Category: Thoughts (Page 17 of 18)

I’ve been working with a great group that is doing some really nice work with Moodle. My part of the process has been twofold:

• working with the writers of the curriculum to identify how to use Moodle effectively and
• working to help the teachers who will implement the curriculum become comfortable and adept at using Moodle.

There are some really talented individuals involved in the process. So when I received the email below, it felt really good.

I just want to tell you both how impressed I am with your work! I just went through the course and as I had questions, they magically were answered by the next text section. It is a very, very professional piece of work and something that you can take great pride in.

All too often, I fail to truly thank those who do terrific work. Receiving that email really made me feel good. It also reminded me to be more thankful of those I have the pleasure of working with.

I found this article, Mute the Messenger, through my RSS feed this week. I found the article fascinating. Essentially, it is the tale of standardized testing and what could potentially be the ugly reality of assessment. It is not the shortest of articles, but a great read.

Now, take the article with a bit of skepticism. Still, it is a very powerful article. Yes, many of the points may be simply circumstantial. Yes, there could be a lot of information that is missing. Still.

Let’s take a look at a few of the quotes.

Testing advocates believed that more rigorous curricula and tests would boost student achievement—the “rising tide lifts all boats” theory. But that’s not how it worked out.

This is one of the powerful quotations for me. There is a fundamental belief that making the curriculum and assessments more rigorous would “obviously” led to more learning. Funny thing about learning though, sometimes it is more complex than people want to think.

Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott, long an advocate of using tests to hold schools accountable, broke from orthodoxy when he called the STAAR test a “perversion of its original intent.”

Yep. Some are starting to realize that just increasing testing isn’t the panacea that some want to think that it is.

Stroup sat down at the witness table and offered the scientific basis behind the widely held suspicion that what the tests measured was not what students have learned but how well students take tests.

…his testimony to the committee broke through the usual assumption that equated standardized testing with high standards. He reframed the debate over accountability by questioning whether the tests were the right tool for the job. The question wasn’t whether to test or not to test, but whether the tests measured what we thought they did.

This points out a profound function of testing that all too many take for granted. What does testing really measure? Yes, we end up with a number at the end of testing. However, what does that number really mean? What do tests really measure? These are crucial important questions.

Stroup argued that the tests were working exactly as designed

Stroup had caught the government using a bathroom scale to measure a student’s height.

The scale wasn’t broken or badly made. The scale was working exactly as designed. It was just the wrong tool for the job. The tests, Stroup said, simply couldn’t measure how much students learned in school.

Here is the crux of the matter. Are we really using the right tools? Are we using assessments correctly? Are we sure that the assessments measure what we think that they measure? I remember times as a principal where the number one question was “what was the topic of the writing” section. Once we knew what the topic was, we were pretty sure (and always right on) about how the students would do on the assessment. Quite frankly, we knew that the topic was really, really important. We knew how well the students could write. Even more importantly, we knew that if the topic was something that the students weren’t interested in, they would not do well on the assessment.

Well, one of the legislators called for Stroup and Pearson to have a debate. That debate would never happen.

…standardized tests have become the pre-eminent yardstick of classroom learning in America, and Pearson is selling the most yardsticks.

Pearson is heavily invested (literally) in assessment. Quite frankly, they are selling the yardsticks.

But, here’s one of the interesting things. Stroup was also teaching kids. He had developed a program that helped students learn math. He knew that the kids were being successful, but that success wasn’t showing up on the statewide standardized tests. He started looking at why.

Stroup knew from his experience teaching impoverished students in inner-city Boston, Mexico City and North Texas that students could improve their mastery of a subject by more than 15 percent in a school year, but the tests couldn’t measure that change. Stroup came to believe that the biggest portion of the test scores that hardly changed—that 72 percent—simply measured test-taking ability. For almost $100 million a year, Texas taxpayers were sold these tests as a gauge of whether schools are doing a good job. Lawmakers were using the wrong tool.

