Assessments in the 21st Century

We should take a good hard look at what and how we are assessing our kids. Over the past few years, we’ve done a great job of changing HOW we teach. We like to see more project based teaching. We encourage teachers to target higher order thinking by designing assessments in which students create a product. We’ve moved away from low level- “worksheet today and quiz on Friday” mentalities. That is a GOOD thing! There is no doubt about that! However, our current assessment strategies do not match these pedagogical best practices. Why on earth would we create higher order thinking lessons then ultimately judge our students based on how well they can choose between A, B, C or D?

Watch Diana Laufenberg from 3:30 - 6:40 as sh talks about this issue.

Instead, we should look to a “portfolio” style assessment. This can be on a small scale (a student keeps track of projects and products to present a portfolio at the end of a class) or on a large scale (a student keeps track of major projects and products throughout grades 9-12). At the end of each level, be it grade level or high school in general, a student can give a presentation/ overview or the portfolio. This model is already widely accepted in arts and I think it would be a great solution to the assessment mismatch we face today!

The Space of Creativity

The technology-infused classroom looks much different than a traditional classroom. I heard a Keynote the other day where the speaker was talking about “the space of creativity.” He had some interesting research. With everyone ones permission, he watch hours upon hours of “big brother” video footage at a scientific research facility. He wanted to know where, in what spaces, do these major scientific breakthroughs take place. Do researchers experience a great revelation while standing over the microscope? Do great ideas come while researchers pour over thick stacks of documents? Or, do they come in comfortable seating area with padded chairs and a small table, where creative minds can speak freely, in conversations with other creative minds, like a coffee house for example. It turns out, this is the kind of space where we see the greatest innovation (source)! But how does this “coffee house” design compare to our classrooms? Can we teach in a room that looks like a coffee house? More importantly, can students learn in this environment? I say YES! However, the role of the teacher will change. We will have to find a balance between “aimless chatter in the coffee house” and something that may seem like aimless chatter but may (at some point) give birth to a marvelous idea! Here are a few photos of typical office space at Lego and Google.

We plan for this with training and restructuring. It’s going to be a long road! But we need to keep an open mind, train our staffs and restructure our systems. We need to recruit these creative minds in to the education business. We need to learn from industry .These innovations can not only produce better competition for the global economy, but also bring innovative ideas back to education. This 5 minute video shows how innovation in these creative spaces can quickly lead to advances in educational technology.

Innovation Overload _ GCU Blog 2

How can visual literacy and the use of the Internet impact the teaching and learning process in the classroom? What are some visual-thinking strategies you would like to use in your classroom? What role do you want the Internet play in your classroom?

I could answer this, but Chris Anderson says it much better in this TED talk. If you want to read my blog, I’ll be honored! However, I will not be offended if you stop reading now and listen to what Mr. Anderson has to say.

Im sure there could be master’s level courses on this topic, if not entire master’s programs. There are an infinite number of great ways to use visuals and the internet to improve teaching and learning. Consider the relatively new presentation tool, Prezi.com. Prezi gives us something PowerPoint, Keynote and even Google Presentations never could, an infinite large canvas. This becomes very interesting in terms of how we can arrange information for visual learners. We can use the canvas, not only to include information we want, but also to give spatial arrangement to show relationships, like we would in a graphic organizer. And because prezi is online, we can collaborate with it. Simply clicking a button will allow collaborators from anywhere in the world work together as if they are side by side.

Collaboration brings be to my second point, the role of the internet in today’s class room is to bring people together. I’ve said for a long time now, the world is getting smaller! Imagine trying to collaborate like the example above without the internet… We can understand now why tools like prezi, youtube and all of the Google products are so exciting for passionate educators. Before the modern internet, collaboration and innovation at this level was simply not possible.

Photo is creative commons:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/klearchos/3627086772/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Pedagogical Techniques for Best Technology Integration

If I've learned anything this week, it's that teachers should know and be comfortable with a mixed bag of instructional strategies! I've enjoyed reading the forums this week. Many of us, myself included, thought there would be no way we would ever defend 20th century teaching styles such as lecture. But when we were asked to think critically about it's place in modern teaching and it's ability to integrate technology, a lot of us came away with a fairly open mind. Not that our beliefs were totally changed, I still do not accept these as best practices in general, but they certainly have their place still today. And, many unpopular teaching strategies still lend well to technology integration. So it's important to consider many elements including audience, content and resources, to name a few, when deciding which strategy is best.

Technology integration may also depend on what teaching strategy is being implemented. Of course some technologies work best with certain strategies, which brings us to another good point about mixing up our teaching strategies. If we want to incorporate different technologies, then we need to be skilled in different pedagogical techniques. In general, I would suggest we plan in this order.
What do I want students to learn?
What 21st century skills can be fostered with this content?
What pedagogical techniques will best meet these needs?
What technology will enhance learning?

You will love this TED talk on student collaboration
and 21st century skills!

Photos: CreativeCommons
http://www.flickr.com/photos/xdxd_vs_xdxd/6223101383/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/northcharleston/5559248656/

Thoughts on how learning is changing in the digital age.

The question has been asked: How is learning changing in the digital age? Here are my thoughts from the discussion forum.

"I’ll talk about one of the most obvious ways the 21^st century is changing education. The world is more connected now than ever. We as teachers need to believe this and plan our instruction as if our kids, even here in little ol’ Huntington, WV, are competing for jobs against young men and women in China, India and around the world. I like to show this video. It points out some interesting truths about how the earth is getting smaller, much small. Many of the today's most in-demand jobs did not exist only a few short years ago. And technology is in no way showing signs of slowing. So, lets face it, the content we teach will not likely be relevant to our students’ careers.

If students’ will be working in fields that do not yet exist, what should we be teaching? I believe the best way to approach this problem is to teach 21^st century skills. For example, let's say we are teaching biology and the assignment is to work with a partner to choose a disease, research it using the web and printed resources, then create a presentation to inform the public on the disease. The presentation could be a printed brochure, digital presentation such as a prezi or keynote, a PSA or even a music video. In this scenario, the teacher may be going a great job of covering content standards. But what is much more important in terms of 21^st century skills is the lesson they will learn while working with a partner, building communication and collaboration skills, problem solving and reasoning skills and skills in digital literacy as they create their presentations."

It seems like for the longest time, education did not change at all. The smartest thing a teacher could do is laminate their lesson plans. But now, education is changing more rapidly than we can keep up. And that leads to another problem. How can we stay current with technologies and still be effective teachers? One suggestion is to invest heavily in infrastructure and training staff. I love iPads, netbooks and flip cameras as much as the next teacher, but what good are they if our system runs out of IP address or bandwidth to run them? Teachers also need full time, building level, technology specialists / trainers. I'm not talking about tech support. (We need them too) I mean licensed and certified teachers who have technology and pedagogical experience and can train teachers in best practices and co-teach technology lessons. Im starting to see a few one-day trainings spring up in my area for an iPad. I have to say, that makes me crazy. How can we learn how to effectively and meaningfully integration this kind of technology in 6 hours? What I see happening a lot is the technology is loaded with angry birds and facebook and students never benefit from it. On the other hand, if we invest in building level trainers, then teachers can enjoy technology rich lessons with the confidence of having specially trained teachers at their side.

Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/neodelphi/2045989901/sizes/s/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinkaspar/4566836176/sizes/s/in/photostream/