Beyond Gold Stars

The days of the gold star on a worksheet have passed. Engaging in meaningful assessment tied to specific learning outcomes is no longer limited to classroom teachers. It needs to be integral to the information literacy curriculum of every school library.

Like many school districts, we have been engaged in curriculum mapping, discussions around the new Common Core State Standards, and the new regulations surrounding the supervision and evaluation of teachers in the state of Massachusetts. These are complicated discussions with important implications for school librarians.

Student achievement is at the heart of these activities and discussions. How do I, in my role, support student learning? What data do I collect that documents this learning? Am I holding myself to the same standard as my classroom colleagues?

These words from Richard DuFour were shared during a recent leadership team discussion:

"To what extent are the students learning the intended outcomes of each course? and What steps can I take to give both students and teachers the additional time and support they need to improve learning?"


The full article is well worth a look. It focuses us on what we need to do to participate as fully accountable educators within our schools.

1. Clarify outcomes - What is the goal of each lesson? Is the goal transparent and assessed?
2. Common assessments - How do we know if we are succeeding? Regular assessments are important, but we also need to be developing common assessments to obtain evidence on our effectiveness as teachers in improving student learning.
3. Analyze results - Share this data with collaborating teachers and our administrative evaluators. Where is there room for professional growth? Where are our strengths, and where do we need to focus on improvement?

Working with our English Department, we have developed a core curriculum unit with embedded common assessments.  Sophomore students will be doing historical research to build context before starting to read The Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison. During this inquiry I will be teaching research skills, source citation, and providing a final, summative assessment on student works cited pages. This requires generating assessment rubrics for the skills I want my students to acquire.

Things I am thinking about:

• How effectively can I provide formative feedback to both the student and teacher during the course of the unit? 
• How will I leverage the face-to-face class time with students into an effective online partnership as they do their research independently?
• How will I effectively collect and manage the assessment data to provide evidence of student learning and growth? 

Identifying opportunities for grade level common assessments will be an ongoing challenge, and a change in the way I have worked in the past. I am looking forward to moving our information literacy curriculum to a new level, with assessments to gauge the impact on student learning.

Gold stars are still nice. I'll stick one at the top of each summative assessment. 

The Learning-Centered Principal

May 2002 | Volume 59 | Number 8 Beyond Instructional Leadership    Pages 12-15  The Learning-Centered Principal Richard DuFour

Classroom Twittering

MassCue Session 5 – 10:00 – 10:55
Classroom Twittering
Michael Purdy, Director of Technology, Hanover Public Schools
(also good resource to discuss Google Apps for Schools)

Twitter creator on Iran: "I never intended for Twitter to be useful." Jack Dorsey - The Onion (6.24.09)

25-40 year olds are most active on Twitter.

Twitter is micro-blogging (140 characters).

Lifeblogging: Is a virtual brain good for the real one?

Proof! Mobile microbloggers are boring...

Lifebloggers track their every move, every word, every document with computers to create a personalized and machine-readable memory archive. Skeptics argue that no one wants to remember this much.

Why tweet?

• instantaneous
• direct
• feels personal
• searchable
• available and flexible

Terminology / How-to:

• delete your account (it is a consumable product, can delete easily)
  
• direct message (D)
  
• @message
• Retweet (RT)
• Hashtag (#)
• URL shorteners

Block unwanted followers - porn trawlers will follow you.

Issues:

• email addresses: get a gmail acccount and use "aliases" to have more than one account to mail to
• student email - huge issue in Web 2.0 world

Hanover PS uses Twitter for:

• job postings
• each school has an account for easy notification of parents who follow the school

(note to self: set up Twitter acct for library)

Teacher as Professional Learner

• self-reflection on teaching process
• member of prof learning community

General Education

• student poses question regarding class
  
• students consult one another about homework or other issues (student experts)
• create a review space for quizzes, tests that can accumulate as students head towards midterms or finals

Precis Writing
Condense "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson into 140 characters - good use of Twitter. Teaches incisive writing and thinking, main idea, key points, sentence combining.