So, he does the research and finds out that what the tests really measure is how well students take the test. His research found that 70% of the test score was “insensitive to instruction”. Essentially, this means that teachers, schools and educators can’t change about 70% of the test results. Pearson called foul. They stated that he had made a mistake. According to Pearson, only 50% of the test is “insensitive to instruction”. That’s right. Pearson admitted that about half of the score that would determine how well teachers were teaching was unchangeable by the teacher. Honestly, teachers are being evaluated by these scores. Jobs, reputations, etc. – all determined by these tests. Yet, here is Pearson admitting that 50% of that score is determined by the student’s ability to take a test. Nothing the teacher or school could do would effect this part of the score.

Stroup concluded that the tests were 72 percent “insensitive to instruction,” a graduate- school way of saying that the tests don’t measure what students learn in the classroom.

After correcting what Pearson interpreted as the mislabeled column, Way wrote, the tests were “only 50 percent” insensitive to instruction.

“teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores,” largely confirming Stroup’s apparently controversial conclusion.

If it’s true that the test measured primarily students’ ability to take a test, then, Stroup reasoned to the House Public Education Committee in June 2012, “it is rational game theory strategy to target the 72 percent.” That means more Pearson worksheets and fewer field trips, more multiple-choice literary analysis and fewer book reports, and weeks devoted to practice tests and less classroom time devoted to learning new things. In other words, logic explained exactly what was going on in Texas’ public schools.

Oh, and the legislator who had called for a debate between Dr. Stroup and Pearson. The debate that never happened. Well, he retired. He is now a lobbyist for Pearson.

Source: http://www.texasobserver.org/walter-stroup-standardized-testing-pearson/

The original concept of the web was to connect documents. Obviously, the web has grown and expanded. Now, there are many, many different places to put “your documents”. Now your “documents” are no frequently longer web pages or documents that you write, but rather things that you post on other’s web sites.

Personal Examples

Lots of people now post their “documents” to places like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, InstaGram, Tumblr, etc. These sites all make it really easy to post information. They all vary in how easy it is to get your data out of their system. They also control where your data lives. Generally, the trade off is the ease of use to post (and network effect of those there) in exchange for your data living in their ecosystem.

Professional Examples

Similar to the personal examples above, there are many professional examples as well. Many people are using some the of the sites above in a professional manner. There are also sites like BlackBoard, Edmodo, Haiku and more. These sites vary from some free access to some very expensive options. Beyond the cost (because usually the cost is born by the school district, not the individual teacher) is the idea of who owns the data. Here the data is the very hard work that a teacher has put into developing that site. Getting that data out can be difficult.

Why does this matter?

I know a teacher who recently switched districts. This is a technology proficient teacher who had created a wide range of classes, activities, resources, etc digitally. However, the district that this teacher was in, had contracted their LMS out. That means that the teacher could not take her data with her. She had some terrific lessons that she had spent time developing and could really use now. However, her data is locked up somewhere else. She can no longer get to it.

There is also a movement called the IndieWeb. The basic concept is that you write a text post, post a picture, post video or some other type of data and then it is connected to whichever other destinations that you want it posted. For example, you could take a picture and post that picture to Instagram, Facebook. This means that even if one of those sites goes away, you still have your picture. Think about how many pictures exist on Facebook only. Maybe that’s fine. But it should be a choice. Here the idea is that you own the data, you post the original and “copies” are distributed around to other sites.

Now the same thing really can be done right now. One can set up a web site, purchase a domain name, install a couple of plug-ins and away you go. This is what I’ve chosen to do via this site. However, it does take some work. Not everyone is going to do that.

It is far easier to sign up for a service like any of those above. Next, hope that there are people there (and especially the right people). Be thoughtful though.

Professionally

This is why I’ve started and use this site. This is one reason that I’m a big believer in Moodle. With this site, I’ve also installed Moodle. I own the data. I can use it however that I want. I’m not dependent upon others. That also means that I need to maintain the site. *It’s really not that hard to maintain.

