Pages, Pedagogy & Practice…

    1. Select one (or both!) of the short videos linked below to watch:
    2. As you reflect on your chosen video, consider our readings, discussions, questions, efforts and experiences with your students. Then, take a moment to:
        • considerreply to the questions in each set below
        • comment on at least 3 posts from others (add a connection, idea, resource, pose a related question, etc.).

 

💭💡 Thinking Outloud 💡💭

Reflect:

      1. What small shifts are you making in your day-to-day practice to encourage and develop students’ roles, thinking abilities and capacity to ask their own questions? Why this/these shifts?
      2. What small shift(s) does this demand of your students day-to-day practice
      3. What are you noticing in your students, as a result of these efforts/shifts?  What have you seen that makes you say this?
      4. What have you noticed about the learning conversations taking place in your classroom?  What have you heard that makes you say this?

Tell me and I forget.

Teach me and I remember.

Involve me and I learn.

Question to Learn… Why Bother?

Please pick one (or more?) of the following articles to read & consider:

As you read, jot down the questions that surface in your thinking.

When you’re done, please add your questions to the board below (be sure to post each question, individually).  We will use your questions to drive our opening work!

Made with Padlet

Access this Padlet online

Today & Tomorrow

What part of the day had the greatest impact on your thinking about assessment?  Why?

How will this effect your approach to assessment tomorrow?

 

Establishing Roots

 

Empowered – Inspired – Nurtured – Respected – Challenged

What role do each of these play in developing a balanced sense of self?

pc: morgan david de lossy

Hack Assessment: Connecting Practice with Purpose

 

Image by Annie Spratt 

Visualize a student you know – a child, relative, family friend, or student.  And picture her as an adult in the world where only the most gifted and passionate have successful careers.  The rest cobble together a living through part-time gigs. Struggle to pay bills. Hold off on having a family because of financial worries.  Never build savings.  Can’t retire at age sixty-five.

Now imagine this student with her own support team – resources that make her more productive than any adult was in 1980. With the productivity advantage, imagine what she can do – start a nonprofit, invent new products, discover cures, create dazzling art, contribute to her community or employer in a myriad of ways.

Today, motivated students can become experts in days, not weeks or years.  They can ask questions to people all over the world and get answers in minutes.  They can ask ‘dumb’ questions without risk of embarrassment.  So what kind of classroom experience will be important to kids with this powerful support team? Sitting passively in a chair listening to someone lecture about content? Memorizing math formulas and science definitions? Memorizing names and dates of historical events? Worrying about the placement of accent marks when writing in a foreign language?  These century-old classroom tasks are obsolete, and – other than inertia – there’s no reason for students to drill endlessly on things when, in the very best case, they’ll be “almost as good as a smartphone”.

While innovation poses challenges, it creates breathtaking opportunities.  Our education system needs to help kids accelerate their potential in the innovation era, not hold them back. With well-designed pedagogy, we can empower kids with critical skills and help them turn passions in to decisive life advantages. The role of education is no longer to teach content, but to help our children learn – in a world that rewards the innovative and punishes the formulaic.”  Wagner, T., & Dintersmith, T. (2015). Most Likely to Succeed. New York, NY: Scribner.

Traditional assessments might be an acceptable form of evaluation for more traditional tasks, such as memorization and comprehension, but they are decidedly less so for the powerful learning opportunities suggested by Wagner & Dintersmith.  In the past, when and if assessment of application was done, it was most often project-based and all students were doing the same thing, or a one-off version of the same project.

Consider the story of the boys creating a new bike track, the NWEA story, the stop-motion video, or a different example from your own practice, as you grapple with and respond to the following questions:

  1. How will assessments have to change if the process is given the same value as the product?
  2. How will assessment have to change if students are doing different things, if the problem/challenge/project is truly unique or if students are digging into a new area of learning, exploration or discovery?

The “Why?” And “What If..?” of Tomorrow

cross posted at https://balancedtech.wikispaces.com

Two questions for today that inform tomorrow: “Why?” And “What If…?”

Jeff Utecht recently published his thoughts around ideas we’ve been playing with since the inception of organized education:  Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking.  In his post, Jeff revisits the 4 C’s based upon significant changes in our world.  The underpinnings of each are defined the same way, but how these underpinnings are applied to our global learning community is critically different.  Jeff took these pieces from a conceptual framework to a living, breathing manifesto of practice.  This manifesto creates an undeniable sense of urgency to understand how to actualize these principles in everyday practices of teaching and learning.

ask-questions-interstate-sign-hi-278x300

Considering the 4 C’s,  please share one professional practice in which you engage that mirrors the efforts and mindset that Jeff describes.

    Why do you do this?  (Why bother?)

 Which one of the practices described inspires you?  Which might inspire your learners?

     What if…you implemented this in your professional practice?

                 The Four C’s of Learning via Jeff Utecht

 

image credit: www.spiritualmediablog.com

Then & Now: Shaping the Start of the Year

At the close of a school year, we are often asked to consider our individual learning journeys and construct words of wisdom for folks following in our footsteps.  The responses below offer insight gleaned from a team of teachers we had the privilege of learning with over the past year:

If I Knew Then What I Know Now…

Letting go of control is hard but giving kids ownership over their learning makes it worthwhile.”

“There is tremendous value in the process!”photos-7398484@N02-potter

This is not too complicated for students or teachers. This process allows you to see your classroom instruction and your students in a new and developing way. Be open to it!

Consider skills students will use in this process and create opportunities for students to practice these skills in everyday learning. Practice will build their confidence and fluency!

It won’t be perfect. Give yourself time to figure it out. You are learning with the students!

“Let the students guide the research, even if you are not sure their ideas will work.

“It’s okay to FAIL (teachers & students), as long as you are sure to regroup and reroute!”

As you reflect on your own learning experience and efforts, consider the impact they have had on your everyday practice.  In what way(s) have you & your students started this year differently?

image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/7398484@N02/

Considering the Diagonals… (pt 2)

In our previous post, Doing More or Doing Some Things Differently, we considered the shifts in our professional learning and practice, and the implications each had on the learning practice of our students.  More specifically, what were we doing more of and doing differently as teachers?   And what were our students doing more of and doing differently, as learners?

Doing More:

for additional resources, please visit BalancEdTech.wikispaces.com
for additional resources & information, please visit… BalancEdTech.wikispaces.com

– What are you doing more of?
– What are your students doing more of?
– To what benefit?
– At what cost?

Doing Some Things Differently:
– What are you doing differently?
– What are your students doing differently?
– To what benefit?
– At what cost?

As we considered our responses and dug further beneath each implication, we wondered about the relationships between them.  What connections surface when we consider the diagonals of our efforts?