w3 - Education
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Week 3 - Discussion
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Your initial discussion thread is due on Day 3 (Thursday) and you have until Day 7 (Monday) to respond to your classmates. Your grade will reflect both the quality of your initial post and the depth of your responses. Refer to the Discussion Forum Grading Rubric under the Settings icon above for guidance on how your discussion will be evaluated.
Creativity and Innovation
Educators strive to create a classroom that instills creativity and innovation. In this discussion, you will think about the creative and innovative instructional approach known as the
flipped classroom (https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/)
while making direct connections to the Common Core State Standards and teacher decision-making based on student assessments. Reflecting on your previous discussion on
CCSS (http://www.corestandards.org/read-the-standards/)
in Week 2, you will complete the three parts of this discussion’s initial post.
There are three parts to this discussion, which are described below.
Part 1
· Discuss how the flipped classroom idea can be used in conjunction with CCSS (Math or English Language Arts)
· Describe ways you could incorporate technology used in the flipped classroom idea to support the
Framework for 21st Century Learning (Links to an external site.)
in the classroom as it relates to decision making based on student assessments.
Part 2
Now, think about assessments you have created or used in the past to address the following:
· Discuss if a school or teacher should use a multimedia resource that is absolutely amazing in delivering both content and assessment but is not accessible.
· Evaluate whether the resource must be excluded from a course if there are no reasonably equivalent accessible alternatives.
Part 3
· Attach a link to your
Folio
.
· In one paragraph, reflect on your experience with the redesign in terms of challenges you encountered during the Week Two Assignment and how you overcame those challenges including any difficulties experienced in revising to meet the components of one
ISTE-S standard (Links to an external site.)
https://www.iste.org/iste-standards and the
CCSS (Links to an external site.)
http://www.corestandards.org/read-the-standards/ (Math or English Language Arts) which are aligned with a minimum of one
core subject and 21st century themes (Links to an external site.)
https://www.battelleforkids.org/networks/p21 and a minimum of one
learning and innovation skill (Links to an external site.)
https://www.battelleforkids.org/networks/p21 one
information, media, and technology skill (Links to an external site.)
https://www.battelleforkids.org/networks/p21 and evidence of at least one
life and career skill (Links to an external site.)
https://www.battelleforkids.org/networks/p21
Guided Response: Respond to at least two peers. Your replies should include a question about the incorporation of CCSS and the Framework for 21st Century Learning in your peers’ posts and should offer an additional resource for consideration that supports an alternative viewpoint. Though two replies is the basic expectation, for deeper engagement and learning, you are encouraged to provide responses to any comments or questions others have given to you, including the instructor. Responding to the replies given to you will further the conversation and provide additional opportunities for you to demonstrate your content expertise, critical thinking, and real world experiences with this topic.
EDU696
Week 3 Instructor Guidance
As you were reminded in Week 2, it is a good idea to look ahead to Week 5 to prepare for the group activity – ask questions now with a quick email to your instructor if you are unclear about any of the requirements for the group activity. In Week 2, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were discussed as well as a summary of your understanding of the foundation of the CCSS in Math and English Language Arts. This week, one discussions and an assignment are required.
Week 3 Intellectual Elaboration
The intellectual elaboration for Week 3 explores 21st Century Learning Skills, the cognitive taxonomy, often referred to as Bloom’s Taxonomy, or the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, and the process for creating high quality assessments.
21st Century Learning Skills
The concept of 21st Century Learning Skills recognizes the need for students to think critically, analyze information, comprehend new ideas, communicate, collaborate, solve problems, and make decisions. In 1956, a group of educational psychologists, headed by Benjamin Bloom, created a system that categorized the level of intellection in assessment questions commonly used in educational settings (Krathwohl 2002; Clark, 1999). Figure 1, below, shows the original taxonomy.
Figure 1. Cognitive Taxonomy ( Bloom, 1994)
· Evaluate is the ability to make judgments about information, provide for validity on ideas or quality of work based on a set of criteria. It is the ability to debate a subject and provide evidence for your answer
· Synthesis is the “…ability to compile information together to form new patterns or proposals to alternative solutions” (Krathwohl, 2002, p. 212).
· Analysis is process of examining and breaking down information into parts to identify motives or causes. To make inferences on and find supporting evidence to support the information.
· Application is “… using new knowledge. Solving problems in a new situation by applying acquired knowledge, facts, techniques and rules in a different way ” (Krathwohl, 2002, p. 212).
· Comprehension is the basic demonstration of understanding of facts and ideas by organizing, comparing and translating the information into the main ideas.
· Knowledge, the lowest on Bloom’s Taxonomy is the recalling of facts, terms, and basic concepts to answer questions.
Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning
The cognitive taxonomy has been used by educators to guide curriculum assessment and development for decades. However, while the levels of thought are still recognized as valid, 21st Century Skills required a revision of Blooms terms and considerations of how technology influences the assessment of the levels. Essentially, the revisions require technology skills to be of use in today’s classrooms (Krathwohl, 2002; Clark, 1999).
Table 1, below, lists the cognitive level and some verbs commonly associated with assessment at each level in the traditional and digital realms. For additional inspiration about designing with the revised taxonomy, see Johnson (2008) or search online where you can find multiple resources for designing and assessing learning in the digital age with the cognitive taxonomy.
Cognitive Level
Traditional Assessment Strategies
Digital Assessment Strategies
Creating
designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising, making
programming, filming, animating, blogging, mixing, wikiing, publishing, podcasting
Evaluating
checking, hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting, judging, testing, detecting, monitoring
reviewing, posting, moderating, collaborating, and networking
Analyzing
comparing, organizing, deconstructing, attributing, outlining, finding, structuring, integrating
mashing, linking, tagging, validating, cracking
Applying
implementing, carrying out, using, executing
running, loading, operating, uploading, sharing, editing
Understanding
interpreting, summarizing, inferring, paraphrasing, classifying, comparing, explaining, exemplifying
advanced searches, Boolean searches, blog journaling, twittering, commenting, annotating, subscribing
Remembering
Recognizing, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming, locating, finding
Bulleting, highlighting, bookmarking, searching, Googling
Table 1. Comparison of Traditional and Digital Assessment Strategies for Cognitive Taxonomy; adapted from Krathwohl (2002) and Clark (1999).
Creating High Quality Assessments
Keeping the Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy restructuring in mind, in regards to 21st Century Skills, one can debate the issue of creating high quality assessments for today’s students. Many states and school districts across the nation are discussing student assessments as they move to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The Standards focus on an increased need for deeper learning and the students’ ability to analyze, synthesize, compare, connect critique, hypothesize, prove, and explain their ideas. Therefore, the question becomes: are assessments still valid measures of student learning when the CCSS promotes a deeper learning of 21st Century skills?
Chapter 5 of Brown and Burnaford (2014) includes several articles on the topic of dynamic curriculum and instruction in the 21st Century. For example in the article by Boss and Krauss (2007) they discuss the need to include project based learning into the classroom to support 21st century learning using real world assessments. Additionally, the Noddings (2013) article discusses the need to create in classrooms the “…concept for guiding a dynamic approach in the 21st century suggests the critical role of creating and making in an environment that fosters problem solving and critical thinking” (p.19).
Week 3 Assessments Overview
Remember to review the full instructions for each assessment on the Week Three homepage in addition to the guidance provided here.