No matter what you choose, at least make the choice thoughtfully. Do you want to own the data? Do you care if the data goes away? Just how important is the data?

Cheers.

I’m currently enjoying the Traverse City Film Festival. One of the movies that I chose was The Internet’s Own Boy:The Story of Aaron Schwartz. See below for a movie recap and my thoughts.

Movie Recap

For those of you who are familiar with the story, Aaron was a gifted child who learned to program. At the age of 14, he helped write the standard of RSS (RSS is a fundamental standard for the web, even though most people don’t know what it is, they use it). Note that he was involved in writing the standard. These are the guiding principles of RSS. This is one example of the deep thoughts that he had, and communicated.

He was also one of the founders of Reddit. When Reddit was bought out, Aaron made a good bit of money. However, he really didn’t fit in with corporate culture (he complained that he wanted to work) and famously got himself fired. He didn’t fit in within the Silicon Valley culture. He felt that people said that they wanted to change the world and make things better, but didn’t do anything tangible to make that happen. He left Silicon Valley and went back to New York. He became more and more interested in social activism.

One of his fundamental beliefs was that the information should be free. He, along with some others but posted under his name, wrote the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. This talks about how information is power and that power should not be “locked up” and held by the few.

Fast forward. Aaron works with group that is “recycling” court documents that people pay to access. The government has set up PACER which is supposed to provide the citizenry with access to official court records. However, they charge for that access. The group, and Aaron, felt that access to the law should be a fundamental right for all. That it shouldn’t be restricted to just those who can afford to pay for it. This was a major theme for Aaron. Information should be free.

Aaron ended up downloading Gigabytes of information from JSTOR through a laptop placed at MIT. The Federal government charged Aaron with several felonies. Since Aaron wanted to work in Congress or the White House, he had grown to understand where he could make true changes, and knew that a felony would mean that he couldn’t do that, he fought the charges.

The fight went on for a couple of years. JSTOR issued a notice saying that they were not interested in pursuing charges. MIT refused to publicly support dropping the charges. Still the Federal government pursued the charges. In fact, they added more felony charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. The only thing that the government told Aaron’s dad is that they wanted to make Aaron an “example”. What was never clear was the example of what.

During the time of the prosecution, Aaron was also fighting for social justice. He was one of the largest voices and organizers of the movement to stop SOPA. When SOPA was first proposed, it looked like a slam dunk. That Aaron and others were able to effectively organize and defeat SOPA was a key to showing Aaron how influential and effective social organizing could be.

Aaron ended up committing suicide.

My Take

One of the things that struck me the most is how much things have changed and how unsettled those changes are for us as a society. Aaron seemed to be caught up in that. He wanted to make changes. He saw things a little differently He fought for knowledge to be free. Fought is the operative word here. There are many who are invested in the way things are (or used to be). Aaron saw that things could be different and worked to make changes.

Another theme was the lack of Congressional understanding. Congress started investing the issue after the public outcry. On of the lines repeated in the movie is “Bring in the nerds” from several Congressmen. The message was simple. The members of Congress were saying “we don’t understand this” and need someone to explain the issues to us. (Congress used to have an Office of Technology Assessment that any member could go to for help understanding these issues, but Newt Gingrich disbanded that group in 1995). Thus, we’ve ended up with Congress making laws for things that they clearly don’t understand. Not only do they not understand, but seem comfortable in in acknowledging that they don’t know (hence the jokes about “bringing in the nerds”). Add in the idea that the Federal prosecutor was using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. This law has changed very little since 1986. Aaron was charged with “recklessly damaging a protected computer” among other things. The law makes no distinction between what happens with the information. Did it make a difference if he was going to use the information to learn something versus making the information free to anyone versus selling the information? (Interestingly, Aaron had downloaded a large amount of information in the past and used the information to analyze what was going on. He did not make the information public).

