[PAAnews] PAA podcast The TeacherCast Audio Podcasts

The TeacherCast Audio Podcasts:

PODCASTS

Check back here and subscribe to our Audio Podcasts and Screencasts to hear interviews with some of the top teachers in our field and learn how they use technology in their classrooms.
Audio Podcasts:

• TeacherCast Podcast 29 "ParentCast"
• TeacherCast Podcast 28 "The Museum of Interesting Things"

Why Mitt Romney’s Education Policy May be the Same as Jeb Bush’s | Scathing Purple Musings

Why Mitt Romney’s Education Policy May be the Same as Jeb Bush’s | Scathing Purple Musings:

Why Mitt Romney’s Education Policy May be the Same as Jeb Bush’s

by Bob Sikes

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has nine policy statements on his official website. But not one for education. Romney and the people advising him are smart people and its not that they’ve forgotten. The omission, however, leaves his position open to interpretation and writing in Politics K12 Alyson Klein has done so. She does so in a fair manner, too, as she uses Romney’s 2010 book. Writes Klein:

Romney hits teacher quality hard. He suggests setting a high bar for education schools and opening up alternative pathways. More controversial is his pitch for an increase in salaries for beginning teachers—that’s a bit unusual for a Republican. He also wants to see a movement away from a “lockstep seniority-based grid.”

Romney has some ideas on social studies education, too, where he wades into some culture war

Moving Towards a World with No Bosses | Lefty Parent

Moving Towards a World with No Bosses | Lefty Parent:

Moving Towards a World with No Bosses

by Cooper Zale

I keep attempting to bear witness to and advocate for our society’s continuing transformation from “hierarchies of control to circles of equals”, but I got feedback from my partner Sally on our morning walk today that that is too academic of a framing… Damn! So how can I call this out in a more clear, un-geeky, and compelling way? What captures the essence of (along with the argument for) this transformation? I thought about it, feeling some frustration that I was not yet effective in really communicating what I’m trying to say.

So I suggested a new framing that my comrade thought might be more compelling. In the simplest and broadest sense of it, isn’t it about moving towards a “world without bosses”?

The word “boss” is such a loaded one in our culture, evoking (at least in my mind) an old-school sense of a person who gives you orders, monitors your conduct, and does a high-stakes evaluation of your performance in

School Tech Connect: The Top Ten Stories Of 2011

School Tech Connect: The Top Ten Stories Of 2011:

The Top Ten Stories Of 2011

by noreply@blogger.com (Tim)

I don't do end-of-year lists, so yes, this is a bait-and-switch.

But some of you do end-of-year lists, and if you're compiling a list of the big education stories, and if you've neglected to include Fred's uncovering of the sociopath Jonah Edelman's tactics, then your list is incomplete. It was the biggest story of the year here in Illinois, and it has ramifications around the country because this Edelman guy is operating nationally, still.

It's a story about the buying of public policy, it's about pay-to-play, and it's about the cravenness of union

As the new year comes, there is good news out of the Heartland for those of us toiling in the field of teacher union reform. « Fred Klonsky

As the new year comes, there is good news out of the Heartland for those of us toiling in the field of teacher union reform. « Fred Klonsky:

As the new year comes, there is good news out of the Heartland for those of us toiling in the field of teacher union reform.

by Fred Klonsky

MTU’s Bob Peterson and the CTU’s Karen Lewis. A fresh wind out of the Heartland.

To both old and new readers of this blog, it is clear that there is nobody more dedicated to the value of teacher unionism than this blogger. And nobody more concerned with the direction of the leadership of the Illinois Education Association and the National Education Association.

I am not just critical of one or two decisions. Who can’t live with that?

I am critical of a vision of teacher unionism that has dominated our Association going back for at least the last twenty years that I have been active in it.

It is a vision of constant compromises that have gutted rights that took years to win. It has turned the idea of