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Good stuff from Cale Birk on Learner Centered Design – “When we create assumption-based solutions independently of those who the solution will impact, and then fail to collect feedback on how the solution worked, we have become “organization-centered”.
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Great distinction between these tests by Peter Greene.
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Great seeing a good friend and talking about helping teachers! https://t.co/NOwgwBwd5t
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“Breaking Tradition” via @patrickmlarkin watch his AWESOME @TEDxYouthBHS talk now! https://t.co/ILz0PzXgGa #Tededchat #bpschat #cpchat
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Curious why Nza-Ari Khepra launched Project Orange Tree + the #WearOrange campaign? https://t.co/AuMKVkbFCh
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Free annotated research papers and accompanying teaching materials
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Because noncognitive assessment is still so new to schools, one answer to this question is we don’t yet know. We anticipate that five years from now we may be astounded by the diverse and innovative ways in which educators wield what we believe will be a powerful and creative tool.
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My buds @NikkiDRobertson & @patrickmlarkin say: “Tell your story, or someone else will.” #tellyourstory #1to1techat https://t.co/pzdeoIcygX
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Great site for audiobooks
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My appearance on BAM Radio on the topic of Transgender issues in schools.
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From EdWeek – Middle and high schools in Maine are returning their iPads and switching back to laptops after a survey found that 88.5 percent of teachers and 74 percent of students in one district preferred laptops for schoolwork and classroom instruction,
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Student Growth Percentiles are as reliable as flipping a coin according to this report.
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“You might as well flip a coin,” Stephen Sireci, one of the report’s authors and a UMass professor at the Center for Educational Assessment, said in an interview. “Our research indicates that student growth percentiles are unreliable and should not be used in teacher evaluations. We see a lot of students being misclassified at the classroom level.”
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An overview of all of the research done on grit.
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We tell students they need a bachelor’s degree to get ahead. But for too many, the numbers no longer add up.
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From the The Council on American-Islamic Relations
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From Jonathan Martin.
Category: Uncategorized
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (May 29, 2016)
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Burlington #bpschat https://t.co/Sx7raQrE9j
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From Richard Byrne
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“Adobe Spark empowers anyone – including small businesses, social marketers and students – to create stunning visual content that engages audiences across multiple channels and looks great on any device.”
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From Edutopia – Fortunately, there are plenty of resources on the web with useful information for all stakeholders — parents, students, educators, and administrators — to help support a successful transition to the next major stepping stone. Here are a few for each milestone in the K-12 pipeline and beyond.
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I like the open-ended questions used here at the Summative Meeting.
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Washington Post article on MA study on PARCC and MCAS – Interesting commentary from a Vermont Supt. who thinks it is a fairy tale.
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does the test validly measure the much vaunted touchstone criteria of “College and Career Ready?”
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This means the PARCC tests predicted 16 percent of first-year college GPA.
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With just as much accuracy, they could have said “the PARCC test cannot explain between 82-95 percent of college GPA. Thus, it cannot validly predict college readiness.”
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Nonetheless, Mr. Mathis is also correct that the correlations are low enough that many students (and parents, and colleges) would overestimate or underestimate their true college readiness—if they relied only on the test score to make the judgment.
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We wouldn’t recommend that anyone rely exclusively on the test score for high-stakes decisions.
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A thoughtful approach to homework for math…Even though I’m not a fan of 30 minutes per night.
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From Phil Hill – I’m seeing a lot of chatter online about the recently-released Blackboard report and this slide in particular: Foundational Insights When students take a class online, they make a tacit agreement to a poorer experience which undermines…
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A lot of information in this 2-minute video on the diversity in the U.S.
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Good overview of Google Classroom from Richard Wells.
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Socio-economic class affects the way children are prescribed pills—and not at all in the way you’d expect.
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From the Fordham Institute
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A good overview of ESSA from Politico
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From Mashable – Still, education has always been a big focus for Apple and its clear that is only going to continue. Many of the big iOS 9.3 features for the iPad were aimed strictly at education. With iPad sales continuing to stagnate, focusing on education makes a lot of sense. After all, it’s clear the kids love using them in the classroom.
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Great video on the impact of the Arts
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From Richard Byrne – Adobe Spark is a new suite of free tools for creating images, videos, and simple web pages.