Discussion 1 - Creativity and Innovation
Discussion one ask you to think about the concept of the Flipped Classroom; an instructional approach that brings creativity and innovation to the classroom. A direct connection will be made between the flipped classroom concept, the Common Core State Standards, and teacher decision-making based on student assessments. You also attach a link to your Folio and reflect on your redesign activity from your Week 2 assignment. In this discussion reflect back on the discussion of Common Core State Standards from Week 2, Discussion 1 and how the incorporation of technology was used to enhance
instruction. Think about how the concept of the Flipped Classroom in relationship to the incorporation of technology, assessment and student learning all intertwine to create a learning experience for diverse learners.
Assignment - Learning and Innovation Skills and Student Assessment
This assignment requires you to make connections between high quality assessment with 21st Century Learning and Innovation Skills. Using the Framework for 21st Century Learning as a resource, you will redesign or modify a prior activity from one of your courses in your Master’s program. For this assignment; consider all the discussions you have had to date about differentiated instruction, diversity, assessment/report cards and technology. Consider as well the information presented this week in the instructor guidance about the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning list. You may want to include in your discussion how this revision of Bloom’s affects students’ assessments and learning in the classroom.
References
Bloom, B. S. (1994). Reflections on the development and use of the taxonomy. In Rehage, Kenneth J.; Anderson, Lorin W.; Sosniak, Lauren A. Blooms taxonomy: A forty-year retrospective. Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education, 93(2).
Boss, S. & Krauss, J. (2007). Mapping the journey: Seeing the big picture. In Reinventing project based learning: Your field guide to real-world projects in the digital age. Washington, DC: ISTE.
Brown, T. & Burnaford, G. (2014). Masters in education capstone reader. Bridgepoint Education.
Clark, D. R. (1999).
Blooms taxonomy of learning domains (Links to an external site.)
. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
Gerwetz, C. (June, 2013).
Experts urge states to stay course on high-quality assessments (Links to an external site.)
. Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2013/06/experts_issue_assessment_crite.html
Johnson, L. (2008).
Bloom’s taxonomy: Designing activities tutorial (Links to an external site.)
(Flash File). Retrieved from http://media.ccconline.org/ccco/FacWiki/TeachingResources/Blooms_Taxonomy_Tutorials/BloomsTaxonomy_Activities_Tabs/BloomsTaxonomyActivitiesTabs.swf
Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Blooms taxonomy: An overview. Routledge 41 (4). 212–218.
Noddings, N. (2013). Standardized curriculum and loss of creativity. Theory into Practice, 52(210), 215.
Required Resources
Text
Burnaford, G., & Brown, T. (2014).
Teaching and learning in 21st century learning environments: A reader. Bridgepoint Education.
· Chapter 5: Dynamic Curriculum and Instruction in the 21st Century
Article
Prensky, M. (2001, October). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5). 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120110424816
· Prensky discusses the difference between digital immigrants (those who acquired knowledge about technology) and digital natives (those who grew up with technology). This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week. The full-text version of this article is available through the EBSCOhost database in the University of Arizona Global Campus Library.
Web Pages
Framework for 21st century learning (Links to an external site.)
. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework
· This web page presents an all-inclusive view of 21st-century teaching and learning. It includes a focus on student outcomes and support systems that help students’ master skills they will need in the 21st century. This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week.
Accessibility Statement does not exist.
Privacy Policy does not exist.
Read the standards (Links to an external site.)
. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards
· This web page provides information on how the standards communicate what is expected of students at each grade level. The focus of CCSS is on core conceptual understandings and procedures starting in the early grades, providing teachers a timeline needed to teach core concepts and allowing each student the time needed to master the concepts. This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week.
Accessibility Statement does not exist.
Privacy Policy does not exist.
Website
Folio
. (https://portfolium.com/welcome)
· This website provides a Folio resource. This resource will support student completion of the final project, as well as discussions and assignments throughout the course. Learn more about Folio, University of Arizona Global Campus ePortfolio tool, by viewing the
Folio Quick Start Guide (Links to an external site.)
.
Accessibility Statement (Links to an external site.)
Privacy Policy (Links to an external site.)
Supplemental Material
Brame, C., (2013). Flipping the classroom (Links to an external site.)
. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/
· This resource provides information related to the use of technology in the classroom as well as how the flipped classroom approach takes learning outside of the classroom for students to experience independently, moving homework help back into the classroom. This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week.
Accessibility Statement does not exist.
Privacy Policy does not exist.
Recommended Resources
Text
Bergmann, J., & Sams, A. (2012).
Flip your classroom: Reach every student in every class every day
. International Society for Technology in Education. Retrieved from http://proquest.libguides.com/ebrary
· Bergmann and Sams discuss how students need their teachers present to answer questions or to provide help if they get stuck on an assignment; they don’t need their teachers present to listen to a lecture or review content. This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week.
Articles
Gray, A. (2013). Week four, discussion 1: Data analysis practice scenario
Download Week four, discussion 1: Data analysis practice scenario. [email protected] https://login.uagc.edu
· This document was used to inform your Week 4 Discussion response for those that have completed EDU 671 when practicing data analysis and serves as a reminder to help inform your response to Discussion 2 in Week 3 of this course.
Nelson, M. E., (2012). Review of deconstructing digital natives (Links to an external site.)
[Review of the book, Deconstructing digital natives: Young people, technology, and the new literacies by M. Thomas (Ed.)]. Language, Learning, & Technology, 16(3), 35-39. Retrieved from https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/44296/1/16_03_review1.pdf
· Nelson discusses the ideas behind Prensky (2001) and the flipped classroom. The review discusses the myth, perspectives and beyond digital natives examining the varied interpretations and significance of Prensky’s ideas. Nelson reports research that grounds and tests the digital natives/digital immigrants formulation. This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week.
Web Page
Defining critical thinking (Links to an external site.)
. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/define_critical_thinking.cfm
· On this web page, critical thinking is defined with specific examples. This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week.
Accessibility Statement does not exist.
Privacy Policy does not exist.
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Required Resources
Text
Burnaford, G., & Brown, T. (2014).
Teaching and learning in 21st century learning environments: A reader. Bridgepoint Education.
· Chapter 5: Dynamic Curriculum and Instruction in the 21st Century
Article
Prensky, M. (2001, October). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5). 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120110424816
· Prensky discusses the difference between digital immigrants (those who acquired knowledge about technology) and digital natives (those who grew up with technology). This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week. The full-text version of this article is available through the EBSCOhost database in the University of Arizona Global Campus Library.
Web Pages
Framework for 21st century learning (Links to an external site.)
. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework
· This web page presents an all-inclusive view of 21st-century teaching and learning. It includes a focus on student outcomes and support systems that help students’ master skills they will need in the 21st century. This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week.
Accessibility Statement does not exist.
Privacy Policy does not exist.
Read the standards (Links to an external site.)
. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards
· This web page provides information on how the standards communicate what is expected of students at each grade level. The focus of CCSS is on core conceptual understandings and procedures starting in the early grades, providing teachers a timeline needed to teach core concepts and allowing each student the time needed to master the concepts. This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week.
Accessibility Statement does not exist.
Privacy Policy does not exist.
Website
Folio
. (https://portfolium.com/welcome)
· This website provides a Folio resource. This resource will support student completion of the final project, as well as discussions and assignments throughout the course. Learn more about Folio, University of Arizona Global Campus ePortfolio tool, by viewing the
Folio Quick Start Guide (Links to an external site.)
.
Accessibility Statement (Links to an external site.)
Privacy Policy (Links to an external site.)
Supplemental Material
Brame, C., (2013). Flipping the classroom (Links to an external site.)
. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/
· This resource provides information related to the use of technology in the classroom as well as how the flipped classroom approach takes learning outside of the classroom for students to experience independently, moving homework help back into the classroom. This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week.
Accessibility Statement does not exist.
Privacy Policy does not exist.
Recommended Resources
Text
Bergmann, J., & Sams, A. (2012).
Flip your classroom: Reach every student in every class every day
. International Society for Technology in Education. Retrieved from http://proquest.libguides.com/ebrary
· Bergmann and Sams discuss how students need their teachers present to answer questions or to provide help if they get stuck on an assignment; they don’t need their teachers present to listen to a lecture or review content. This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week.
Articles
Gray, A. (2013). Week four, discussion 1: Data analysis practice scenario
Download Week four, discussion 1: Data analysis practice scenario. [email protected] https://login.uagc.edu
· This document was used to inform your Week 4 Discussion response for those that have completed EDU 671 when practicing data analysis and serves as a reminder to help inform your response to Discussion 2 in Week 3 of this course.
Nelson, M. E., (2012). Review of deconstructing digital natives (Links to an external site.)
[Review of the book, Deconstructing digital natives: Young people, technology, and the new literacies by M. Thomas (Ed.)]. Language, Learning, & Technology, 16(3), 35-39. Retrieved from https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/44296/1/16_03_review1.pdf
· Nelson discusses the ideas behind Prensky (2001) and the flipped classroom. The review discusses the myth, perspectives and beyond digital natives examining the varied interpretations and significance of Prensky’s ideas. Nelson reports research that grounds and tests the digital natives/digital immigrants formulation. This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week.
Web Page
Defining critical thinking (Links to an external site.)
. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/define_critical_thinking.cfm
· On this web page, critical thinking is defined with specific examples. This resource will support student completion of the discussions and assignment for this week.
Accessibility Statement does not exist.
Privacy Policy does not exist.
Go to top of page
Copyright
Gail Burnaford and Tara Brown
Teaching and Learning in 21st Century Learning Environments: A Reader
Editor in Chief, AVP: Steve Wainwright
Sponsoring Editor: Cheryl Cechvala
Development Editor: Cheryl Cechvala
Assistant Editor: Amanda Nixon
Senior Editorial Assistant: Nicole Sanchez-Sullivan
Production Editor: Lauren LePera
Senior Product Manager: Peter Galuardi
Cover Design: Jelena Mirkovic Jankovic
Printing Services: Bordeaux
Production Services: Lachina Publishing Services
ePub Development: Lachina Publishing Services
Permission Editor: Karen Ehrmann
Video Production: Ed Tech Productions
Cover Image: Stockbyte/Jupiterimages/Thinkstock
ISBN-10: 1621781496
ISBN-13: 978-1-62178-149-3
Copyright © 2014 Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
All rights reserved.
GRANT OF PERMISSION TO PRINT: The copyright owner of this material hereby grants the holder of this publication the right to print these materials for personal use. The holder of this material may print the materials herein for personal use only. Any print, reprint, reproduction or distribution of these materials for commercial use without the express written consent of the copyright owner constitutes a violation of the U.S. Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101-810, as amended.
Preface
Teaching and Learning in 21st Century Learning Environments: A Reader prepares readers to enter the field of education ready to address the needs of 21st-century learners. The book is intended to serve as a bridge between coursework that participants have taken, and the ongoing professional development that graduates are encouraged to pursue upon course and program completion.
The text presents excerpts from leading voices in education, providing insight on crucial topics such as differentiation for diverse learners, curriculum and instruction, professional growth and leadership, and skills for digital age learning. The authors integrate theory, research studies, and practical application to provide readers with a set of tools and strategies for continuing to learn and grow in the field of education. Finally, embedded video interviews with practicing educators offer a real-world perspective of important topics.
Textbook Features
Teaching and Learning in 21st Century Learning Environments: A Reader includes a number of features to help students understand key concepts:
Voices From the Field feature boxes: Provide personal stories from educators based on real experiences in the field, giving readers a sense of what it really means to be an educator in the 21st century.
Tying It All Together feature boxes: Provide guidance to assist students in synthesizing the information presented within each chapter.
Videos: Provide real-world perspectives from practicing educators on key topics in 21st-century education.
Critical Thinking and Discussion Questions: Are found at the end of each article. These questions prompt students to critically examine the information presented in each excerpt and draw connections to their own experiences.
Accessible Anywhere. Anytime.
With Constellation, faculty and students have full access to eTextbooks at their fingertips. The eTextbooks are instantly accessible on web, mobile, and tablet.
iPad
To download the Constellation iPad app, go to the App Store on your iPad, search for Constellation for UAGC, and download the free application. You may log in to the iPad application with the same username and password used to access Constellation on the web.
NOTE: You will need iOS version 7.0 or higher.
Android Tablet and Phone
To download the Constellation Android app, go to the Google Play Store on your Android Device, search for Constellation for UAGC, and download the free application. You may log in to the Android application with the same username and password used to access Constellation on the web.
NOTE: You will need a tablet or phone running Android version 2.3 (Gingerbread) or higher.
About the Authors
Gail Burnaford
Gail Burnaford holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Georgia State University, and is currently Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Culture and Educational Inquiry at Florida Atlantic University. Prior to moving to Florida, she directed the Undergraduate Teacher Education and School Partnerships Program at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy.
Dr. Burnaford is the author of four books and numerous articles on topics related to teacher learning, professional development, arts integration and curriculum design. She has served as Principal Investigator on multiple program evaluations focused on arts integration partnerships, including those funded through the U.S. Department of Education’s Professional Development Grants. Dr. Burnaford has acquired eLearning Certification and teaches courses including research in curriculum and instruction, educational policy, documentation and assessment, and curriculum leadership in hybrid, online and face-to-face learning environments. Her current research focuses on faculty’s use of iPads in teaching and the nature/impact of faculty feedback on student work.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the many people who were involved in the development of this text. Special thanks are due to Cheryl Cechvala, sponsoring editor and development editor; Amanda Nixon, assistant editor; Nicole Sanchez-Sullivan, senior editorial assistant; and Lauren LePera, production editor. Thanks also to the following Ashford faculty and advisors for their helpful advice and suggestions: Amy Gray, Stephen Halfaker, Kathleen Lunsford, Andrew Shean, Melissa Phillips, Tony Valley, Gina Warren, and Laurie Wellner.
Finally, the authors would like to thank the following reviewers for their valuable feedback and insight:
Paula Conroy, University of Northern Colorado
Graham Crookes, University of Hawaii
Tara Brown
Tara M. Brown is an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. She holds a doctorate degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is a former secondary classroom teacher in alternative education.
Tara’s research focuses on the experiences of low-income adolescents and young adults served by urban schools, particularly as related to disciplinary exclusion and dropout. She specializes in qualitative, community-based, participatory, and action research methodologies. Her most recent research is entitled Uncredentialed: Young Adults Living without a Secondary Degree. This community-based participatory study focuses on the social, educational, and economic causes and implications of school dropout among primarily Latina/o young adults living in mid-sized, post-industrial city.
Ch 3: Assessment in the 21st Century
3.1 Five Assessment Myths and Their Consequences, by Rick Stiggins
Introduction
Rick Stiggins is a well-known consultant and expert in the field of assessment. He founded the Assessment Training Institute, which provides professional development in assessment for teachers and school leaders. He has served on the faculty at Michigan State University, the University of Minnesota, and Lewis and Clark College. Stiggins has also served as director of the American College Testing Program.
