Author’s Note: Later in this post I will share some video clips of interviews with students that I have uploaded to my YouTube channel. When you get to the end of each clip come back to this site. The other video clips displayed on the screen at the end are something YouTube does but have no connection to the topic of this entry.
I have been blessed to have an ongoing ability to interact with fellow Teachers of the Year (TOY) from around the country ever since I was named Oregon’s TOY in 2007. As an example, last year many postings on this blog were about lessons that were inspired by my participation in the Mobile Learning Institute. I flew to Washington D.C. in the summer of 2010 along with 15 other fellow TOY to participate in this institute sponsored by Pearson Learning Group, Nokia and the Smithsonian.
This year, we are taking advantage of participating in webinars sponsored by the Center for Teaching Quality and CCSSO to provide professional development opportunities to our group. Our first webinar had as guest speaker, Marc Tucker, currently the executive director of the National Center on Education and the Economy and a leader of the standards-driven education reform movement for many years. In this webinar Mr. Tucker shared some of the findings from his new book, Surpassing Shanghai. This book was published by Harvard Education Press in September of 2011. It explores the question, “What would the education policies and practices of the United States be if they were based on the policies and practices of the countries that now lead the world in student performance?” The research on the highest performing countries was performed by a team assembled by the National Center on Education and the Economy, at the request of the OECD.
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