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Communication in Education

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What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - Anu Partanen. The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence.

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - Anu Partanen

Sergey Ivanov/Flickr Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point. The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known -- if it was known for anything at all -- as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. Finland's schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). And yet it wasn't clear that Sahlberg's message was actually getting through. Yet one of the most significant things Sahlberg said passed practically unnoticed.

Herein lay the real shocker. Move over QR codes… I am quite fond of tweeting and love to use QR codes, but was not aware until last week, that I could chirp too.

Move over QR codes…

Yes, thanks to one of my new teachers at Hill Country Middle School, I discovered the power of chirping. It is quite easy: Step 1: Download the Chirp app on all devices you wish to communicate from and with.Step 2: Decide which media you wish to chirp and share! You can share pictures from your camera and camera roll as well as notes and links! Step 3: Be ready to be be amazed! I can see this being a very useful tool for blasting out a message, task, or link to all students in a classroom. Or… let out a cheery chirp over the morning announcements and allow students to receive the unique link or message through the mobile devices… school wide!

Chirp sharing features highlighted in PolyFrame app Don’t take my word for it… be blissfully amazed by the following video… Move over QR codes, there’s a new app in town… or in the cloud? 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom. Many critics of Twitter believe that the 140-character microblog offered by the ubiquitous social network can do little for the education industry.

They are wrong. K-12 teachers have taken advantage of Twitter’s format to keep their classes engaged and up-to-date on the latest technologies. The following projects provide you and your students with 50 ways to Twitter in the classroom to create important and lasting lessons. 1. Tweet about upcoming due dates or assignments. One of the simplest ways that teachers can use Twitter in the classroom involves setting up a feed dedicated exclusively to due dates, tests or quizzes. 2. Subscribe to different mainstream and independent news feeds with different biases as a way to compare and contrast how different perspectives interpret current events and issues. 3. The modern-day classroom has to account for a variety of learning styles in...

Making ESL students feel welcome at their new school is vital to their success... 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.