It is a real benefit for me to have the opportunity to share the day with curriculum directors from our member schools. The use of blogging could be a valuable communication tool for this group. The LeaderTalk blog might be a good site to use as a model.

During the opening for the day, it was stated that students starting school in 2007 will be graduating in 2020. Karl Fisch has a very active blog, The Fischbowl. One of the presentations that he has created is titled 2020 Vision, where he is giving the commencement speech for students graduating in the year 2020. Another one of his presentations is titled "Did You Know", which contains information that follows many issues contained in "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman and "A Whole New Mind" by Daniel Pink. 

The main reason for attending this meeting was to share information about the NSSRS (Nebraska Student and Staff Record System). There is a link on NDE's homepage for NSSRS. The NSSRS page contains links to a documents page where you will be able to view PDF template files for Student, Staff, Assessment, etc. These files contain detailed descriptions for all fields that should be populated with data, and the format or codes for each field.

The Staff Development and Technology departments at ESU 13 will deliver a workshop on implementing Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement by Robert Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, Jane Pollock, and technology tools that will support the strategies. There are a number of websites that are devoted to this topic.

Nebraska Educational Service Units 

Educational Technology the Works

Jordan School District Utah 

Cherry Creek Schools Colorado

Bedford County Department of Education Tennessee

There are also numerous examples and links to other resources on these sites, but I also wanted to include a couple of specific tools here. This will help me to stay organized, since all resources that I plan to share will be located in this blog entry.

Compare and Contrast Map (ReadWriteThink)

Summarizing & Note Taking (ESU 13 Wiki) 

Reinforcing Effort & Providing Recognition (Educational Technology that Works)

NonLinguistic Representation  (bubbl.us)

The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) has created a study guide that could be used in a variety of ways.