Comprehensive research released today by The Center for Rural Policy and Development offers policymakers a series of recommendations on how to help and improve rural Minnesota schools.
Develop collaboration instead of consolidation: A state policy should be developed to help foster collaboration with and between school districts. While consolidation has been used in rural districts with declining enrollment, the authors’ research on cost-effective policies strongly cautions against this strategy as the negatives outweigh the positives.
Use technology to its best advantage: Online professional learning communities should be established to help rural educators share best practices and reduce isolation, and online general subject or enrichment courses should be made available to isolated rural learners.
Use technology to its best advantage: Online professional learning communities should be established to help rural educators share best practices and reduce isolation, and online general subject or enrichment courses should be made available to isolated rural learners.
"Elk River school district is well aware of the benefits of learning coding in today's increasingly tech savvy world. Troy Anderson, Manager of Instructional Technology, spoke with us about their process for selecting and rolling out a curriculum that met their district technology goals."
"What makes an effective teacher? Or more specifically, what observable characteristics might you see and hear?
The University of Minnesota offered some observable characteristics of effective teaching which, while focused on teacher actions rather than student learning, had some useful tips-not so much how to teach generally, but specific actions that you can use tomorrow."
"This weekend, my family and I were camping in north central Minnesota, and Internet connection-both 3G and wi-fi were sporadic. In one of the situations where we had service, I saw Tony Vincent's (a leader in educational technology who I have seen speak in person) tweet about Matthew Gudenius's "No iPad" video series:"
"The following infographic from the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota offers 7 tips for the parents of struggling readers, conveniently structured around the apt acronym READING.
Makes for useful source material that, combined with a few tips of your own, could be sent him a couple of times per year to support those parents looking for strategies and advice."
"A couple of months ago when Brad Gustafson (principal/lead learner at Greenwood Elementary School in Plymouth Minnesota), asked me if I wanted to help him create a "book talk" play-off podcast, of course I jumped at the chance. Since then, we've been plotting, scheming, designing, collaborating (mostly over Voxer) and collecting video book talks from some of the finest educators on the planet, so that we can bring you (insert drum roll here) ...
The #30secondbooktalk Podcast Challenge!!!!
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