Grammar / Vocabulary

• have students punctuate a paragraph that has punctuation removed
• have students write a sentence that properly illustrates the meaning of a vocabulary words

Literature

• students microblog as characters from within a literary work; they must reveal the motivation of character as it relates to plot
• students create online lexicon of literary terms covered in class with examples from the reading
• Twitter book club
• rewrite a play capturing its essence

Newsroom

• follow tweets of historical occurrences
• journalism classes can report on school-based news events as they happen
• journalism report events outside school

Debate

• debate assigned topics within twitter forum

Social Studies

• explain main point of great speeches
• create a study site of these speeches with interpretation
• students microblog in real time from an historical event ex the Kennedy assassination or Gettysburg, or Normandy

Science

• report science experiments

Math

• first student to solve problem
• students challenge each other
• daily math fluency

Foreign Language

• discussions in foreign language
• teach phrases
• outreach to ELL

Film/TV Study

• Students watch films/programs looking for specific instances of ex irony, symblism etc. they can tweet as the recognize occurences inwhat they watch

Sports

• tweet during sports event - reporting
• pictures can be included in tweets
• create a sports network within school

Lots of ideas!

Photo Credit:
"Meet Mr. Twitters"
Roz Chast
The New Yorker, 8.31.09
The CartoonBank

Chairs w/ Alan November - notes

K-12 District Team / Chairs session w/ Alan November

Chairs w/ Alan November
Sept. 2

Cellphones in the classroom – invite but demand performance
PollEverywhere.com – we Have ActiVotes, same concept.

Unfair advantage to tech savvy students? Are there parents who don’t want their kids to use technology? It is a personal value, not pursued.

Assessment – is writing overlooked/surpassed by presentation and aesthetics of an assignment? Does glitz of technology mask the major component(writing)of assignment?
• AN – final paper – how did student get to the writing? Google docs revision history
• Takes draft to a whole new orbit – provides data to understand final doc in a new way.
• Have we given teachers enough info to do the best possible job? New tools give insight into the process of learning than ever before.

Research – how do we ensure that kids are taught tools/skills in K-12 continuum?
• Google Custom Search – design your own search engine. Power of Google limited to sites you put int. 100 people can be on design team, unlimited access. Create content search engines built by classes. One student tasked with being researcher-for-the-day. That student finds the worlds best resources while teacher teaches. Teacher can answer questions – or teach students to get their own answer.
• Teach kids they are building a search engine (design team) they will take ownership of it.
• The best tech teacher in a lab can teach, but it has to be reinforced in every classroom.

Overwhelmed by Technology
• Comprehensive plan to support teachers is needed
• Need teachers to model
• Scale up the pioneers in organizational design
o ActivBoards

Paradigm / Practice Shift
What could support look like to put this into practice and make this change.
• Start with curriculum – what is the toughest to teach
• What works the best
• What works the worst – where do kids struggle
• Give that list to your tech leaders to help
• Create bridge between tech and pedadogy
o Embedded specialists in each department
o Kick the wheels, play, choose a few things to start with, enlist the kids in helping you learn
o Manage tech you don’t know how to use, but know what is possible. Know the CONCEPT
• Specialists give suggestions for pedagogy

New Tools to make learning more powerful. Nothing new. Addition of new tools in communicating content to new learners. More attractive to kids.

How-To Research
Do we need to teach this? Discipline behind the knowledge, with reinforcement and practice. Technology isn’t an option but a core requirement.
• Secondary teachers use collaborative word processing
o Leaders models this so it filters down

Scotland and other small and developing countries – takes tech seriously, in a global economy they can’t afford to lose 1 kid. They get that there are new rules, and Internet as new tool for opening up economic opportunities.

Student Voice
SpEd – new opportunities for these students
Find new formats to find voice and contribute to their won learning
Task students with designing tutorials – they know it has meaning to others
Ownership of product > learning > publishing globally > authentic

Design
Skills are merging in student projects, and collegial support for student production needs to be a design feature.
Professional community on the web - free

Robin's TO DO:

CREATE NING
TEMPLATE DEPT CUSTOM GOOGLE SEARCH WIDGETS

Keynote Kick-Off with Alan November - Notes

"What do you do with technology when you are not in school?"