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From Larry Ferlazzo – Looks Like A Good Source Of Free Reading Passages For Social Studies).…
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Interesting study out of Germany
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Jesus loves the church: Shadows and Signposts of his love, you can listen to it right here:… https://t.co/QkCGrUqfz2
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“Google Keep is like virtual sticky notes, but it’s so much more. Create notes in your Google Keep with a headline and body text. Add check boxes to make an instant checklist — perfect for a grocery list or a “grading to do” list.”
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Evolving how you lead — you may already sense — is hard work. It’s hard for multiple reasons.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (May 22, 2016)
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Our Burlington eNumeracy Website
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Good clip on teaching technology
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From Larry Ferlazzo -Thanks to Elyse Eidman-Aadahl from the amazing National Writing Project, I learned about a fascinating interactive set-up by the Wall Street Journal to compare liberal and conservative news feeds f…
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Important thoughts on personalized learning and what tech companies are trying to sell.
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New study on charter schools from Columbia University
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Read between the lines of a college financial aid award letter https://t.co/HYKLSmKsdW https://t.co/blQ869LcnU
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From Tom Vander Ark and Getting Smart
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Good ELL resources from Getting Smart
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Schooling in all its forms must place a greater priority on developing student noncognitive skills and character strengths.
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Such sanctuaries are becoming necessary as Massachusetts schools confront an alarming rise in the number of students who are hospitalized for mental health disorders. Over the last decade, many schools have seen the number of cases grow from just a few a year to upwards of several dozen, often transforming guidance offices into de facto psychiatric wards, educators say.
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This is so good, people! Watch it! @brandon_timm is awesome! #cpchat #nebedchat #education https://t.co/9QWFlH5vtN
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Average salaries
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Social and Emotional Learning Core Competencies
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Social literacy, as an important factor for furthering more socially productive and aware citizenship, offers richer interpersonal connections, expanded social circles, cultural fluency, and instills genuine and appropriate interactions.
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One Drop of Love is a multimedia one-woman show exploring the intersections of race, class and gender in search of justice and LOVE.
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The Social Centric Institute is designed to enhance skills of educators, counselors, parents, community organizers, law enforcement, and anyone wanting to improve human relations.
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Good look at what students need to do to show what they are passionate about.
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According to Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), social and emotional learning is “the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.”
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“What beliefs guide your work in your school?”
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Duplicating existing leadership won’t bring success when adaptivity is the order of the day. What’s the new recipe for talent development? RADAR identifies two key ingredients: Initiative & A Growth Mindset
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Good resources for fostering an adaptive mindset
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My slides from #OERSummit are available here. https://t.co/ZLgScUODkW
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Check out our Open Anthology of Earlier American Lit here: https://t.co/29IiS4A5gL #OERSummit https://t.co/zK5OqDrQs4
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Coming Sept. 27, 2016 https://t.co/NJNJxgFPa2 https://t.co/PvhIEScv8h
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Ugh
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From Harvard Education – Welcome to the Internet of Things. It may be about to change our lives as radically as the Internet itself did 20 years ago.
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Report from the Berkman Center at Harvard on problems of surveillance and cybersecurity
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The stress low-income kids experience hurts them biologically. How we punish them doesn’t help.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (May 15, 2016)
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Good analogies to help answer the WHY on moving to OpenEd Resorces
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From EdWeek – Efforts by K-12 schools to give every student a laptop computer increased student achievement and gave a modest boost to their “21st century skills,” according to a first-of-its-kind meta-analysis of 15 years’ worth of research studies.
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From the ALA – “It is important for libraries to develop privacy policies for student use of library resources that are adopted by both the library and the school’s policy-making body. Students should be notified about library privacy policies when borrowing materials or accessing resources for the first time and as appropriate when there is a change in services, policies, or access. Library privacy policies should be made easily available and understandable to students in an age-appropriate manner. Safeguarding user privacy requires that staff keep all in-library use and reference questions confidential and assure that there is no monitoring by staff or peers of what students are reading, viewing, or researching while in the library.”
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We are adding these to our technology resources in Burlington
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Unfortunate news here…
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The 2016 presidential campaign is unlike any other campaign in recent history in the ways it’s affecting students, schools and teachers. According to 2,000 teachers who responded to a survey Teaching Tolerance conducted in late March 2016, the campaign is: eliciting fear and anxiety among children of color, immigrants and Muslims; emboldening students to mimic the words and tone of the campaign; making it hard for teachers to remain impartial in the face of ugly rhetoric; and disrupting opportunities to teach effectively about political campaigns and civic engagement.
