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Diigo provides a great way to model and practice reading informational text and to engage students in collaborative virtual discussions.  Many know Delicious and Diigo as social bookmarking sites.  Diigo is so much more!  Find a website that you want your students to read.  Then use Diigo to model the active reading process and make notations right on the web site by using the Diigo tools of Sticky Notes and Highlighting.  Paste a sticky note at the beginning of the text to remind students to ask themselves, “What do you already know about this topic?”  Also, add a sticky note reminding students to note their purpose for reading.  Diigo’s highlighting tools include four different colors.  Use the various colors and model how to find the main ideas and highlight only the essential words in yellow.  Supporting details, key vocabulary words,  and confusing parts can each be highlighted with different colors.  Consistency in highlighting color will provide another cue for students about text structure.  Diigo serves as  an excellent tool for modeling the pre-reading process, for pointing out text features and structure, and to practice active reading by making connections and asking questions.  Once students are ready for independent practice, Diigo can be taken to another level.  Educator accounts allow teachers to create classes.  Each student  in the class can annotate  and highlight the assigned web site article independently.  Connections, questions, and comments  are then shared with the teacher and the class.  “Sticky note”  or “Read and Say Something” conversations can then be conducted through Diigo. 

Schools offer teachers and students an opportunity to do what is almost never done in society. In schools we can gather together a group of twenty to thirty people and have them listen, discuss, analyze, and share differing points of view. Schools provide a rare chance to read, debate, write, and quietly think. We don’t need expensive technology to learn how to ask excellent questions, articulate ideas, and be forced to defend our thoughts.

Technology can, of course, do amazing things. Any tool can be used properly or improperly. Unfortunately, with devices like Smart Boards, images come and go, and the teacher is often looking at a computer screen for part of the class. Smart Boards and similar technologies reinforce the idea that knowledge resides in things. We don’t need Smart Boards, we need smart people.

Not only do Finnish educational authorities provide students with far more recess than their U.S. counterparts—75 minutes a day in Finnish elementary schools versus an average of 27 minutes in the U.S.—but they also mandate lots of arts and crafts, more learning by doing, rigorous standards for teacher certification, higher teacher pay, and attractive working conditions.

it had to modernize its economy and could only do so by first improving its schools. To that end, the government agreed to reduce class size, boost teacher pay, and require that, by 1979, all teachers complete a rigorous master’s program.

Finnish teachers earn very competitive salaries: High school teachers with 15 years of experience make 102 percent of what their fellow university graduates do. In the United States, by contrast, they earn just 65 percent.

we are obsessing on a small problem while we give short shrift to professional development strategies that could move large numbers of teachers from satisfactory to excellent

removing ineffective teachers has much more to do with ill-trained and supported administrators than tenure rules

scholars from Vanderbilt University and the RAND Corporation plainly conclude that “rewarding teachers with bonus pay, in the absence of any other support programs, does not raise student test scores.”