Confirm what you are already doing.

I don't like technology. it breaks, especially in front of audiences.

Helps expand relationships with kids and access to information.


West Point 1985 act of Congress required every student to have a laptop. First university to make this requirement. They hire all of their graduates (6 years). Possible that a student will be a field commander later. They have data on results of learning that most schools don't.
Change in mission. Win the war > now the goal is to win the peace. (Should the mission of K-12 change?) New curriculum, new skills. Massive wrenching change for institution and faculty.

Teaching graduate program in info searching. Now have to teach students that there are different points of view. Example: impact of pope's speech in Turkey.Serious real-life problem with bad results.
Google results return Western results w/ no Muslim perspective. This does not support the mission to win the peace. West Point wants students to find alternate perspectives to find the truth, to win peace. Knowing the language of digital search addresses this problem. You don't know what you don't know, and it isn't your fault because you were never taught.

Caught in transition from paper to digital.

Should we teach American kids that there are other points of view?

Class of 2010 - demographers created working label "Boomerangs" > children of Boomers.

Alan's Advice on How to Get Kids Out of Your Parent's House:
critical thinking in the web (syntax, grammar)
"the medium is the message" - Marshall McLuahn

(Students didn't know how Google algorithm worked) students look at top page, don't change search engines.

What can YOU do?
1. Announce that you don't know everything
2. Hire the kid who breaks in
3. "Hire" the kids to teach you the tools you need - they want to be helpful

Peeling back the web to validate information
Google - link:www.marinlutherking.org

altavista - seach engine for finding links into a website link:www.marinlutherking.org
this search engine returns far more links to main site

How should teach this? Should it be embedded in what you teach?

High Tech High, San Diego - highest standardized test scores in CA, but they don't teach to the test. They ask the students to find solutions to teaching the most difficult concepts in your curriculum, Have them come back with examples in diverse media formats.

Assessment - assessing final product rather than process of getting to the final product. Assess how the kid got there.

SOCIAL WEB
Kids have a developmental need to connect socially with other people
YouTube phenomenal growth - show students the work of other students from around the world - this is cross-curricular.

The mission of education: Brain research shows that if a kid goes home and does homework and makes a mistake, the mistake is embedded in the brain. The longer the wait for the feedback the less relevant the learning and the most damaging the mistake.
Need to give different kinds of homework, like looking at vodcasts.
Bob Sprankle, Welles, ME - We have underestimated what young children can do. Children can watch a review of what was learned the week before, that they produced. No mistakes, they love to publish.

What's the difference between regular homework and producing/publishing for class? Homework is for self and doesn't matter. Publishing for authentic audience increases value, learning, enthusiasm in learning. When kids produce tutorials there is HUGE traffic. Students who take notes off a pod/screen cast do better than those who take notes live during class.

Change in culture of teaching/learning where kids take more responsibility for learning in the class. WHO should own the learning? US ed system designed for teachers to own the learning. Teachers work harder than the kids. These new tools can change this power nexus.

• Literacy more than reading paper. Internet is a core literacy.
• Global perspectives, alternate POV. Skype is a social connection, and kids thrive on social authenticity. Share/publish globally. Kids will listen and go back over it because it is their voice. This is FUN!
  

Robin's Ideas/ TO DO:

• prof development Google docs/forms (essential equity issue)
• Google workshop - basic search
• Deep web search tools - tricks and grammatical tools to validate web content
• Jing workshop
• IDEA - "Play in the Sandbox" workshops around themes/tools. Group exploration.
  

Super Researcher Girl!

Shazam! It is official. I now have super-powers beyond those of the average mortal. Harnessing the powers of Diigo, I can take notes on web pages (!) and collaborate and share with anyone in my research process.

I was playing around with Google Books (very cool) and found this article giving an overview of their platform. This is an area of interest for me, so using Diigo I have started a research project on e-books. You can see the link, the description I gave it, and then the tags I assigned the article. Below that you will find paragraphs I highlighted, and bulleted notes (brief) with my name. Go ahead and scan. I'll see you on the other end. You will recognize it is me again by the orange font ;)

• Inside Google Books: Download Over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format

  (My short description of the article) Resources on public domain e-books.