Stiggins’ article emphasizes the importance of paying attention to assessment at the classroom level. He notes that in the current educational climate, there is huge investment in yearly standardized tests rather than daily assessments that are a part of teaching. Stiggins states, however, that teachers are not well-prepared to assess effectively and have not had much assessment training in their teacher education programs.
Stiggins’ article about the myths that drive assessment is especially important because of his attention to students and their role in assessment. He laments that nowhere in the assessment literature over the past 60 years do we find reference to students as “users” and “instructional decision makers.” Finally, the author describes the power of assessing for learning rather than relying on grades and test scores to motivate students.
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from Stiggins, R. (2007). Five assessment myths and their consequences. Education Week, 27(8), 28–29. Reprinted with permission from the author.
America has spent 60 years building layer upon layer of district, state, national, and international assessments at immense cost—and with little evidence that our assessment practices have improved learning. True, testing data have revealed achievement problems. But revealing problems and helping fix them are two entirely different things.
As a member of the measurement community, I find this legacy very discouraging. It causes me to reflect deeply on my role and function. Are we helping students and teachers with our assessment practices, or contributing to their problems?
My reflections have brought me to the conclusion that assessment’s impact on the improvement of schools has been severely limited by several widespread but erroneous beliefs about what role it ought to play. Here are five of the most problematic of these assessment myths:
Myth 1: The Path to School Improvement Is Paved With Standardized Tests.
Evidence of the strength of this belief is seen in the evolution, intensity, and immense investment in our large-scale testing programs. We have been ranking states on the basis of average college-admission-test scores since the 1950s, comparing schools based on district-wide testing since the 1960s, comparing districts based on state assessments since the 1970s, comparing states based on national assessment since the 1980s, and comparing nations on the basis of international assessments since the l990s. Have schools improved as a result?
The problem is that once-a-year assessments have never been able to meet the information needs of the decisionmakers who contribute the most to determining the effectiveness of schools: students and teachers, who make such decisions every three to four minutes. The brief history of our investment in testing outlined above includes no reference to day-to-day classroom assessment, which represents 99.9 percent of the assessments in a student’s school life. We have almost completely neglected classroom assessment in our obsession with standardized testing. Had we not, our path to school improvement would have been far more productive.
Myth 2: School and Community Leaders Know How to Use Assessment to Improve Schools.
Over the decades, very few educational leaders have been trained to understand what standardized tests measure, how they relate to the local curriculum, what the scores mean, how to use them, or, indeed, whether better instruction can influence scores. Beyond this, we in the measurement community have narrowed our role to maximizing the efficiency and accuracy of high-stakes testing, paying little attention to the day-to-day impact of test scores on teachers or learners in the classroom.
Many in the business community believe that we get better schools by comparing them based on annual test scores, and then rewarding or punishing them. They do not understand the negative impact on students and teachers in struggling schools that continuously lose in such competition. Politicians at all levels believe that if a little intimidation doesn’t work, a lot of intimidation will, and assessment has been used to increase anxiety. They too misunderstand the implications for struggling schools and learners.
Myth 3: Teachers Are Trained to Assess Productively.
Teachers can spend a quarter or more of their professional time involved in assessment-related activities. If they assess accurately and use results effectively, their students can prosper. Administrators, too, use assessment to make crucial curriculum and resource-allocation decisions that can improve school quality.
Given the critically important roles of assessment, it is no surprise that Americans believe teachers are thoroughly trained to assess accurately and use assessment productively. In fact, teachers typically have not been given the opportunity to learn these things during preservice preparation or while they are teaching. This has been the case for decades. And lest we believe that teachers can turn to their principals or other district leaders for help in learning about sound assessment practices, let it be known that relevant, helpful assessment training is rarely included in leadership-preparation programs either.
Myth 4: Adult Decisions Drive School Effectiveness.
We assess to inform instructional decisions. Annual tests inform annual decisions made by school leaders. Interim tests used formatively permit faculty teams to fine-tune programs. Classroom assessment helps teachers know what comes next in learning, or what grades go on report cards. In all cases, the assessment results inform the grown-ups who run the system.
But there are other data-based instructional decisionmakers present in classrooms whose influence over learning success is greater than that of the adults. I refer, of course, to students. Nowhere in our 60-year assessment legacy do we find reference to students as assessment users and instructional decisionmakers. But, in fact, they interpret the feedback we give them to decide whether they have hope of future success, whether the learning is worth the energy it will take to attain it, and whether to keep trying. If students conclude that there is no hope, it doesn’t matter what the adults decide. Learning stops. The most valid and reliable “high stakes” test, if it causes students to give up in hopelessness, cannot be regarded as productive. It does more harm than good.
Myth 5: Grades and Test Scores Maximize Student Motivation and Learning.
Most of us grew up in schools that left lots of students behind. By the end of high school, we were ranked based on achievement. There were winners and losers. Some rode winning streaks to confident, successful life trajectories, while others failed early and often, found recovery increasingly difficult, and ultimately gave up. After 13 years, a quarter of us had dropped out and the rest were dependably ranked. Schools operated on the belief that if I fail you or threaten to do so, it will cause you to try harder. This was only true for those who felt in control of the success contingencies. For the others, chronic failure resulted, and the intimidation minimized their learning. True hopelessness always trumps pressure to learn.
Society has changed the mission of its schools to “leave no child behind.” We want all students to meet state standards. This requires that all students believe they can succeed. Frequent success and infrequent failure must pave the path to optimism. This represents a fundamental redefinition of productive assessment dynamics.
Classroom-assessment researchers have discovered how to assess for learning to accomplish this. Assessment for learning (as opposed to of learning) has a profoundly positive impact on achievement, especially for struggling learners, as has been verified through rigorous scientific research conducted around the world. But, again, our educators have never been given the opportunity to learn about it.
Sound assessment is not something to be practiced once a year. As we look to the future, we must balance annual, interim or benchmark, and classroom assessment. Only then will we meet the critically important information needs of all instructional decisionmakers. We must build a long-missing foundation of assessment literacy at all levels of the system, so that we know how to assess accurately and use results productively. This will require an unprecedented investment in professional learning both at the preservice and in-service levels for teachers and administrators, and for policymakers as well.
Of greatest importance, however, is that we acknowledge the key role of the learner in the assessment-learning connection. We must begin to use classroom assessment to help all students experience continuous success and come to believe in themselves as learners.
Source: Stiggins, R. (2007). Five assessment myths and their consequences. Education Week 27(8), pp. 28–29. © Rick Stiggins. As first appeared in Education Week, October 16, 2007. Reprinted with permission from the author.
Summary
Stiggins offers five myths regarding assessment. He then suggests the consequences that teachers and leaders face when the educational community apparently believes these myths. The author challenges the myth that standardized testing can be the path to school improvement, noting that classroom assessment has much more power over student learning. He asserts, contrary to popular opinion, that most teachers and leaders do not know how to use assessment data to improve schools, nor are teachers adequately prepared to assess productively.
Educators and the general public appear to believe that grades and test scores motivate student learning, despite the evidence that classroom-based assessment for learning is actually what promotes student success. Finally, Stiggins debunks the myth that adult decisions drive school effectiveness and reminds readers of the role the students themselves play in the process.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. To what degree do you believe students play a pivotal role in school effectiveness as “assessment users” and “instructional decision makers”? How might that role be strengthened for students in schools?
2. How would you evaluate your own assessment knowledge and preparation for teaching and leadership in assessment? How would you characterize the gaps in your knowledge about assessment?
