towards.

but

2. What makes Finland different so that they are able to make the political and cultural gains necessary to make a system they are describing, work?

and

3. Is it actually working?

As far as question 2 goes, I think the difference are multifarious and complex, ranging from the diversity of the Finnish population, to the overall size of the population, to the form of government, and the general higher emphasis that it appears Europe places on education that we seem to do much less of here in the United States. However, I wonder how much of this is used as an excuse not to take smaller countries with functioning systems as models, and how much of it actually leads to irreconcilable differences that cant translate.

And as far as the third point goes, I'm really interested in probing further into this. 

 

Thoughts or insights anyone?

 

Signing out on this beautiful Friday Afternoon,

the quickly evolving tech geek :)

eTextbooks to Replace Paper

I've always preferred reading a hard copy of a book rather than perusing it online or in a digital format. I just like the feel of paper, I like marking up my books with  notes in the margins, and up until recently, my excuse was that I could take them anywhere, as opposed to a laptop, which can be cumbersome. (I don't have an e-reader, and replacing all of my books with digital versions doesn't appeal to me, even though it would save a lot of space). But what kind of scares me about However, recently, I've begun to change my mind, and its mostly cost related. Rather than buying course readers with compiled readings, it has been much cheaper to use pdf files, and if prices stay down in the e formats, I can see how they're starting to overtake the paper format.

In our teacher prep classes here,we've been talking quite a bit about the place for ipads and ireaders in the modern classroom.  Although the readers can  be expensive, the textbooks used are more so, and are less flexible in terms of the amount of information available, and the accuracy of that information, since they become outdated so quickly.

The other upside to using e books is that many students prefer them, according to @ShellTerrell and others.


Courtesy of: Schools.com

My only concern is that the lifespan of electronics is far shorter than that of paper. While they are excellent tools that it is necessary that we teach and take advantage of, Computers and phones malfunction all the time, but we still have books from the BC days. Although you can store files indefinitely,  technology is so constantly improving and changing that just like text books, any equipment bought for schools is going to quickly become out of date, or break down, so I'm not sure that switching over will solve the problem, as much as just relocate it in the modern age.

Standardized Tests and the Alabama Scandal

Hey everyone, Happy Sunday Afternoon.

I came upon this tweet by @Larryferlazzo  "The Best Posts & Articles About the Atlanta Testing Scandal this morning, and it led me to a host of articles about this controversy that has been exposed recently. 

Here's the skinny: Apparently the entire school district has been changing student's answers in order to boost their test scores to improve their stats, so they don't lose funding, or get taken over.Over a hundred and fifty people were involved, and its unknown as to exactly how long this has been going on, although they've gotten quite a few teachers to step forward and fess up. 

Many newspapers, and some commenters have discussed the fact that these teachers are letting their students down, and are cheating them out of a good education by not letting them have a real picture of what they're able to do and what they don't yet understand...

and that's all well and good, but what stands out to me, as has been stated by several other bloggers, is the fact that we have set up a faulty system of evaluation.  Even when students take tests on their own, there is little room for discovery of what students actually know or are able to do. The tests instead rest on knowing how to answer questions properly rather than testing whether a student has real comprehension. With the removal of the writing portion from testing, this problem is exasperated. 

Point being: Yes, these people acted unprofessionally, and (potentially) dishonestly, if you consider standardized testing a valid presentation of human knowledge. However, firing and ostracizing the teachers will not fix the fundamental problems, a couple of which are,

1) talking through answers to questions is not cheating anywhere else in the world except in schools, and it makes no sense to judge knowledge in this way. 

2) If there continues to be a financial incentive for better test scores, this will continue to be an issue. 

Just more evidence that we need to change our methods of assessment in this country.

ELL Aid from Verbling?

@Larryferlazzo introduced me to this new site as it was reported on by techcrunch.com. Verbling just launched on Friday. It's not a new idea: it appears that there are a lot of similar sites that are capable of doing this, but the structure of it sounds promising. The program pairs up people with native speakers of the language that they want to learn. So for example, someone who is a native speaker of say, Turkish, and wants to learn English, would be paired up with a native speaker of English, who wants to speak Turkish.  The conversation between both parties is timed, so that half is done in one language, and half in the other, and the site encourages you to switch partners several times throughout your session so that you are exposed to a number of different speaking styles and conversational topics. In addition each person is grouped by approximate ability, and topics are given to help facilitate conversation.

When I saw this come up in my feed, I immediately started wondering whether it could be used to help ELL students. Say I paired up the students with each other, based on interests in learning different languages, and then they had to teach it to each other. The site itself might be problematic to use in a classroom, (since I'm not sure how well regulated it is) but it might be interesting to  use the process with students, where native english speakers are helping their classmates learn english, and their classmates are helping native english speakers learn another language. This would not only help the ELL student, but would be beneficial to the other student as well, since so many people in the US cant speak any other language, and skills in another language can help immensely with mapping and comprehension. Conversely, if I had a student who spoke a language I wasnt familiar with, this would possibly be a good tool to introduce me to the language.

Twitter folks I'm following:

capitolfax Rich Miller

All IL poitics, all the time

 Following

 

ieanea IEANEA

Illinois Education Association, education news, advocacy, fair funding

 Following

 

district299 district299

Unofficial news about Chicago public schools

 Following

 

CatalystChicago Catalyst Chicago Mag

Award-winning, independent reporting on urban school reform since 1990. Published by Community Renewal Society. Sister pubs: The Chicago Reporter, Catalyst Ohio

 Following

 

USCRossier USC Rossier

The mission of the USC Rossier School of Education is to strengthen urban education locally, nationally, and globally.

 Following

 

UrbanEducation Urban Education

Information about Education for Educators concerning Urban School Districts.

 Following

 

Center4UrbanEd CUE

The Center for Urban Education (CUE) at USC is committed to equity & closing gaps in higher education for students of color using socially conscious research.

 Following

 

Pags21 Melissa Sheninger

HS English teacher and Guidance Counselor interested in collaboration with other educators, parents, and moms juggling both a career and family.

 Following

 

lkolb Liz Kolb

Teacher and Author: Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education.

 Following

 

nancydevine Nancy Devine

I teach high school English, write and co-direct the Red River Valley Writing Project.

 Following

 

hrmason Heather Mason

Middle school language arts teacher, National Board Certified, DEN Star Educator, mother of two, just trying hard to keep up.

 Following

 

DrGrammar Dennis Baron

dr. grammar is dennis baron, the world's only consulting linguist and a real grammar doctor; follow my posts on the Web of Language.

 Following

 

OxfordWords Oxford Dictionaries

Oxford University Press, publisher of Oxford Dictionaries, brings you news and insights from today’s world of words.

 Following

 

MerriamWebster Merriam-Webster

The dictionary people

 Following

 

nyteducation NYT Education Life

A quarterly section about colleges and universities, teachers, public and private schools, tuition, scholarships, financial aid and student loans.

 Follow

 

EducationNext Education Next

Education Next is a quarterly journal which bases its editorial policy on the premise that the education sector is ripe for major change and reform.

 Following

 

usedgov US Dept of Education 

News and information from the U.S Department of Education.

 Follow

 

librarycongress Library of Congress 

We are the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in our collections.

 Following

 

tedtalks TEDTalks Updates 

The official feed for daily TEDTalks. Only new TEDTalks are posted on this feed. For all TED news, follow @TEDNewstoo!