Blogs in the 21st Century

Today holds a first for me. My first blog! I viewed and read through many other educational blogs today in class and found one in particular to be very interesting. I enjoyed David Warlick's blog and its discussion on Finland's school systems. The differences between Finland and the United States' approach to educating our students are huge. We are in a system that believes in testing both our students and teachers time and time again; whereas Warlick's blog mentions that they rarely test either teachers or students. He also mentions that they have very little economic difference which he said showed higher levels of learning. I also enjoyed his blog about "Six Reasons Textbooks Should Stop Being Textbooks." I have seen quite a few classrooms who touched their books twice in a school-- when they handed them out in August and picked them back up in May. For the most part in those classrooms, the teachers use their access to technology to teach their content area instead of their textbooks.