  (My tags)tags: ebooks, epub, Free, books, digital books, Google Books

  • Before physical books were invented, thoughts were constrained by both space and time. It was difficult for humans to share their thoughts and feelings with a set of people too far from their physical location. Printed books changed that by allowing authors to record their experiences in a medium that could be shipped around the world. Similarly, the words written down could be preserved through time. The result was an explosion in collaboration and creativity. Via printed books, a 17th century physicist in Great Britain could build on the work of a 16th century Italian scholar.
    • The first step in global collaboration - post by rcicchetti
  • it can be difficult and costly to reproduce and transport the information that older physical books contain. Some can't afford these works. Others who might be able to afford to purchase them can't unless they can find a physical copy available for sale or loan. Some important books are so limited in quantity that one must fly around the world to find a copy. Access to other works is only available to those who attend certain universities or belong to certain organizations.
    • Barriers to access - post by rcicchetti
  • convert atoms from physical books into digital bits
    • New format - evolution. Same content. - post by rcicchetti
  • While atoms remain fairly expensive, digital bits are on a trend where they become ever cheaper to produce, transport, and store. For example, providing every student in a school district with a paper copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet might cost thousands of dollars. Yet if those same students already have cell phones, laptops, or access to the Internet, then they can access a digital copy of Hamlet for just a fraction of the cost.
    • Barriers to access - economics. The devices are expensive, though. For the poor, is a book still the most cost effective way to go? If books disappear will the poor be without free access to information? Digital bits are cheaper than atoms, but the cost of the device and access must also be figured in. - post by rcicchetti

Thanks for sticking with me so far! What I want you to notice is that my "rcicchetti" link is live and can take you to my Diigo page. I can invite others to participate in reading this article and taking notes along with me, collaborating as we go. This is an online discussion platform. There are lots of privacy feature, but I haven't set them up on my account, because I want it to be as open as possible at this point.

Cooler yet, I exported the whole thing to this blog with the click of the keypad! Versatile, powerful, collaborative - I haven't found the kryptonite for Diigo yet.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Photo credit Flickr Creative Commons:

Shazam! - Series 1 ( DC Direct )

Uploaded on April 19, 2009
by Leandro [ Egon ]

Teaching, Learning and Assessing 21st Century Skills - Bob Pearlman

Raw notes
Bob Pearlman - Teaching, Learning and Assessing 21st Century Skills
conference slides: http://www.bobpearlman.org/BLC2009.htm

New Technology Foundation "New Tech's mission is to re-invent teaching and learning for the 21 st Century by offering a proven model and a fully integrated suite of tools designed to facilitate the creation and management of a relevant and engaging 21st Century education."

Partnership for 21st Century Skills - updated competencies 2002-2003

• Learning & Innovation (many sub-categories)
  
• Life & Career (many sub-categories)
• Information & Technology (many sub-categories)

How do you teach and then assess these skills?

Project-Based Learning (PBL), teams, inter-disciplinary all provide opportunities for these skills and outcomes.
Examples from 10th gr English/Social Studies classroom: Video - Teaching the Adolescent Brain
Many examples given: company commissioned by NASA to develop games to play on the moon. The project drives the curriculum and a need to know with external audience.

PBL Plan Assessment

• final product (not good)
  
• sub-assignments (scaffolding): many types and all provide opportunities for assessment
  
• process documents (keep everyone on track and accountable): contract who does what, when, "followship", online learning platform for collaboration
• develop assessment rubrics so kids know how they will be graded, how they can do better. Builds habit of self-direction and motivation.

Sacramento 10 Learning Outcomes

1. content proficient
2. able to write proficiently
3. orally proficient
4. critical thinking
5. tech proficient
6. abe to collaborate
7. prepared fr career
8. solid ethical citizenship
9. analyze and deal with data
10. processing a solid work ethic

8 Napa Learning Outcomes

1. tech literacy
2. collaboration
3. critical thinking
4. oral skills
   
5. written
6. career prepared
7. numeracy
8. ? missed it ?