Public education is in a similar position as Congress. Things have changed. The world has changed. It is time for us to evaluate where we are, what we need to differently, what changes that we need to make. We won’t get it perfect, but we need to continue the dialogue.

I’m back from ISTE (obviously) and been pretty busy. There have been lots of things going on that have gotten in the way with keeping up the site.

On a personal level, I’ve been dealing with parents that are getting older and in need of some additional attention. I think that we’ve got that worked out now.

I’m doing some consultant work which has taken a good bit of attention. It’s a lot of work, but very worthwhile. I’ll post more about that in the future.

On the professional front, this has also been a big summer. My district has passed a bond which will allow us to better serve the students, teachers, administrators and community. However, this also comes with a ton of effort by my team. We’re working on putting things in place so that the school year can start smoothly.

That being said, I should be catching back up on things shortly.

   I’ve landed at ISTE 2014. For anyone who has never attended, this is an overwhelming conference. There are thousands of people in attendance. The conference is always in a very large city with a massive conference center. This year, Atlanta, Georgia is the spot. The Conference Center has several buildings. The conference begins on Friday and runs until Tuesday.

The start of the conference is the overview of the schedule. This is done using the Conference App. The app itself is very overwhelming. The central issue for me is which sessions can I attend.

• When are these sessions?
• Are sessions offered more than once?
• What is the session about? There are lots of overlapping sessions. There are also lots of extra pay sessions. I have mixed feelings about extra pay sessions. On one hand, I certainly understand individuals being compensated or their expertise, time, and efforts. ISTE wisely has mostly segregated these sessions to the morning of Saturday. I like that. However, notice it is “mostly”. I do wish that the paid sessions were a little more, shall I say, affordable. Lots of the sessions are in the $100-200 range for a half day session. The real truth is, that I feel that many of these sessions are things that you could fairly easily learn on your own. There is some advantage to streamlining these topics, but $100 seems pricy to accomplish that. For example, there is a session that called “Streamline your daily tasks using Google tools and scripting”. The description is: “Discover how to make everyday processes more efficient using new tools and scripts.” This session is $109-$119. The description really isn’t enough for me to make a $100 commitment. However, I may be in the minority (this session sold out). This is not to disparage this session, by the way. This is just my view.

I spent several hours going through sessions so far. I still don’t have a discrete schedule (lots of choices, with many overlapping). This is one thing that I don’t like. Sessions may run from 8:00-10:00am. Other sessions run from 8:30-9:30. Others, 8:30-11:00. I prefer straight forward, simply organized blocks of time. You know 8:00-9:00, 9:00-10:00 OR 8:00-10:00. That way, if I attend a two hour session, I know that it replaces two one hour sessions.

I can imagine that traffic flow is an issue with a conference this large though. Again, this is a huge conference with tons of things going on.

I’ve been reading about “flipped” this and that lately. Now, I love buzz words as much as anyone. But why is everything flipped these days? I’ve just finished reading another article about flipped staff meetings. The idea behind these flipped staff meetings is that the mundane informational items are communicated via email or newsletter instead of being shared at the staff meeting. In other words, let people read what they can read and spend staff meeting time with teachers sharing best practices ideas and concepts. How is this a flipped anything? Granted it is a good idea, but flipped?

I was last a building principal over three years ago now. All of our meetings were run with teachers leading the way. We focused on school improvement ideas. We shared best practice strategies. We modeled lessons that were actually used in classrooms. We met in groups to discuss teaching strategies, students, curriculum, etc. We didn’t call it flipped. It was just good practice. I put out a weekly newsletter to share information (with a cute name, of course).

Flipped seems to be the most current fashionable jargon word available. I’ve heard just about everything referred to as flipped. So much so, that flipped has lost almost all meaning to me. There could be a good debate over whether or not the flipped classroom is actually effective or not. To do so, we’d first have to agree on the definition of flipped.

