For years, Finland has been the by-word for a successful education system, perched at the top of international league tables for literacy and numeracy.
Only far eastern countries such as Singapore and China outperform the Nordic nation in the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. Politicians and education experts from around the world – including the UK – have made pilgrimages to Helsinki in the hope of identifying and replicating the secret of its success.
Read MoreEducators often wonder how they are going to meet all the demands of Common Core. One important point is that the standards require more depth and less breadth. Meeting these standards can be done by doing less, not more. In this post, we’ll look at three effective ways to do this: integrating curriculum, combining test prep into daily learning, and cutting topics.
Read MoreIt could be argued—and probably argued well—that what a student fundamentally needs to know today isn’t much different than what Tom Sawyer or Joan of Arc or Alexander the Great needed to know.
Read MoreCreativity, contentment, awe and wonder, excitement, curiosity, pride, surprise, love, relief, and joy. These are the ten emotions that game players experience, according to Jane McGonigal in Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Change the World. Do teachers report feeling any of these emotions when they describe professional development? No (except for maybe relief when it’s over).
Read MoreMore than 100,000 teacher-created digital textbooks are now available online through the CK-12 Foundation’s free STEM content and tools platform. The 106,000 digital texts, or FlexBooks, come from the roughly 30,000 schools using CK-12’s free and open digital resources. CK-12 is launching two new tools in addition to its new content. (…)
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