How do students stay on task and develop self-direction?
Every project has an online platform w/ calendar, docs, rubrics - the whole thing.
How do you judge collaboration? Peer assessment using online rubric.

Oral communication - students need many, many opportunities. Bring in outside groups for authentic audience experience and assessment feedback.

Collective outcomes - common outcomes/grading across courses.
Digital portfolios required to show mastery of learning outcomes.

YouTube Video: What is New Manor Tech

edubloggercon: the Un-conference Before BLC 09

Today I went to my first Edubloggercon Un-Conference at the Park Plaza Hotel, the day before the Building Learning Communities 09 Conference. My head feels like it is going to explode! Great conference,small, intimate, informal, fast and furious, high level discussions.

Edubloggercon - East Coast 20009
"EduBloggerCon is based on the idea of an "un-conference," and is being organized by the participants in real time on this wiki. Another way to describe this event is as a "collaborative conference," where the conference attendees help to build and create the experience."

edubloggercon - EBCEast-Agenda

Backchannel - Beta testing with this conference. Very cool. Beta version from MIT lab.
Allows participants to log in with either Facebook or Twitter and process the session online, asking questions, tossing ideas around while the main discussion continues.

Twitter Hashtags #EBCE09 #BLC09

Session #1 with Dennis Richards, David Truss, Liz Davis
What works in presentations, what doesn't?
Dave discourages blogs with classes, prefers a platform that encourages engagement that goes on between student and student. Power of wiki is that the power is distributes. Great entry point for people to engage. Teachers should use the tool they plan to use and engage. Each page becomes the student's personal tool box. Access and equity for students to encourage student engagement. Authentic audience. To be transformational teacher must move away from hanging on to power and allow social aspects to exchange of information. Promotes ownership and students want to go there. Homework becomes the by product.
Make staff meetings paperless using a wiki or Google doc. Free up collaborative time. Depends on leadership. Need someone to identify current practices and find skill/tool to be more engaging, collaborative, transformational, efficient. Coaching model most effective because it is hands on. Requires a lot of one-to-one. Lots of tech tools, but where is the implementation? Good presenters tell a story. Transformation changes the learning experience. This is a business model. Students need to experience learning, not just receive content. It is about skills, not mindset. Needs honest discussions. Clint Kennedy - When tech leaders are helping peers in schools we need to be more "bit-torrent" and less "napster".
Clay Shirkey's TED Talk - Institutions versus collaboration.

Session #2 - New Media Reaches All Learners - Facilitated by Karen Janowski, Assistive Technology Consultant
Etherpad Link - Etherpad is synchronous! Discussion logged here. 16 allowed at a time for free version. Check out educator pricing.
Universal Design for Learning - remove all barriers to learning: instructional goals, materials, assessment

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for designing curricula that enable all individuals to gain knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm for learning. UDL provides rich supports for learning and reduces barriers to the curriculum while maintaining high achievement standards for all.

PBS Misunderstood Minds - excellent resource for understanding the experience of students with learning challenges. Good to share with teachers.
Think about how we present what we do in classroom to engage, present, and demonstrate what they know. Remove obstacle to learning traditional methods put in place.
Free text-to-speech toolbar Click Speak - Firefox extension. Follow up on this.
Scaffolding that helps struggling learners helps many additional students to learn and understand. Focusing on the needs of the struggling kids helps your design in lesson plan and assessment. Students need to bring ALL their tools and strategies to assessments. Teachers need to stop throwing up barriers. Design assessment for many contexts and situations where adaptability and resourcefulness will help them gther the tools they eed to show what they know. Our curriculum is the problem.

