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Posts Tagged ‘assessment’

Unconferencing at the BCSSA

Posted in Change, Professional Development, Technology, tagged , , , , on November 18, 2010| 15 Comments »

One notion that stuck with me this morning from Valerie Hannon, a keynote speaker at the BCSSA Fall Conference, was  that education requires disruptive innovation in order to prevent an “institutional bypass.” In another post I will share some of the key points from Valerie and other speakers today, but I want to focus on the conference going on behind the conference and how many of us have bypassed the traditional structure, through disruptive innovation to make meaning at the event.

As I write this post at the end of the first day of the BCSSA Fall Conference, ninety-three different people have tagged posts on Twitter #bcssa10 and tagged close to 1,000 tweets.  At different points today the conference has been a trending topic both in Vancouver and across Canada.  There were more people using Twitter to talk about the future of teaching and learning than to discuss the Canucks or the weather. 

I believe one year ago at this conference there were three  people sharing information on Twitter.  The ninety-three tweeters today included participants in the room, and those who engaged in the conference from many sites around the province and beyond.

In addition to the dialogue on Twitter, there was  a second back-channel conversation happening on TodaysMeet (a great tool for in-class online conversations – no account required).  Several dozen more people used this tool to extend the presentations.

While the conference has looked very similar to the conferences I have become accustomed to since I first attended this event about a decade ago, I think we have found a way, using Valerie Hannon’s notion, to bypass the traditional conference structure.  The presentations were largely stand-and-deliver lectures, but those of us who learn by engaging with others had an amazingly rich un-conference experience. 

Thinking about the change in just one year with how we engage in professional learning, I wonder what these type of events will look like over the next few years.

Some other wins with the un-conferencing:

  • We have exposed dozens of educators in a variety of roles to the power of Twitter as a professional tool
  • We have been able to share our learning with colleagues in our districts who were not able to join us
  • We have collaboratively compiled notes to use after the conference
  • We have modelled cross-role and cross-district learning

We often talk about the need to “go where the kids are”.  Our efforts in engaging in social media to support our learning, is part of this journey.

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Seth Godin, the Two Percent and Education

Posted in Change, SD45, Technology, tagged , , , , , on November 10, 2010| 12 Comments »

I love how Seth Godin uses his blog to succinctly articulate ideas with a straight forward, common sense approach.  Seth, is an author and public speaker and I find a number of his posts have ramifications for education – something I thought when reading his recent post Alienating the 2%.

I find we often spend hours thinking about, worrying about, and strategizing over, the group Seth refers to as the two percent:

If you have fans or followers or customers, no matter what you do, you’ll annoy or disappoint two percent of them. And you’ll probably hear a lot more from the unhappy 2% than from the delighted 98.

I am not giving away any trade secrets when I suggest that as we propose innovations, we often have the faces of particular students, educators or parents in mind – wondering how they will respond, knowing that they often relish their role in Seth’s 2%.

Here are just three of the issues in education (as well as in the West Vancouver context) that seem to fall into the two percent challenge:

More Feedback, Less Marks – We have had almost universal appreciation for how teachers and schools are embracing the use of feedback through formative assessment, and in turn, results are improving.  We have heard the concern that this approach to assessment has the greatest benefit for weaker students, thus shrinking the gap on the spectrum between those at the top and those at the bottom.  This is great – except if you are at the top – the old way was working great for you and this new way, while it still works well for you, has just increased your competition for university.

Wireless Technology – On one level, it is a trust-in-government issue (can we really trust Health Canada’s statements on safety), and there is also some pushback around whether these “gadgets” are really necessary.  We can lose sight on the conversation about what we are trying to do – provide access to information and collaboration through web-based, secured learning environments; provide assisting technologies to enable students with special needs to work with their classmates; connect with classrooms in other communities, provinces and countries, as well as to utilize digital texts, and extending learning beyond the traditional bell-to-bell of school.

Embrace First Nations Education – West Vancouver has very few First Nations’ students.  As of the September count, we had about 30 students who self-declared out of our 7,000 student population.  We are making a concerted effort to work with our local Squamish Nation, to better support our First Nations’ students, and also improve the understanding of all of our students about the Squamish Nation.  For some, this is an add-on, or an initiative that is only about a small number of students – most of us see it very differently.