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Interesting study on the impact of mass shootings on gun control.
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Great initiative for intergenerational opportunities.
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From MA DESE – Planning for Success is a proven planning model piloted by districts in Massachusetts. Based on the Massachusetts Planning and Implementation Framework Download PDF Document Download MS WORD Document, Planning for Success incorporates legislative requirements, educator evaluation expectations, and effective planning practices in its design. The Planning for Success model includes a multi-year improvement plan and annual action plan that supports implementation. Planning for Success provides simple and accessible resources districts and schools can use to conduct an inclusive planning process. The goal of the Planning for Success process is to create a quality plan while building community ownership and support.
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Another perspective on Grit
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Good overview of the work done surrounding Personalized/Blended Learning at the HIghlander Institute
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enjoyed this post by @patrickmlarkin #edchat https://t.co/XF4oL9s5fX
Let Students Veer From the Old Path
This post originally appeared on my Education Week Blog
I recently stumbled across a blog post from Jason Kottke titled The invention of the jump shot. As someone who has both played and coached basketball, I was intrigued a bit about the fact that there was actually a time when people shot the basketball without their feet leaving the floor. I couldn’t help wondering what caused the change from the set shot to the jump shot.
My curiosity led me to an article by Brad Botkin of CBS Sports titled, Birth of the Jump Shot. Botkin detailed the story of Kenny Sailors, a guard from the University of Wyoming who took the first jump shot on record in a college basketball in 1942 during a game at Madison Square Garden. However, this trivial tidbit does not tell the story of why Sailors created the jump shot. This all happened a few years earlier when Kenny was just 13 and he was routinely getting his shots knocked back at him by his older brother Bud. Kenny, just 5-foot-8, needed a new plan to get a shot up over his 6-foot-5 brother. What followed of course was the jump shot.
However, what interested me as much as the ingenuity of the 13-year old boy who orchestrated the jump shot was the reaction of his older brother upon seeing this new tactic used against him. Here is an excerpt from Botkin’s article where Kenny describes Bud’s reaction:
Bud said to me, ‘Kenny, that’s a pretty good shot. You ought to try to develop that.’ So from that point forward, that’s pretty much what I did. I worked on that shot every chance I got.”
I can’t help thinking that if Bud had laughed his little brother off the court or chastised him for trying something so outlandish that Kenny would never have taken that shot at Madison Square Garden some eight years later. Where would the game of basketball be today? Interestingly enough, the jump shot still took some time to take off as a mainstream basketball move. In 1963, over 20 years after Kenny’s historic shot, Hall-of-Famer Bob Cousy said the following prior to his final game with the Boston Celtics:
“I think the jump shot is the worst thing that has happened to basketball in ten years.” Cousy’s objections? “Any time you can do something on the ground, it’s better.”
As R. Kelly’s I Believe I Can Fly echoes in my head, I have to smile at the irony in the fact that an innovative basketball player like Bob Cousy did not see the possibilities in the jump shot. What does this have to do with education? Like young Kenny Sailors, we need to move past the traditional mindset that got us to this point. History is full of examples of talented people like Bob Cousy who did not see the changes that were on the horizon. Let me remind you a few:
“Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” – Darryl Zanuck, executive at 20th Century Fox, 1946
“There is no reason that anyone would want a computer in their home.” – Ken Olson – the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
My final example is a bit of a challenge, fill in the blank on the following quote and then guess who said it…
“_________ will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories.” – ?
If you guessed the name of any 21st Century educator worrying about the impact of Google searches by his or her students then you are exactly…wrong. It was Socrates sometime around 400 BC worrying about the impact that writing was going to have on young scholars.
Of course this immediately brings to mind current disagreements about whether or not our students should be reading real books instead of digital books or whether they should take notes by hand instead of on a device. Maybe these are bad exammples. However, the one point I want to make is that we need to allow our students to veer from the path that we have taken. We need to be cautious about holding onto outdated traditions with white knuckles because they are what we are most comfortable with or because it worked for us. The bottom line is that this type of thinking will be to the detriment of our students. Most importantly, when we see our students trying new things that may be a bit unorthodox, we need to consider saying what Bud Sailors said to his little brother Kenny – “That’s pretty good. You should develop that.”