Free text-to-speech tools
udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/

Session #3 - Scratch - Facilitated by Liz Davis
You don't need to know Scratch to teach it. Visual programming language. Kids can connect with how games, animation and online things are created. Takes mystery out of their online experiences. I can see very good applications for classroom assessments. Relies on script building. Add as an option for students. Maybe good for team work to take advantages of multiple intelligences/skills. Nice alternative to Powerpoint projects.
Go to File > Open >Scratch Projects > Examples (on left nav bar) - see multiple projects from websites to see and play with scripts, download scripts to see how they work, re-mix existing Scratch scripts. Creating and re-mixing this open source tool.
Characters are called "sprites", and sprites can broadcast secrets to each other- very cool. Includes coordinates, directions, sequencing, process, problem solving, logic, etc. Provides immediate feedback. It works or it doesn't work.
Scratch - free download and resources. Check support button for tutorials and additional materials like activity cards. Lots to check out for classroom activities.
Learn Scratch - good tutorials.
scratched.media.mit.edu/discussions - lots of good stuff on this link.
Scratch is a community where students can find support, feedback, look at other people's programs and learn collaboratively from the community. Kids in control. Easy to import multimedia files of all sorts.
PicoCricket - sensor board that will interact with Scratch, includes temperature sensors. $50.
Mitch Resnick created Scratch. Extension of Logo. MIT has a Scratch Day for students on Saturday. Very interactive and dynamic. Good connecting and networking.
Power of Educational Technology - Scratch - Liz's blog post and Scratch-umentory.
Liz's Scratch Lesson Plan - 6 lessons, 45 min. each.

Session #4 - Making the Most of the BackChannel: Utilizing Conference Backchannels Using Multiple Technologies - Facilitated by Lisa Thumann
How can we use a back channel in our classroom to enrich learning? In small keynotes or classrooms set up backchannel beforehand and encourage people to use it. Extending the conversation beyond direct instruction to keep kids engaged. Make sure you have laptops in the hands of kids before you start. Plan for the backchannel. Also allows presenter/teacher to adapt the presentation to needs of audience and learners. This will not be for everybody.
Pedagogy - need to set up acceptable practices before you start. Clear expecations, classroom norms, buy in, these are being established as we go along in conferences. Engage students by including the technology they ae already using. Also empowers quiet or non-verbal students to participate.

Things to look for in a BackChannel: Clickability, moderation, embeddability, archiving, synchronous communication, accountability.

Resources:
Twitter, UStream, Chatzy, Skype, TodaysMeet.com, CoverItLive (this looks GOOD - can embed charts, editable, etc high praise for classroom use. Can also embed in wiki!!), TinyChat, Elluminate (free rooms to educators, good for presentations and professional development - chat is the back channel), EdMoto (free, educational version of Twitter but more, gets big plug, easy interface, can share notes and files, can be archived)
EdTechTalk - live streaming with chat
Joyce Valenza: BackChannel and Chat Resources
Joyce Valenza: Twitter and New Tools

Session #5 - Web 2.0 Smackdown - Facilitated by Lisa Thumann
Google doc used for link collection.

• bubblecomment - allows someone to leave a video comment on any web page. Good for class webpage. You get a new URL with video comment on your original webpage, and they are left on the original page as if you were never there.
• Google > Show Options - search goes vertical, filling in contextual information with related searches, and the Wonder Wheel is great because it creates a mind map of the Google search. Allows user to drill deeper into the search. Timeline also allows for more meaningful search results. Google Squared a meta-search with graphic organization.
• edu.Glogster.com - media rich poster, allows you to mash up lots of elements including graphics, video, sounds, music. Called a "glog". Teachers can register up to 200 students. Secure for students. Future iteration will give teachers more power to organize class lists. Walled garden.
• Firefox Add-On - Fireshot - captures, annotates, organizes, exports screenshots. Free! Capture screen and annotate. No audio.
• Socrato - Contet library you can browse by state standards to assemble worksheets, etc. Content area by tag cloud, question bank, shopping cart for questions to share. Ex. poetry, grade 10, passages asociated with questions, create test. Students log in for assessment or print out as assignment.
• Aardvark - utilizing social network for answers. Question is sent out to real people via email or IM, facilitates meeting new people. People tag themselves as experts on various topics. Twist on Cha Cha without the reference skills.
• Livescribe PulsePen - Adaptive technology. Love this. Digitizes notes and makes them searchable. $187 through Costco online through end of month, w/ 4 notebooks, earbuds, all the stuff. Target, Amazon also stock this.
  
