Mr. Howard's Neighborhood

  (Education Rankings by Country 2026, 2026)     In 2009 Sweden, a top performing educational system in the world began to move its students into a more digital framework in their classrooms, going as far as replacing textbooks with laptops and tablets. This move at the time provided educators the opportunity to access, update and disseminate information in a much more efficient manner. However, in 2026, the Swedish education system has decided to make major investments in moving away from an all digital system to returning textbooks and "analog" writing back to the classrooms (Hart, 2026). Why does what Sweden do in their classrooms matter to me an educator in the United States of America? The graphic above depicts Sweden's ranking in public education on a global scale. With a score of 99.9 in public education, their education rank in the world is 15th. Conversely in the picture below, the United States has a public education score of 79.2 and are 31st in the world educa...

  Transform PD with Video Professional development with a focus on integrating technology into the classroom provides the greatest opportunity to address many of the issues faced in the world of K-12 education. Considering the issues of teacher shortages being filled by untrained individuals, and some experienced teachers having major discomfort with application of the technological tools, effective professional development that directly benefits the work can help with these issues.   Please excuse the "commercial" of the attached video, but he is right! If we know who the good teachers are, why aren't their practices on display to explain/teach and show others?  No matter how large or small the district, there are individuals that stand out for their mastery of the content standards and how they use technology to present the standards to students. It is important for the content to be relevant to the teachers expected to access these videos because the more specifi...