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (May 8, 2016)
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Great snapshot of Middletown, NY school district and the work they are doing to ensure success for all students.
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When used intentionally and appropriately, technology and interactive media are effective tools to support learning and development.
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Half of teenagers in the United States feel addicted to their mobile phones, with most checking the devices at least every hour and feeling pressured to respond immediately to messages, a survey released on Tuesday found.
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Sesame Workshop launched Sesame Studios, a new channel that lives not on television but online — on YouTube. The idea is to create new content swiftly and inexpensively, reaching children where they consume media, just like adults, on smartphones, tablets and computers.
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Worthwhile read on grit.
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there is a fundamental mismatch between who universities and bootcamps currently serve. The former focuses on getting students degrees; the latter helps working adults and better jobs. And because the majority of people who attend bootcamps already have degrees, he argues, they would not be eligible for Title IV funding anyways.
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More thoughts on school choice and “accountability” from Jay Greene
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Good question: Are math and reading test results strong enough indicators of school quality that regulators can rely on them to determine which schools should be closed and which should be expanded—even if parental demand is inconsistent with test results?
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Money, Race and Success: How Your School District Compares: Stanford researchers conclude that the number one indicator in school district rankings is parent income…
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“It is neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things that you don’t care about” https://t.co/bqBpIBf9Vc Most school curriculum?
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MLA just the 8th Edition of its Handbook. And, there are some key changes between MLA 7 and MLA 8 in this fresh look at documenting sources that you will need to note!
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How does your #K12 community engagement program compare? Use this free asssessment to find out: https://t.co/hSnpVOTnkE #sponsor #ad
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Here is the doc on changing the role of #teachers for #deeperlearning https://t.co/nMInOjffMG #ewa16 https://t.co/pVuNMZCIwA
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Wonderful-Dartmouth HS students performed Ted Talks this year! Developing poise, confidence, knowledge @DartmouthPS https://t.co/QX6gnIo0xE
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (May 1, 2016)
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This is a game changer for school marketers and school leaders. You can now go live on your school’s Facebook page. This option is built into your Facebook page. Think about this opportunity. This is the primary social media site that your parents use. Now, you can broadcast anything live that you want to your fans.
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Great resource which is going up in my classroom and boarding house! https://t.co/oM0lUMdsAA
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Via @BHSEnglish1 – Mark Steinbach (Class of ’13) is President of the Harvard Lampoon https://t.co/7qe2SRivm6 #bpschat
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From Alexandra Samuel – Enough with the digital fasts, people. Unplugging from the Internet is not the way to find a better balance between life on- and off-screen.
Getting Our Schools Focused On The Right Things
Nick Donohue, the President and CEO of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, was a speaker at a recent education conference that I attended. His summation of the state of educational discord in our country was right on point. He mentioned a few of the mantras of those who want to overhaul our public schools. “We need to fix our broken schools” and “we need to go back to the basics” were two of the common chants that Donohue referenced. The problem with these proclamations, as Donohue acknowledged, is that while they are great at grabbing attention, they offer little substance in the area of solutions.
Even worse is the fact that these lines of thinking are usually followed by the vilification of one of following groups:
- Educators – Let’s face it, if we just had better educators then everything would be different. I mean, just look at the test scores.
- Parents – If we had more competent parents then these kids would be better prepared to learn. They just don’t care about their child’s education enough.
- Students – Gosh, if these kids just took school more seriously. They aren’t as conscientious about school as students were in prior decades.
Anyway, you get the picture. Donohue continued with an important point regardinng the relationship between the teacher, the student, and the parent. He called this “the iron triad.” I could not agree more in regards to the importance of these connectons. In fact, as I think about the public discourse surrounding education mentioned above, it seems that a key aspect of this movement is to break apart the iron triad to which Donohue referred.
As Donohue encouraged the educators in the room to make sure that their schools and communities are moving beyond the empty rhetoric that is fueled by blaming and bashing key stakeholders, he recommended a reframing of the issues with forward-thinking questions (i.e. What if we started by asking the adults in a school community to discuss something that was a significant learning in their lives? How can we offer our students more personalized, relevant, and contextualized experiences? How can we provide more agency for the learner?)
The whole conversation immediately brought me back to a recent post I read from Will Richardson titled We’re Trying To Do “The Wrong Thing Right” in Schools. The excerpt below is filled with forward-thinking questions that need to be answered.
