What you teach should either have relevance in your students lives, either now or in their future, or it should be engaging. If neither of those is true, don’t teach it.
Author: David Wees (page 56 of 97)
The orange circle represents the leader of the school, the lines between the circles represent the relationships between people. Which school would you rather work in?
or
Which school do you think functions better when the leader is away?
I was talking to Diane Laufenberg this afternoon, and we got on the subject of wasted money being spent in society. I had the idea that we should start a new meme. Basically, you take a public project, like this monstrous mistake for example, and equate the cost of the project to how many teachers could be hired for a year for the same amount of money.
We’ll assume that teachers make $100,000 per year including all benefits. It’s a generous salary, but really not that outrageous overall, and some teachers actually make this much money (although most do not). For example, the completely insane project above would be 5,850 FTE (Full Time Equivalency) since the total cost of that public high school was $585 million dollars. It’s a pretty simple calculation, you just divide the cost of the project by $100,000.
I think a separate hashtag for this would be useful, so I’m choosing #FTEED, which doesn’t look like it is in use by anyone else. Ideally if you can find a picture of the project and post it to somewhere like Flickr, that would be helpful for creating presentations, but even links to stories would be useful. Please try and choose publicly funded projects which are arguably not necessary.
I’m going to start this project off with two tweets, and we’ll see if we can other people involved.
Update: Heidi Hass Gable pointed out that a hole in my logic is that we would be comparing mostly 1 time costs with a continuing cost for the teacher. That’s fine. I’m sure we can find enough wasteful projects to pay for the teachers for more than a year. Certainly when I start making totaling, I’ll factor this issue into the equation.
Thanks to @ChadSansing for sharing this video with us during the National Writing Project Hackjam today.
We need to teach kids to program their lives, instead of being programmed. Watch this video, and you’ll understand what I mean.
Using Mozilla’s Hackasaurus Goggles, I’ve revised Bill Gates tweets so that he is posting the stuff I’d like to see him posting. Read his (edited) tweets carefully…
As part of the National Writing Project Hackjam at SLA today, we were asked to describe what we thought a hacker was. I decided to "hack the activity’ a bit, and I crowd-sourced the project. The above montage is what was created.
It’s not obvious from this picture, but the Science Leadership Academy is not a fancy looking building. It’s also not a very large building, and when I walked inside the building, I didn’t feel like I was in an amazing place. The open learning spaces were an interesting feature, but are certainly not unique to SLA.
The message I got is that a strong school is not about the building, it’s about the people. So before you go and build your fancy building, remember to make sure it contains the supplies you’ll need, and that you support the work people will do in the building.
I’m finally in Philadelphia and able to relax a bit, but the trip to get here was something else.
It start on Friday morning, when I was woken up especially early by an exuberant little boy who wanted to play with his daddy. We played for a bit, and then I got ready for work. Next, I head to work and have two meetings before presenting to my colleagues on 30 tech tools in 30 minutes. We then had our final staff meeting, had lunch, and I finished up some last minute work for the year, and finally I headed home.
Once home, I spent about 4 hours cleaning and packing as we are moving next week. Exhausted, my wife, son and I drove to the airport where we said our good-byes. With my son nearly in tears, I headed off for the obligatory 2 hour transfer from the check-in counter to the gate, through security. At 11pm, the flight took off.
After 3 hours where I sat in a cramped chair and struggled to sleep, I arrived in Chicago. Looking at my itinerary, I realized I had an hour to try and get to the next flight, so I sprinted to customs, and then ran to catch a train to the right terminal, which unfortunately I just missed. I waited around for what felt like 15 minutes, and finally got on a train from terminal 5 allll the way to terminal 1. Arriving in Terminal 1, I found out that I had to go through security again, which took 35 minutes. Not entirely sure of the time, once I left security, I sprinted in my socks to my gate, to see the doors of the departure gate were already closed and no one left to board the plane. Sigh.