• Instructables - How to do just about anything. Explain and teach how you do something. Could be a good alternate assessment.
• Image Chef - Really cool customized images. LOVE THIS! Embed code, share, huge gallery. FREE! Use this for presentations.
• Xtranormal - text-to-movie application, good for UDL. Great resource for alternate assessment. Can add movement, animations, camera angles. Intuitive. Show this to Andy Sapp for teaching filming. Good for teaching concepts, building social stories, etc. Lots of potential applications.
• Stixy - Digital bulletin board, good for reading lists. Drag and drop. Alternate to Glogster, a little more organized. Kind of like post-it notes.
• YoLink - Sneak peek into links. Download toolbar to search any site and any site it links to. Splits screen and brings back full paragraph results from each link. Keyword highlighted n results. Save and share / social bookmarking feature. Alternative to static Google results, bringing back richer esults. Color coding lets you look for density of color for added support in searching, brings efficiency.
• WolframAlpha - semantic/computational search engine. Great for mathematics instruction. Homework will now have to be different. Also has country codes - tons of data, maps, satellite images, geograhpic properties, demographics, etc.

August 14th - free ed tech conference - SocialTechEducation

Lisa Thumann's notes with links and Twitter names

The Test is Broken

The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, otherwise known as "ugh - MCAS", has the students enrolled in public schools across this fine state firmly in its teeth.

Today the CCHS Library closed its doors to classes and students on study passes in order to make room for over 165 students who needed additional time to finish today's exams. This is in addition to students in 3 other extended-time locations in the school. In other words, the majority of the sophomore class was unable to finish the test in the allotted time.

As I look at the kids silently writing away in every available space, I see many of the brightest and most diligent students at CCHS. There isn't a student in this library who isn't totally focused on the task at hand. I am so proud of all of them, and yet I can't help but feel frustrated.

When I think about the time allocated to mandated testing, balanced against lost instructional time, and multiply it across the state and across grade levels, I have to join the chorus and ask is this really necessary?

Wikipedia says MCAS has 3 primary purposes:

1. to inform and improve curriculum
2. to evaluate student, school, and district performance according to Massachusetts Curriculum Framework content standards and performance standards
3. to determine student eligibility for the Competency Determination requirement in order to award high school diplomas

These are legitimate goals. Protecting students in chronically under-performing schools and federally guaranteeing them the right to an education based on standards and verifiable results is worth it, without a doubt. This isn't the way to go about it.

When the majority of a class is unable to finish a standardized test in the allotted time, it isn't their fault. MCAS just doesn't work. The test is broken.

Photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons
take the test already
by billaday
uploaded 5/28/08

Assessing Media

I like to keep an eye out for new tools that will help illustrate tricky, nuanced things - like potential bias. Still underdevelopment, this company is definitely going into my RSS feed. Take a look at the graphic and you can see that CNN focuses more on the Congress, while Fox News focuses on the White House.

"Media Cloud is a system that lets you see the flow of the media. The Internet is fundamentally altering the way that news is produced and distributed, but there are few comprehensive approaches to understanding the nature of these changes. Media Cloud automatically builds an archive of news stories and blog posts from the web, applies language processing, and gives you ways to analyze and visualize the data. The system is still in early development, but we invite you to explore our current data and suggest research ideas. This is an open-source project, and we will be releasing all of the code soon. You can read more background on the project or just get started below."

Credit to ReadWriteWeb for being such an awesome source for the latest on educational technology.

Ten Trends and Technologies for 2009

Ten Trends and Technologies for 2009

This post comes courtesy of Michael Stephens, author of the blog Tame the Web: Libraries, Technology and People. Michael's post is scholarly and filled with data, links, and academic sources. Borrowing his 10 descriptors, this is my version, viewed through the lens of the CCHS Library.

1. The Ubiquity of the Cloud - Clouds provide a powerful alternate way to present data. It is hard to find opportunities to use data with students to evaluate things that aren't intrinsically empirical. An example is writing. A student can copy and paste a paper into something like Wordle and see the resulting word cloud. If there are repetitive words it shows up immediately. Tag clouds are becoming increasingly important to search functions, especially with social networking sites. Understanding a cloud is an important emerging literacy.
   
