The President's Education Plan

The digital stories were awesome Monday night. I think that Jill had a perfect recap in her blog. I was most impressed by the diversity and character of our cohort. And people continue to surprise me. There is so much that we have to learn about each other! That activity definitely made me feel closer to everyone as a whole. Much better than your run of the mill ice breaking activity.
On another subject- I know Chrisann had mentioned merit-based pay in a previous entry but wanted to poll our cohort as a whole on President Obama's education plan. What do you think of it? If you're not that familiar with it an overview is provided here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/education/
As many of you already know I'm a die hard democrat and, not suprisingly in support of the President's plan. I think it's time that No Child Left Behind is reformed as I am not a fan of teaching to tests. That doesn't mean that I think accountability should be thrown out the window and this is where I'm torn. How should teachers be evaluated? I don't know that I have the answer because there are so many possibilities, some which I am more fond of than others. I love the POTUS' zero to five plan because education begins way before kindergarten. Also, I think that his support for ELL's will hopefully get implemented and have a big impact in regions like ours.

Random Thoughts....

I have really enjoyed this class and getting to work in the three different technologies. I think that technology can be intimidating so it has been nice to actually work in a wiki, create a digital story and post blogs. It proved to me that I can be technology proficient. Rafe Esquith, an amazing teacher and author of 2 books that I know of on teaching said that teachers need to work through difficult problems first before they can teach them to their students. Many shy away from this because of the time and effort involved. And I think this applies here. I don’t know that I would have jumped into digital storytelling, for example, because it seems so, well, complicated. I mean, something that looks as good as this final product has to be difficult, doesn’t it? Well, no. I feel much more confident in my ability to teach these technologies because I now know that I can do them myself!
I wish that this class was longer and a three credit class. I think technology in the classroom is so important. Kids love it and it is so relevant today. And by the way, if anyone out there knows of a classroom teacher that successfully implemented digital stories in an elementary classroom I would love to hear about it. This is a technology that I definitely am thinking of using myself. Because everyone has a story, most people just need an avenue to tell it through….