November+2011

Thank you to everyone in our committee who contributed their time and talents to make our District-wide PD Day such a success! You are so important in this work!


 * District is hosting an invite-only Transforming Education meeting on Nov. 2 from 7-9 pm. All of our local council site reps are asked to attend, along with some members of executive. This is a great chance to ensure that PD continues to be a big piece of the conversation surrounding advancing education.
 * PD Council meeting is Nov. 16 in the pm. If you have not yet RSVP'd to Kathy, please let her know if you can attend for lunch. Subs will be covered.


 * Read Around the Planet is a site you might want to consider for linking your students up with other kids around the world via teleconferencing.


 * New ESL Benchmark videos are available through LearnAlberta at www.learnalberta.ca These model the various learner levels and also feature a revised edition of the paper benchmarks.These are very important not only for ELL leads in schools, but for all staff who work with the ELL kids.


 * tons of great resources for digital citizenship at [|www.2learn.ca/ydp], including guidelines on copyright, privacy, Internet safety, web 2.0 tools......wow! This is valuable for your student instruction as well as your staff PD.


 * Kathy and Lorelie attended the ATA sponsored Curriculum Symposium on Nov. 3-5 in Edmonton with notable guest speakers Jim Parsons, Pasi Sahlberg, Stephen Murgatroyd, and Irmeli Halinen (Head of Curriculum Dev't, Finland). The result is designed to further the conversation so that teachersw will be a big puzzle piece of curriculum reform for Alberta.
 * Highlights include Finn Pasi Sahlberg recommending that Albertans, like Finns, consider the present state a state of emergency....even though things are good, we need to look at the future and ways to make improvements on the quality we have set up for ourselves.
 * Pasi also reassured readers that his new book is not a soap box statement that Finland has the best system - he does not believe that is true. He acknowledges that there is a need for both Finland and Alberta (comparable systems) to recognize their present success as a state of emergency and that we have to look forward at curriculum design to .maintain our current level of success as the world catches up.