2. The Value of the Commons - A rich, collaborative space for people to create is the heart of this idea, covering everything from Creative Commons licensing to a Media Commons model for the library. Learning by doing, literacy beyond text, global connections - these are all elements that resonate with me. A Commons philosophy is welcoming, creative, fosters connections, and puts students at the center.
   
3. The Changing Role of IT - Everyone needs to be an IT Specialist now. Period. We all must accept the responsibility basic trouble shooting. While we don't all need to know html or network configuration, we all need to be competent end-users, confident to try things, click buttons, roll our sleeves up and dig into an application. Comfort with various media files, uploading, downloading, embedable code, wikis, Nings and blogs are all core competentices for life in Web 2.0 and the 21st Century. How else will we be ready for Web 3.0?
   
4. The Care & Nurturing of the Tribe - Teenagers need their tribe. They need to belong to a social group, thus the incredible popularity of Facebook. They also need nurturing and guidance as they learn to navigate the halls of their real world, and pixels of their digital lives. Both are real, both are valuable, and both are relevant.
   
5. Encourage the Heart - How can we make authentic human connections with each other? Be the Change has played an important role in fostering connection and caring at CCHS. Can we capitalize on this and expand those connections to a global awareness? Really, it is about encouraging intellectual curiosity and caring.
   
6. The Triumph of the Portable Device - iPhones are like lightning bolts of connectivity, and in a perfect world I would put one in the hands of every student. Connectivity is the air they breathe, and we should harness is and use it as an integral part of the educational process.
   
7. The Importance of Personalization - At CCHS every student has a network account, and as they log in each day I can see how they personalize their desktop, their preferences, their interface with the world. Each student is different and while they often dress, talk and behave like each other, online they are far freer to be themselves. It is a joy to see how diverse they are in the freedom of their digital environment.
   
8. The Impact of Localization - Our local resources are rich and varied, and sometimes this can get lost in the rush to push global awareness. Yet we have CCTV, our local cable access station, where I can tune into channel 10 and see what media is being produced and shared by our students. I can tune into WIQH 88.3FM and hear the local sports and weather forecast by students, listen to their music, and their political views. Kids are creating local content, and finding ways to share it with their communities. We need to continue to find ways to facilitate this local exchange.
   
9. The Evolution of the Digital Lifestyle - Put an "i" in front of it, and it connects to everything in your life, or at least that what it feels like. Seamless, fluid, we are approaching a time when our digital interface will be a fully networked archive of our experience and work. The tricky bit is the blurring of traditional lines. In social networks who should we be friends with, and who should we not be friends with? Teachers? Professional colleagues? Bosses? The Digital Lifestyle demands that we review our social traditions, mores and policies.
   
10. The Shift Toward Open Thinking - We need to be more open to creativity and finding alternative ways of demonstrating what we know. We need to be more lenient of technical failure, and give credit for trying. Allowing students to access learning in different ways, and providing alternate formats to access content has to be a priority.
    

Media to Enhance Traditional Methods

New Media for New Minds:
Audio, Video, and Web Production to Enhance Traditional Methods
Vera Ventura - Watertown, Media and Production Instruction

Web 2.0 and free Google apps address equity and access issues for students. Student presentations for synthesis of content are important, and these tools are available via Google Docs. This allows sharing via email or collaboration options. Can download as powerpoint or pdf. FreeFreeFreeFree!

It is OK for students to be ahead of teachers on mastering the nuts and bolts of technology and applications. Let the students teach you, learn together. Use students as a resource. Bridging the new media ind and the old educational mind is the challenge.

iTunes University
There is a little video tour embedded in the top right corner.

Historic Tale Construction Kit

Historic Tale Construction Kit
This is the coolest site I have seen in awhile. It makes me want to re-read The Canterbury Tales. Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, you can create your own, embroidered, medieval legend. It has great music, too. What a wonderful way to create alternate assessments or review elements of character or plot. You can save your historic tale, add panels, email it to someone, or upload it. It is fun, easy to use, and free.