“Doing the right thing in schools starts with one fairly straightforward question: What do you believe about how kids learn most powerfully and deeply in their lives? Once you’ve answered that as an individual and as a school community, the question that follows is does your practice in classrooms with kids honor those beliefs? In other words, if you believe that kids learn best when they have authentic reasons for learning, when their work lives in the world in some real way, when they are pursuing answers to questions that they themselves find interesting, when they’re not constrained by a schedule or a curriculum, when they are having fun, and when they can learn with other students and teachers, then are you giving priority to those conditions in the classroom?”
I am fairly certain that if this happened that there would be a quick realization that the path we are on is not one that is in the best interest of our kids.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (April 24, 2016)
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We need to be teaching this to all students
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From The Network for Public Education
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A look at the plan being unveiled by Baltimore County Public Schools to transform the way students learn: “BCPS is first redesigning curriculum in the core content areas to redefine what instruction will look like in a blended learning environment, while placing a stronger emphasis on critical thinking and analytical skills.”
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An interesting read..
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Enjoying articles and books by Will Richardson…he is right on the mark. https://t.co/eCZxx0odBY
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We need to face this quiet epidemic as a country… https://t.co/qx2uXV3lHf
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Dan Meyer’s presentation from NCTM 2016
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Great post from Peter Greene on Teacher Evaluation and the misguided attempts to do this well.
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Can you address the key indicators of a culture of excellence and steps to establishing that culture for a school?
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Too for research which integrates with Google Drive – via Richard Byrne
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Great post by Karl Fisch on the true cost of standardized testing.
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From iNACOL – School leaders find once they begin to optimize their instructional models using anytime, anywhere learning, state policies that reinforce seat time become a barrier to innovative approaches delivering highly-personalized learning experiences for all students.
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Combine recent findings in behavioral economics, breakthroughs in brain science, a touch of armchair philosophy and a healthy dose of pop psychology, and a new business truism arises: Appeal to customers’ reason and they’re yours for a day. Appeal to customers’ emotions and they’re yours for a lifetime.
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“When people type their notes they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can,” Mueller tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. “The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective — because you can’t write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them.”
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Generative notetaking pertains to “summarizing, paraphrasing, concept mapping,” while nongenerative notetaking involves copying something verbatim.
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Because people can type faster than they write, using a laptop will make people more likely to try to transcribe everything they’re hearing. So on the one hand, Mueller and Oppenheimer were faced with the question of whether the benefits of being able to look at your more complete, transcribed notes on a laptop outweighs the drawbacks of not processing that information
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“But they are developing lots of technologies now like Livescribe and various stylus and tablet technologies that are getting better and better. And I think that will be sort of an easier sell to college students and people of that generation.”
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Some studies have illustrated quite clearly that kids do better when they have a say in their choices. Bruce Feiler, author and New York Times columnist, tried it in the form of “family meetings” where the kids could decide their own rewards and punishments for their behavior and accomplishments during the previous week.
My Weekly Diigo Bookmarks (April 17, 2016)
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Agreed! @LangOnCourse @patrickmlarkin @E_Sheninger https://t.co/9yzaP1r9gD
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From Richard Byrne
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Great short video from Derek SIvers on great ideas
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By Phil HillMore Posts (395) I have previously written a primer on competency-based education (CBE) using SPT Malan’s seminal article as the basis for understanding the key elements. Chris Mallett, formerly associate provost at Western Governors University (WGU) and currently VP for … Continue reading →
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The Book Creator Conference website is now live! https://t.co/60C0LBA6r7 FREE with iBooks Author Conference registration on or before 5/31!
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“Not yet” tells students where they are with skills. “No.” The red “X,” “F” tells them nothing. #betterfeedback https://t.co/6CYdOLc1W1
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Sadly this happens in every school that has to partake in compliance-based state testing – “I teach first grade in a neighborhood school for the Chicago Public Schools. The PARCC exam begins in the third grade, but even though my students did not take the test, their schedules and learning were still disrupted and negatively affected by the tests. “
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We need to remember that many of the struggles that students show in our schools are a result of things happening outside of school.
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Thanks for sharing @patrickmlarkin hope to see you this summer! #satchat https://t.co/LB5Sq6NjLa
My Un-Learning Journey 