Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Reauthorization of Elementary & Secondary Education Act Report Released: A Blueprint for Reform

The Blueprint for Reform provides the Obama Administration's vision for the federal role in elementary and secondary education. It focuses on teacher effectiveness, college and career readiness, support of school choice.

President Obama unveils Educational Technology plan

On March 5, the Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology plan was unveiled issued by the Obama Administration. It provides a blueprint for individualized, digital learning approaches to enhance education, with a focus on STEM education for students and enhancing online teaching skills in Teacher Education. It touches on Information Literacy skills in the President's Grand Challenge Problem 2.0: Design and validate an integrated system for designing and implementing valid, reliable, and cost-effective assessments of complex aspects of 21st century expertise and competencies across academic disciplines. Those 21st century competencies include student's abilities to access, retrieve, evaluate and ethically use information.

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier

"In Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier, FRONTLINE presents an in-depth exploration of what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world." [from Frontline description]

Watch the documentaries, interviews and participate in discussions on the impact of technology on education, relationships and communities.

Monday, March 08, 2010

Building a Better Teacher

From Sunday March 8 New York Times Magazine, Doug Lemov a former teacher, a principal, charter-school founder, and now educational consultant, discusses the qualities of effective teachers.