3. Imagine that you are speaking to a group of parents of students in a middle school. Explain how you would assess students daily in order to improve your teaching.
4. Discuss Rick Stiggins’ assertion that school improvement is not informed by standardized test results. What are some of the problems with relying on yearly standardized tests to drive curriculum and teaching in a school?
3.2 Assessment Literacy for Teachers: Faddish or Fundamental? by W. James Popham
Introduction
W. James Popham is an emeritus professor in the graduate school of the University of California, Los Angeles. He is considered one of the premier researchers in the field of assessment and is the founder of IOX Assessment Associates, a research and development organization.
This article introduces the concept of assessment literacy as a fundamental task for professional development in schools, especially in the current context in which teacher preparation assessment programs may be viewed as inadequate. Popham claims that teachers know very little about assessment beyond the administration of traditional tests, and in this piece he describes 13 “must understand” assessment topics for teachers, including the difference between formative and summative assessment tools. He also differentiates between classroom assessments and accountability assessments in terms of their goals and uses by teachers and administrators.
A key concept offered in this article is the idea that assessment approaches that are instructionally sensitive can be directly related to good teaching or, conversely, poor teaching. Popham maintains that teachers need to know the basics of the content area of assessment, including reliability, the three types of validity, types of test items, and the development and scoring of alternative assessments such as portfolios, exhibitions, peer, and self-assessments.
Teachers and leaders also need to be able to interpret standardized test results and use them meaningfully to improve instruction, because they are a key feature of today’s data-driven practice in many schools and districts.
Finally, the article reminds readers that assessment of English-language learners and students with disabilities remains an essential content field for all teachers.
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from Popham, W. J. (2009). Assessment literacy for teachers: faddish or fundamental? Theory Into Practice, 48, 4–11.
In recent years, increasing numbers of professional development programs have dealt with assessment literacy for teachers and/or administrators. Is assessment literacy merely a fashionable focus for today’s professional developers or, in contrast, should it be regarded as a significant area of professional development interest for many years to come? After dividing educators’ measurement-related concerns into either classroom assessments or accountability assessments, it is argued that educators’ inadequate knowledge in either of these arenas can cripple the quality of education. Assessment literacy is seen, therefore, as a sine qua non for today’s competent educator. As such, assessment literacy must be a pivotal content area for current and future staff development endeavors. Thirteen must-understand topics are set forth for consideration by those who design and deliver assessment literacy programs. Until preservice teacher education programs begin producing assessment literate teachers, professional developers must continue to rectify this omission in educators’ professional capabilities.
For the past several years, assessment literacy has been increasingly touted as a fitting focus for teachers’ professional development programs. The sort of assessment literacy that is typically recommended refers to a teacher’s familiarity with those measurement basics related directly to what goes on in classrooms. Given today’s ubiquitous, externally imposed scrutiny of schools, we can readily understand why assessment literacy might be regarded as a likely target for teachers’ professional development. Yet, is assessment literacy a legitimate focus for teachers’ professional development programs or, instead, is it a fashionable but soon forgettable fad?
The Consequences of Omission
Many of today’s teachers know little about educational assessment. For some teachers, test is a four-letter word, both literally and figuratively. The gaping gap in teachers’ assessment-related knowledge is all too understandable. The most obvious explanation is, in this instance, the correct explanation. Regrettably, when most of today’s teachers completed their teacher-education programs, there was no requirement that they learn anything about educational assessment. For these teachers, their only exposure to the concepts and practices of educational assessment might have been a few sessions in their educational psychology classes or, perhaps, a unit in a methods class (La Marca, 2006; Stiggins, 2006).
Thus, many teachers in previous years usually arrived at their first teaching assignment quite bereft of any fundamental understanding of educational measurement. Happily, in recent years we have seen the emergence of increased preservice requirements that offer teacher education candidates greater insights regarding educational assessment. Accordingly, in a decade or two, the assessment literacy of the nation’s teaching force is bound to be substantially stronger. But for now, it must be professional development—completed subsequent to teacher education—that will supply the nation’s teachers with the assessment related skills and knowledge they need.
* * *
A Quick Content Dip
Professional development programs focused on assessment literacy need to be tailored. Such a program designed for school administrators is likely to be similar to an assessment-literacy program for teachers, in the sense that many of the topics to be treated would be essentially identical, but some salient content differences would—and should—exist. To conclude this analysis, I would like to lay out the content that should be addressed—in a real-world, practical manner rather than an esoteric, theoretical fashion—during an assessment-literacy professional development program for teachers. This will only be a brief listing of potential content, but those who are interested in a closer look at possible content for such programs will find more detailed treatments of potential emphases in the list of references.
Those considering what to include in an assessment literacy professional development program for teachers should seriously consider focusing on a set of target skills and knowledge dealing with the following content:
1. The fundamental function of educational assessment, namely, the collection of evidence from which inferences can be made about students’ skills, knowledge, and affect. A common misconception among educators is to reify test scores, as though such scores are the true target of an educator’s concern. In reality, the only reason we test our students is in order collect evidence regarding what we cannot see—understanding, skill development, and so on. Almost all of our educational goals are aimed at unseeable skills and knowledge. We cannot tell how much history a student knows just by looking at that student. Thus, we must rely on students’ overt test performances to produce evidence so we can arrive at defensible inferences about students’ covert skills and knowledge.
2. Reliability of educational assessments, especially the three forms in which consistency evidence is reported for groups of test-takers (stability, alternate-form, and internal consistency) and how to gauge consistency of assessment for individual test-takers. Many educators place absolutely unwarranted confidence in the accuracy of educational tests, especially those high-stakes tests created by well-established testing companies. When educators grasp the nature of measurement error, and realize the myriad factors that can trigger inconsistency in a student’s test performances, those educators will regard with proper caution the imprecision of the results obtained on even some of our most time-honored assessment instruments.
3. The prominent role three types of validity evidence should play in the building of arguments to support the accuracy of test-based interpretations about students, namely, content-related, criterion-related, and construct-related evidence. Anytime an educator utters the phrase a valid test, that educator is—at least technically—in error. It is not a test that is valid or invalid. Rather, it is the inference we base on a test-taker’s score whose validity is at issue. Moreover, the types of validity evidence we collect are fundamentally different. As a consequence, for example, classroom teachers need to know that the chief kind of validity evidence they need to attend to should be content-related.
4. How to identify and eliminate assessment bias that offends or unfairly penalizes test-takers because of personal characteristics such as race, gender, or socioeconomic status. During the past two decades, the measurement community has devised both judgmental and empirical ways of dramatically reducing the amount of assessment bias in our large-scale educational tests. Classroom teachers need to know how to identify and eliminate bias in their own teacher-made tests.
5. Construction and improvement of selected-response and constructed-response test items. Through the years, measurement specialists have been assembling a collection of guidelines regarding how to create wonderful, rather than wretched, test items. Moreover, once a set of test items has been constructed, there are easily used procedures available for making those items even better. Educators who generate tests need to be conversant with the creation and honing of test items.
6. Scoring of students’ responses to constructed-response tests items, especially the distinctive contribution made by well-formed rubrics. Although constructed-response test items such as essay and short answer items often provide particularly illuminating evidence about students’ skills and knowledge, the scoring of students’ responses to such items often goes haywire because of loose judgmental procedures. Teachers need to know how to create and use rubrics, that is, scoring guides, so students’ performances on constructed-response items can be accurately appraised.
