Blogs on Teacher Development

Last week, the annual Silfen Forum was held at the University of Pennsylvania. The theme, Open Learning and the Future of Higher Education, brought together educators from around the country, including the panelists Amy Gutmann, Martha Kanter, Thomas Friedman, Daphne Koller and William Kirwan. A common thread during the one-hour conversation was on how the world has gone from connected to hyper-connected over the last seven years. The rise of MOOCs (Massive Online Open Classrooms) has forced us to re-evaluate what traditional college and university teaching and learning look like. A full sharing of tweets from and about the forum can be found on Storify.

How many of you would go see a movie or read a book that was all mixed up? Let's face it, we all like a good beginning, middle and end in movies and books. So why not in our lessons?

The PennFinn13 team has been in Helsinki, Finland this week learning about education in Finland. They have been asking critical questions about core values in place, curriculum, professional development, student voice and culture, governance, finances and leadership. Learning from the likes of Finnish leaders Pasi Sahlberg, Jari Lavonen, Arto Kallioniemi, Heidi Krzywacki and Atso Taipale, the team is providing an opportunity for the rest of the world to explore teaching, learning and leading in a top-ranked educational landscape.

ASCD's annual conference (see #ASCD13 on Twitter) recently came to a close, and one of the main themes that kept surfacing was the need for more "connected educators." At this conference, there were definitely some great "firsts." The general session kicked off with a keynote from Freeman A. Hrabowski III, who tweeted his first tweet; an impromptu #edcampRogue sprouted up from in-attendance edcampers; and author and poet Maya Angelou was even tweeting at age 85!