Back to Seth:

It seems as though there are only two ways to deal with this: Stop innovating, just stagnate. Or go ahead and delight the vast majority.

Sure, you can try to minimize the cost of change, and you might even get the number to 1%. But if you try to delight everyone, all the time, you’ll just make yourself crazy. Or become boring.

I am committed to not being boring, or having West Vancouver become stagnate.  Whether it is continuing to embrace formative assessment, supporting wireless technology to transform learning, or more involvement with our local First Nations, for starters, we need to keep the 98% in the foreground.

The easiest thing to do in education is nothing.  There is something sadly reassuring about our children’s education looking like our  K-12 education experience – I heard once that the best advice to a vice-principal who wanted to become principal was to make sure nothing changed because nobody would complain, and in-turn, everyone would say you are doing a good job.

We have to be better than that.

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What We Assess and What We Value

Posted in Assessment, SD45, tagged , , , , , on September 30, 2010| 1 Comment »

If you want to open up a contentious conversation with any group of teachers, or the public at large, engage people in the topic of whether late work, or plagiarized work should factor into a high school student’s mark.

Since the start of the school year both Ontario and Saskatchewan have waded into this debate.  Earlier this week the focus was on Saskatoon:

Saskatoon’s public high school students will no longer be penalized for plagiarism or for turning in assignments late under a new evaluation method for report cards.

Last month, the focus was on Ontario, which had been seen on the leading-edge of separating assessment from work habits, and made the following adjustment:

New guidelines from the Ontario Ministry of Education will allow secondary school teachers to give students a grade of zero if they fail to hand in assignments on time — something teachers have been discouraged from doing in the past.

Regardless of which direction jurisdictions follow in the debate, the discussion is very entrenched.  On the one side, there are those who point to the need to separate students performance related to a set of outcomes from their behaviours (including whether assignments are in on time or whether they copied some of the work).  On the other side, are those looking for students to be real-world ready, where there are deadlines and consequences.

We do often equate the information we use to determine grades as being synonymous for what we value.  If we don’t include behaviours like participation, timeliness of work, or academic honesty, how do we show they are important?

There are a number of leaders in this field.   Ken O’Connor is a regular presenter in many British Columbia districts and says:

I continue to support the idea of not giving zeros, late penalty mark exclusion, and failing to provide extra credit opportunities that count for grades because they are educationally undesirable practices.

O’Connor, along with Damion Cooper (another sought after presenter in B.C.), are co-authors of the Communicating Student Learning – Guidelines for Schools in Manitoba.  It is interesting to see that in line with the Ontario discussion, some of the same discussions are happening in Manitoba.

Student understanding of the importance of deadlines, guidelines giving proper credit when others’ work is shared, amongst a host of other work-ethic habits, are very important.  As a parent, I want feedback not only on my children’s progress in relation to the outcomes of any given course, but their growth in a host of very important behaviours, as well.

I just don’t want the two mixed up, so that I can’t understand where the assessment of learning ends, and where their development of work habits begin.

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One School at a Time

Posted in SD45, tagged , , , , , on September 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It is very exciting to see how different schools in West Vancouver are working to answer the question of how we prepare our students for the future.   Whether it is called personalized learning, 21st century learning, or self-directed learning, there are some common themes emerging in both our elementary and secondary schools.

Gleneagles Elementary School, Principal Lynne Tomlinson, shared with me a presentation she gave at the school’s recent Curriculum Night. With the assistance of Head Teacher Chris Parslow, who is a key leader with the technology, they shared a learning vision for students in the school rooted in the very best current thinking around teaching and learning.

While sharing a slide deck never really does justice to any presentation, here is the framework shared with parents this past week at Gleneagles:

Unfortunately, some people get so excited about the possibilities of technology, that learning does not stay in the forefront of the change.  Gleneagles has it right – technology is not the story here, but it will help support the changes to prepare our students for the future.

It will be exciting to follow their journey!

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