7. Development and scoring of performance assessments, portfolio assessments, exhibitions, peer assessments, and self-assessments. Gone are the days when teachers only had to know how to score tests by distinguishing between a circled T or F for students’ answers to true–false items. Given the current use of assessment procedures calling for students to respond in dramatically diverse ways, today’s teachers need to learn how to generate and perhaps score a considerable variety of assessment strategies.
8. Designing and implementing formative assessment procedures consonant with both research evidence and experience-based insights regarding such procedures’ likely success. Formative assessment is a process, not a particular type of test. Because there is now substantial evidence at hand that properly employed formative assessment can meaningfully boost students’ achievement (Black & Wiliam, 1998a), today’s educators need to understand the innards of this potent classroom process.
9. How to collect and interpret evidence of students’ attitudes, interests, and values. When considering the importance of students’ acquisition of cognitive versus affective outcomes, it could be argued that inattention to students’ attitudes, interests, and values can have a lasting, negative impact on those students. Teachers, therefore, should at least learn how to assess their students’ affect so that, if those teachers choose to do so, they can get an accurate fix on their students’ affective dispositions.
10. Interpreting students’ performances on large-scale, standardized achievement and aptitude assessments. Because students’ performances are of interest to both teachers and students’ parents, teachers must understand the most widely used techniques for reporting students’ scores on today’s oft-administered standardized examinations, including, for example, what is meant by a scale score.
11. Assessing English Language Learners and students with disabilities. Although most of the measurement concepts that educators need to understand will apply across the board to all types of students, there are special assessment issues associated with students whose first language is not English and for students with disabilities. Because today’s educators have been adjured to attend to such students with more care than was seen in the past, it is important for all teachers to become conversant with the assessment procedures most suitable for these subgroups of students.
12. How to appropriately (and not inappropriately) prepare students for high-stakes tests. Given the pressures on educators to have their students shine on state and, sometimes, district accountability tests, there have been reports of test-preparation practices that are patently inappropriate. In many instances, such unsound practices arise simply because teachers had not devoted attention to the question of how students should and should not be readied for important tests. They should be prepared to do so.
13. How to determine the appropriateness of an accountability test for use in evaluating the quality of instruction. It is not safe to assume that, because an accountability test has been officially adopted in a state, this test is suitable for evaluating schools. More than ever before, educators need to understand what makes a test suitable for appraising the quality of instruction.
All but a few of these 13 content recommendations are applicable to both classroom assessments and accountability assessments. The recommendations regarding the determination of an accountability test’s evaluative appropriateness and interpreting students’ performances on large-scale, standardized tests, of course, refer only to accountability assessments. Conversely, the recommendation regarding learning about formative assessment procedures clearly deals with classroom assessments rather than accountability assessments. Beyond those dissimilarities, however, a professional development program aimed at the promotion of teachers’ assessment literacy should show how the bulk of the content recommended here has clear relevance to both classroom assessments and accountability assessments.
Of particular merit these days is the use of professional learning communities as an adjunct to, or in place of, more traditional professional development activities. Such communities consist of small groups of teachers and/or administrators who meet periodically over an extended period of time, for instance, one or more school years, to focus on topics such as those identified above. If such a group consists exclusively of teachers, then it is typically referred to as a teacher learning community. If administrators are involved, then the label professional learning community is usually affixed. Given access to at least some written or electronic materials as a backdrop (e.g., Popham, 2006, which is available gratis to such learning communities), collections of educators with similar interest can prove to be remarkably effective in helping educators acquire significant new insights.
Fad-Free Focus?
The presenting question that initiated this analysis was whether professional development programs aimed at enhancing teachers’ assessment literacy were warranted, either in the short-term or long-term. I identified two sets of teachers’ assessment-related decisions that could be illuminated by such programs, namely, those decisions related to classroom assessments and those decisions related to accountability assessments. Although, at the current time, teachers are surely faced with assessment-dependent choices stemming from both of these sorts of assessments, will both types of assessments be with us over the long haul?
The answer to that question is, in my view, an emphatic Yes. With regard to classroom assessments, the influential work of Black and Wiliam (1998a, 1998b) lends powerful empirical support attesting to the learning dividends of instructionally oriented classroom assessment. When classroom assessments are conceived as assessments for learning, rather than assessments of learning, students will learn better what their teacher wants them to learn. Not only is the evidence supporting such a formative approach to classroom assessment demonstrably effective, but there are—happily—diverse ways to implement an instructionally oriented approach to classroom assessment. As the two British researchers point out:
The range of conditions and contexts under which studies have shown that gains can be achieved must indicate that the principles that underlie achievement of substantial improvements in learning are robust. Significant gains can be achieved by many different routes, and initiatives here are not likely to fail through neglect of delicate and subtle features. (Black & Wiliam, 1998a, pp. 61–62)
It appears, then, that teachers who want to be optimally effective ought to be learning about the essentials of classroom assessment for a long while to come.
Turning to accountability assessment, there seems little reason to believe that the demand for test-based evidence of teachers’ effectiveness will evaporate—ever. Accountability pressure on educators springs from taxpayers’ doubts that their public schools are as effective as they ought to be. It will take decades of consistent educational success stories before the public is disabused of its skeptical regard for public schools. Even if the public were ever to relax its demands for educational accountability evidence, thoughtful educators still ought to insist on the collection of such evidence. That is the kind of requirement that any self-respecting profession ought to impose on itself.
Thus, it seems that assessment literacy is a commodity needed by teachers for their own long-term well-being, and for the educational well-being of their students. For the foreseeable future, teachers are likely to exist in an environment where test-elicited evidence plays a prominent instructional and evaluative role. In such environments, those who control the tests tend to control the entire enterprise. Until preservice teacher educators routinely provide meaningful assessment literacy for prospective teachers, the architects of professional development programs will need to offer assessment-literacy programs. We can only hope they do it well.
References
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998a). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy, and Practice, 5(1), 7–73.
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998b). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139–148.
La Marca. P. (2006). Assessment literacy: Building capacity for improving student learning. Paper presented at the National Conference on Large-Scale Assessment, Council of Chief State School Officers, San Francisco, CA.
Popham, W. J. (2006). Mastering assessment: A self-service system for educators. New York: Routledge.
Stiggins, R. J. (2006). Assessment for learning: A key to student motivation and learning. Phi Delta Kappa Edge, 2(2), 1–19.
Source: Popham, W. J. (2009). Assessment Literacy for Teachers: Faddish or Fundamental? Theory Into Practice 48: 4–11. Taylor and Francis. Copyright © 2009 Routledge.
Summary
Popham’s article presents a range of assessment topics that teachers and leaders should be knowledgeable about; he terms competence in these content areas as “assessment literacy” and asserts that professional development in school districts should focus explicitly on these areas in order to improve schools and enhance student learning.
The author asserts that the word assessment, for most teachers, is synonymous with the word test. He poses the critical question, “What kinds of assessments do teachers most need to understand?” and responds with a list of 13 topics.
The article suggests that teachers and leaders need to be able not only to apply meaningful and varied assessments but also to understand and be “literate” in the field of assessment itself. The author claims that standardized testing in the United States tends to be “instructionally insensitive,” meaning that the results have little or no relationship to how well students are taught.
Finally, the author challenges professional development leaders to consider how to embed these important concepts and practices into ongoing teacher learning venues in schools, and he mentions professional learning communities (PLCs) as a promising approach.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. Design a year of PLC meetings in which teachers engage in conscious assessment literacy learning. What would such meetings look like? How would teachers engage with each other in learning more about assessment in PLCs?