Now, I agree that not everyone is at the same juncture of their journey in educational practice. I’m sure that there are many concepts and ideas that I’m behind in understanding and applying. But can we at least stop glomming unto a name and applying it to everything?

The last couple of weeks have extremely busy. Like most educators. However, I was also lucky enough to spend a great deal of that time in schools. Specifically, I spent time in classrooms and media centers (libraries). I miss watching kids learn. I miss the ”light bulb” moments. It was great fun to see that again.

I also spent a little bit of time teaching classes. Not the full on, teacher lessons, teaching all day, but at least I was able to do some real instruction. The topics were things that I was pretty comfortable with and have taught before. Mostly, I was teaching about technology, how to navigate through a web page, etc. (On a side note, it is amazing how many educators don’t really know how to use a browser. Things like bookmarking, Back navigation, etc are a strange concept to some.)

One of my favorite moments was in an elementary school. A teacher was running late. I was in a classroom to help with a Promethean Board issue. The teacher I was helping started collecting the students from across the hall. The room quickly filled and there were more students yet to arrive. I told the teacher that I would take the other class back to their room and get them going. The incredulous look was priceless. “Are you sure?”

I assured the teacher that I would be fine. I had a great time with the first graders. The teacher arrived a bit after we started things out.

I was once again reminded how different things are when you work year round. You lose a bit of the ebb and flow of the year. Since there is no “break” to look forward to, no real new beginnings or endings, the ebb and flow become much closer to a monotonous drone.

These really are exciting times that we are living in. Never before has it been possible to reach so many students in so many ways. As humans, we are very visually oriented. We respond to what we see. We make sense of the world by looking around, making judgements, decisions, based on that information that we perceive.

This is one reason that many classrooms have been so teacher driven. Teachers can provide a focal point. A good teacher directs the attention of the students when and where it is needed. Teachers used the tools at hand to do just that. A blackboard allows for all students to see the same thing at the same time. This eventually morphed into the overhead projector. This allowed the teacher to focus the attention of the students while maintaining eye contact. The teacher was able to direct the learning and evaluate as the lesson was under way. What a powerful concept. However, that doesn’t scale well. It lead to teaching to the middle.

Carol Tomlinson and others made a push for differentiated instruction. Who could argue with that? Well, at least until it came time to actual differentiate instruction. Turns out that creating multiple pathways for students can take a time. A lot of time. A really, really lot of time. That wasn’t time invested, it was time spent. Teachers who do a really excellent job of differentiating instruction (and there are some out there), tend to put in a lot of time. Now, most teachers put in a lot of time. I’m talking about 6:00am-8:00pm at school kind of time. It just isn’t a model that seems to be able to be spread far and wide successfully. Yet, I’m excited about Blended Learning and the ability to differentiate instruction. Why?

Blended Learning allows teachers to leverage work. It still means a lot of work. However, it is work that is invested. Not just in the kids in front of the teachers right then, but invested into the future as well. Blended Learning allows teachers to reuse, remix, share, steal, borrow, leverage, etc, the work of creating resources. This work isn’t just for that one class (or one student), but becomes a resource for future classes and students as well.

Blended Learning classrooms now allow teachers to use video easily. This feeds the visual needs of students. The students who need to see the presentation again, can do so. It has never been as easy as it is right now to create video recording that are available for students. And it will only get easier. This allows teachers to create those resources and provide them to the students. This has been a generating force for “flipped classrooms”. But it really goes beyond that. Visually, we can now easily video conference (and this will get even easier). That means that we can take students to places that we never could before. They can see what a place looks like. They can talk to students from other places with the full visual queues that humans instinctively rely on. It also means that we can use video that others have created.

Blended Learning classrooms can do so much more than that. But that focus alone is super powerful. Creating visually intensive opportunities for kids. Grabbing the attention of a student. Focusing their attention in a biologically supported way. All these are powerful options.

Yes, we are on the precipice of fundamental change. These are exciting times. There will be some struggles as we move forward. But just think about what we can do.