I was fortunate to be rerouted to a 7:30am flight, which of course was on the other side of the airport. I took a shuttle bus, racing between moving airplanes and wondering if I could be accidentally squished. I got to the flight, got a chance to sit down, discovered I would have to pay for Wifi so I could update the EdubloggerCon people that I would be unable to present due to the flight delay. Finally, I got to board the flight, about 15 minutes delayed, at which time I was forced to endure another hour delay.
Landing in Philadelphia 2.5 hours later than expected, and disappointed to be missing EdubloggerCon already, I found out that my bag hadn’t arrived in Philadelphia with me. I wandered from Delta to United to US Airways until I found someone helpful who told me that my bag would be on the 1pm plane from Chicago. I gave her the address of my hotel, and took a taxi to #TEDxPhiladelphiaED, stopping to get a hot dog on the way, the only food I’ve had at this stage in the past 15 hours.
So now I’m sitting in the #TEDxPhiladelphia theatre, listening to a wonderful story from Barbara Allen, hungry, a bit smelly, and very, very tired, but also very grateful that I’m finally here for the International Society for Technology in Education conference.
(image credit: dionnehartnett)
One basic assumption we often have about life is that there is only way to get things done. We struggle to see paths other than the one before us. Sometimes we are so blind to the alternate views of reality that we construct arguments against why they are possible, rather than accepting the evidence in front of our eyes.
I recently discovered that there are at least 2 other ways of tying one’s shoes, for example, a fact I did not know for nearly 30 years. I have almost certainly witnessed literally thousands of different people tying their shoes over the years but have never noticed these other methods before now. I only noticed because I’ve been helping my son learn how to tie his own shoes, I’ve been reflecting on how shoes are tied, and then suddenly noticed that there are people who’s shoes are tied using completely different methods than what I’m familiar.
If I can be wrong about something simple like shoes being tied, what else could I be wrong about? Maybe one reason why education reform is such a struggle right now is that the many sides of the debate can only see the direction with which they are familiar? I don’t think that my vision of what education reform should be is wrong, but am I being myopic?
(image credit: bertiemabootoo)
Every path has a fork. Sometimes you can double-back and try a different path, but you are never stuck on the one you’ve chosen. No path is one way. One thing is clear though, it is rare that two forks of a path lead to the same place. Let us remember that while we may not like the path that is being chosen for us in education reform, when the pendulum swings again, we can retrace our steps, and hopefully undo a lot of the damage that is being done.
I’d like to help the people in charge of the reform see that they are on what I think is the wrong path, but I also need to keep my eyes open and look for the evidence they see that convinces them that they are on the right path. Without understanding why they are so sure of their direction, I cannot expect to be able to convince them of the error of their ways. Similarly, I must be open to the possibility that it is me who is on the wrong path.
I don’t think that’s true though. I just think I have a different destination in mind.
When I started working at my current school, I realized that they do something in assessment which is very rare. Our school separates the behaviours and all of the types of things which are part of the process of work from the summative grades which come from the assessments which are the product of work. We end up with an "Approaches to Learning" rubric, which we use to provide feedback to students about the learning habits they’ve developed. Our current rubric has a quality of work column which I think we are planning on deleting for next year, so here is the rubric we will (hopefully) use.