2. Popham writes that school administrators need assessment literacy training that is, in some ways, like the professional development needed by teachers. He then mentions that there would be some differences in terms of what administrators need to know. What might those differences be?
3. One of the 13 “must understand” topics refers to eliminating assessments that offend or penalize students because of race, gender, or socioeconomic status. Discuss this topic in terms of your experience and the students you have encountered. How might schools and teachers work toward bias-free assessment?
4. This article briefly refers to the need for teachers to assess students’ affect, that is, their attitudes, interests, and values. Why is this important, and how might teachers do this as part of their practice?
5. What is your overall impression of this article and the author’s presentation of the tenets of assessment literacy
3.3 Seven Keys to Effective Feedback, by Grant Wiggins
Introduction
Grant Wiggins has been a central contributor to the field of assessment in the last 25 years, due in part to his landmark book, Educative Assessment: Designing Assessments to Inform and Improve Student Performance, as well as his work with Jay McTighe. Wiggins and coauthor McTighe have written many books and articles focused on backward design for curriculum and assessment. Used in hundreds of school districts around the country, backward design is a process of planning curriculum from the goals or aims “backwards.”
This article directs readers’ attention to feedback as a means of providing learners with information about how they are doing in their efforts to reach a specific goal. Wiggins is clear about the need for a goal in order for feedback to be meaningful to learners. The author also asserts that feedback is not evaluative or judgmental, nor is it advice-driven. Effective feedback is user-friendly, timely, ongoing and consistent.
Wiggins also calls attention to the responsibilities of the learner to be open to and use feedback. He writes: “If I am not clear on my goals or if I fail to pay attention to them, I cannot get helpful feedback” (p. 18). Finally, Wiggins explains that research shows the power of teaching less in order to provide more feedback. A careful consideration of this concept may be the essential next step in improving assessment practices.
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from Wiggins, G. (2012). 7 keys to effective feedback. Educational Leadership, 70(1), 10–19.
Who would dispute the idea that feedback is a good thing? Both common sense and research make it clear: Formative assessment, consisting of lots of feedback and opportunities to use that feedback, enhances performance and achievement.
Yet even John Hattie (2008), whose decades of research revealed that feedback as among the most powerful influences on achievement, acknowledges that he has “struggled to understand the concept” (p. 173). And many writings on the subject don’t even attempt to define the term. To improve formative assessment practices among both teachers and assessment designers, we need to look more closely at just what feedback is—and isn’t.
What Is Feedback, Anyway?
The term feedback is often used to describe all kinds of comments made after the fact, including advice, praise, and evaluation. But none of these are feedback, strictly speaking.
Basically, feedback is information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal. I hit a tennis ball with the goal of keeping it in the court, and I see where it lands—in or out. I tell a joke with the goal of making people laugh, and I observe the audience’s reaction—they laugh loudly or barely snicker. I teach a lesson with the goal of engaging students, and I see that some students have their eyes riveted on me while others are nodding off.
Here are some other examples of feedback:
· A friend tells me, “You know, when you put it that way and speak in that softer tone of voice, it makes me feel better.”
· A reader comments on my short story, “The first few paragraphs kept my full attention. The scene painted was vivid and interesting. But then the dialogue became hard to follow; as a reader, I was confused about who was talking, and the sequence of actions was puzzling, so I became less engaged.”
· A baseball coach tells me, “Each time you swung and missed, you raised your head as you swung so you didn’t really have your eye on the ball. On the one you hit hard, you kept your head down and saw the ball.”
Note the difference between these three examples and the first three I cited—the tennis stroke, the joke, and the student responses to teaching. In the first group, I only had to take note of the tangible effect of my actions, keeping my goals in mind. No one volunteered feedback, but there was still plenty of feedback to get and use. The second group of examples all involved the deliberate, explicit giving of feedback by other people.
Whether the feedback was in the observable effects or from other people, in every case the information received was not advice, nor was the performance evaluated. No one told me as a performer what to do differently or how “good” or “bad” my results were. (You might think that the reader of my writing was judging my work, but look at the words used again: She simply played back the effect my writing had on her as a reader.) Nor did any of the three people tell me what to do (which is what many people erroneously think feedback is—advice). Guidance would be premature; I first need to receive feedback on what I did or didn’t do that would warrant such advice.
In all six cases, information was conveyed about the effects of my actions as related to a goal. The information did not include value judgments or recommendations on how to improve.
Decades of education research support the idea that by teaching less and providing more feedback, we can produce greater learning (see Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Hattie, 2008; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Compare the typical lecture-driven course, which often produces less-than-optimal learning, with the peer instruction model developed by Eric Mazur (2009) at Harvard. He hardly lectures at all to his 200 introductory physics students; instead, he gives them problems to think about individually and then discuss in small groups. This system, he writes, “provides frequent and continuous feedback (to both the students and the instructor) about the level of understanding of the subject being discussed” (p. 51), producing gains in both conceptual understanding of the subject and problem-solving skills. Less “teaching,” more feedback equals better results.
Feedback Essentials
Whether feedback is just there to be grasped or is provided by another person, helpful feedback is goal-referenced; tangible and transparent; actionable; user-friendly (specific and personalized); timely; ongoing; and consistent.
Goal-Referenced
Effective feedback requires that a person has a goal, takes action to achieve the goal, and receives goal-related information about his or her actions. I told a joke—why? To make people laugh. I wrote a story to engage the reader with vivid language and believable dialogue that captures the characters’ feelings. I went up to bat to get a hit. If I am not clear on my goals or if I fail to pay attention to them, I cannot get helpful feedback (nor am I likely to achieve my goals).
Information becomes feedback if, and only if, I am trying to cause something and the information tells me whether I am on track or need to change course. If some joke or aspect of my writing isn’t working—a revealing, nonjudgmental phrase—I need to know.
Note that in everyday situations, goals are often implicit, although fairly obvious to everyone. I don’t need to announce when telling the joke that my aim is to make you laugh. But in school, learners are often unclear about the specific goal of a task or lesson, so it is crucial to remind them about the goal and the criteria by which they should self-assess. For example, a teacher might say,
· The point of this writing task is for you to make readers laugh. So, when rereading your draft or getting feedback from peers, ask, how funny is this? Where might it be funnier?
· As you prepare a table poster to display the findings of your science project, remember that the aim is to interest people in your work as well as to describe the facts you discovered through your experiment. Self-assess your work against those two criteria using these rubrics. The science fair judges will do likewise.
Tangible and Transparent
Any useful feedback system involves not only a clear goal, but also tangible results related to the goal. People laugh, chuckle, or don’t laugh at each joke; students are highly attentive, somewhat attentive, or inattentive to my teaching.
Even as little children, we learn from such tangible feedback. That’s how we learn to walk; to hold a spoon; and to understand that certain words magically yield food, drink, or a change of clothes from big people. The best feedback is so tangible that anyone who has a goal can learn from it.
Alas, far too much instructional feedback is opaque, as revealed in a true story a teacher told me years ago. A student came up to her at year’s end and said, “Miss Jones, you kept writing this same word on my English papers all year, and I still don’t know what it means.” “What’s the word?” she asked. “Vag-oo,” he said. (The word was vague!)
Sometimes, even when the information is tangible and transparent, the performers don’t obtain it—either because they don’t look for it or because they are too busy performing to focus on the effects. In sports, novice tennis players or batters often don’t realize that they’re taking their eyes off the ball; they often protest, in fact, when that feedback is given. (Constantly yelling “Keep your eye on the ball!” rarely works.) And we have all seen how new teachers are sometimes so busy concentrating on “teaching” that they fail to notice that few students are listening or learning.