| Quality of effort | Reflection | Remediation | Application to next situation | |
| 7 | An appropriate level of effort was evident throughout the term. Assignments were done on time. Student is an example to the rest of the class. | Student thinks about the tasks and the results. Accepts responsibility for learning, and looks for ways to improve. Always makes corrections. | Student clarified expectations and did follow-up with teacher when needed. If needed, appropriate steps were taken to fix any difficulties. | Is successful in making changes to approaches to learning to ensure ongoing success. Develops a variety of strategies. Seeks to improve and is successful. |
| 6 | An appropriate level of effort was evident, although there was an occasional letup. | Student often reflects on work and quality, and takes responsibility for learning. Usually makes corrections. | Student clarified expectations and did follow-up with teacher when needed. | Makes good effort in improving approaches to learning. |
| 5 | Effort was evident, but not always at the level it needed to be at. Occasionally (but rarely), deadlines were missed. | Student is developing a sense of understanding of the ways he or she learns best, and is making effort to improve learning. | Student readily asks for assistance, in class, but does not make much out of class effort to seek help. | Cares about performance and makes effort, sometimes unsuccessful, to improve work. |
| 4 | Effort level is inconsistent. Student sometimes misses deadlines, but always gets work in eventually. | Student reflection is only evident when teacher prods. When that occurs, student demonstrates awareness of learning issues. Makes corrections only when required. | Student only seeks help when teacher requires it. However, student takes a positive approach. | Occasionally, student makes purposeful changes in approaches to learning. |
| 3 | Student needs constant prodding to get work in, often after the deadline. Most work is handed in. | Student is able, but often unwilling, to be reflective about work. Seldom takes pride in corrections. | Student only seeks help when the teacher requires it, and is not positive about the experience. | Makes limited adjustments to learning, even when faced with poor initial work. |
| 2 | Work is seldom handed in, even after much prodding by teacher. | Student does not seem to be able to reflect on learning. Corrections seldom done, and only when pushed by teacher. | Student resists invitations for extra help. | There is limited attempt to make any adjustments, even when initial work is poorly done. |
| 1 | Work is not handed in. | Student does not seem to be able to reflect on learning. Corrections never done. | Student never seeks extra help, especially when needed. | Student does not learn from mistakes. |
There are some things I like less about this rubric. For example, while I think giving students feedback on their learning habits is useful, I don’t like the number associated with it. The 1 to 7 scale comes from the International Baccalaureate program, and is a mapping from descriptors like "very poor" and "good" to a number system. The temptation to find the average of the numbers from each column in the rubric above is too great, and the result of the average is a too brief summary of the learning habits of students. They often need the whole picture, not the summary.
Somethings I do like about this system a lot is that we often have students self-assess themselves on this rubric, and then we have a conversation about their self-assessment. I also really like that it means that all of those types of assignments which in the past I would have carefully graded and included as part of an average mark for students are now more formative tools. I don’t need to include a student’s marks on quizzes, homework, or small projects in their final grade. I can give them feedback on the assignment, and then keep track of their general learning habits using this rubric. The final summative grade reflects the rigorous assessments of learning I’ve given the students.
In the act of separating the learning habits from the summative grades, we learn a lot about students as well. A student who has strong work habits, but struggles to demonstrate mastery of material is now more obvious, and can receive the support they need. A student who has weak work habits, but is able to produce excellent summative work now gets feedback about their learning processes.
When I assessed students during my time in New York, at our school we were required to give students 20% of their grade for "work habits" (we weren’t allowed to call it participation), 20% for homework, and 60% for the assessments from class (included tests, quizzes, exit slips, whatever). The result was that students with "good" work habits were virtually certain to get a passing grade, even with horrible understanding of the material. The system was designed to pass students along to the next person, rather than verify that they understood what they were learning.
On the summative end of our assessment, for each course we have different criteria we assess. For example, math teacher assess using "Knowledge and Understanding", "Investigating Patterns", "Communication in Mathematics", and "Reflection in Mathematics." To be perfectly honest, it can get complicated for students to understand all of the assessment criteria, given that each is different for each course. In some respect this is similar to what happens when each teacher decides on how they want their work formated, and how it will be graded. However, the advantage of this system is that students get more feedback about what areas they need to improve, rather than just an overall grade. One aspect of this system I really like is that the final grade in each criterion is not an average of the marks the student has received, it is supposed to instead be a snapshot of what we think the kids are capable of doing on a good day, given their previous performance, and we discuss what we mean by snapshot so that there is some consistency across the school.
As much as is possible, I believe we should separate the learning habits students have from their performance on their summative assessments. Giving 0s for missed work, late penalties, etc… all dilute the meaning of a grade so that it doesn’t reflect the learning the student has done. Given that we still work in a system which expects student and teacher accountability through grades, at the very least these grades should have some meaning. A performance grade diluted by aspects of student behaviour just leads to questions like, "What can I do better?" Either it hides poor performance but good work habits, or it hides poor work habits with students who are good at summatize assessments.