That’s why, in addition to feedback from coaches or other able observers, video or audio recordings can help us perceive things that we may not perceive as we perform; and by extension, such recordings help us learn to look for difficult-to-perceive but vital information. I recommend that all teachers videotape their own classes at least once a month. It was a transformative experience for me when I did it as a beginning teacher. Concepts that had been crystal clear to me when I was teaching seemed opaque and downright confusing on tape—captured also in the many quizzical looks of my students, which I had missed in the moment.
Actionable
Effective feedback is concrete, specific, and useful; it provides actionable information. Thus, “Good job!” and “You did that wrong” and B+ are not feedback at all. We can easily imagine the learners asking themselves in response to these comments, what specifically should I do more or less of next time, based on this information? No idea. They don’t know what was “good” or “wrong” about what they did.
Actionable feedback must also be accepted by the performer. Many so-called feedback situations lead to arguments because the givers are not sufficiently descriptive; they jump to an inference from the data instead of simply presenting the data. For example, a supervisor may make the unfortunate but common mistake of stating that “many students were bored in class.” That’s a judgment, not an observation. It would have been far more useful and less debatable had the supervisor said something like, “I counted ongoing inattentive behaviors in 12 of the 25 students once the lecture was underway. The behaviors included texting under desks, passing notes, and making eye contact with other students. However, after the small-group exercise began, I saw such behavior in only one student.”
Such care in offering neutral, goal-related facts is the whole point of the clinical supervision of teaching and of good coaching more generally. Effective supervisors and coaches work hard to carefully observe and comment on what they observed, based on a clear statement of goals. That’s why I always ask when visiting a class, “What would you like me to look for and perhaps count?” In my experience as a teacher of teachers, I have always found such pure feedback to be accepted and welcomed. Effective coaches also know that in complex performance situations, actionable feedback about what went right is as important as feedback about what didn’t work.
User-Friendly
Even if feedback is specific and accurate in the eyes of experts or bystanders, it is not of much value if the user cannot understand it or is overwhelmed by it. Highly technical feedback will seem odd and confusing to a novice. Describing a baseball swing to a 6-year-old in terms of torque and other physics concepts will not likely yield a better hitter. Too much feedback is also counterproductive; better to help the performer concentrate on only one or two key elements of performance than to create a buzz of information coming in from all sides.
Expert coaches uniformly avoid overloading performers with too much or too technical information. They tell the performers one important thing they noticed that, if changed, will likely yield immediate and noticeable improvement (“I was confused about who was talking in the dialogue you wrote in this paragraph”). They don’t offer advice until they make sure the performer understands the importance of what they saw.
Timely
In most cases, the sooner I get feedback, the better. I don’t want to wait for hours or days to find out whether my students were attentive and whether they learned, or which part of my written story works and which part doesn’t. I say “in most cases” to allow for situations like playing a piano piece in a recital. I don’t want my teacher or the audience barking out feedback as I perform. That’s why it is more precise to say that good feedback is “timely” rather than “immediate.”
A great problem in education, however, is untimely feedback. Vital feedback on key performances often comes days, weeks, or even months after the performance—think of writing and handing in papers or getting back results on standardized tests. As educators, we should work overtime to figure out ways to ensure that students get more timely feedback and opportunities to use it while the attempt and effects are still fresh in their minds.
Before you say that this is impossible, remember that feedback does not need to come only from the teacher or even from people at all. Technology is one powerful tool—part of the power of computer-assisted learning is unlimited, timely feedback and opportunities to use it. Peer review is another strategy for managing the load to ensure lots of timely feedback; it’s essential, however, to train students to do small-group peer review to high standards, without immature criticisms or unhelpful praise.
Ongoing
Adjusting our performance depends on not only receiving feedback but also having opportunities to use it. What makes any assessment in education formative is not merely that it precedes summative assessments, but that the performer has opportunities, if results are less than optimal, to reshape the performance to better achieve the goal. In summative assessment, the feedback comes too late; the performance is over.
Thus, the more feedback I can receive in real time, the better my ultimate performance will be. This is how all highly successful computer games work. If you play Angry Birds, Halo, Guitar Hero, or Tetris, you know that the key to substantial improvement is that the feedback is both timely and ongoing. When you fail, you can immediately start over—sometimes even right where you left off—to get another opportunity to receive and learn from the feedback. (This powerful feedback loop is also user-friendly. Games are built to reflect and adapt to our changing need, pace, and ability to process information.)
It is telling, too, that performers are often judged on their ability to adjust in light of feedback. The ability to quickly adapt one’s performance is a mark of all great achievers and problem solvers in a wide array of fields. Or, as many little league coaches say, “The problem is not making errors; you will all miss many balls in the field, and that’s part of learning. The problem is when you don’t learn from the errors.”
Consistent
To be useful, feedback must be consistent. Clearly, performers can only adjust their performance successfully if the information fed back to them is stable, accurate, and trustworthy. In education, that means teachers have to be on the same page about what high-quality work is. Teachers need to look at student work together, becoming more consistent over time and formalizing their judgments in highly descriptive rubrics supported by anchor products and performances. By extension, if we want student-to-student feedback to be more helpful, students have to be trained to be consistent the same way we train teachers, using the same exemplars and rubrics.
Progress Toward a Goal
In light of these key characteristics of helpful feedback, how can schools most effectively use feedback as part of a system of formative assessment? The key is to gear feedback to long-term goals.
Let’s look at how this works in sports. My daughter runs the mile in track. At the end of each lap in races and practice races, the coaches yell out split times (the times for each lap) and bits of feedback (“You’re not swinging your arms!” “You’re on pace for 5:15”), followed by advice (“Pick it up—you need to take two seconds off this next lap to get in under 5:10!”).
My daughter and her teammates are getting feedback (and advice) about how they are performing now compared with their final desired time. My daughter’s goal is to run a 5:00 mile. She has already run 5:09. Her coach is telling her that at the pace she just ran in the first lap, she is unlikely even to meet her best time so far this season, never mind her long-term goal. Then, he tells her something descriptive about her current performance (she’s not swinging her arms) and gives her a brief piece of concrete advice (take two seconds off the next lap) to make achievement of the goal more likely.
The ability to improve one’s result depends on the ability to adjust one’s pace in light of ongoing feedback that measures performance against a concrete, long-term goal. But this isn’t what most school district “pacing guides” and grades on “formative” tests tell you.
They yield a grade against recent objectives taught, not useful feedback against the final performance standards. Instead of informing teachers and students at an interim date whether they are on track to achieve a desired level of student performance by the end of the school year, the guide and the test grade just provide a schedule for the teacher to follow in delivering content and a grade on that content. It’s as if at the end of the first lap of the mile race, my daughter’s coach simply yelled out, “B+ on that lap!”
The advice for how to change this sad situation should be clear: Score student work in the fall and winter against spring standards, use more pre- and post-assessments to measure progress toward these standards, and do the item analysis to note what each student needs to work on for better future performance.
“But There’s No Time!”
Although the universal teacher lament that there’s no time for such feedback is understandable, remember that “no time to give and use feedback” actually means “no time to cause learning.” As we have seen, research shows that less teaching plus more feedback is the key to achieving greater learning. And there are numerous ways—through technology, peers, and other teachers—that students can get the feedback they need.
References
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge.
Marzano, R., Pickering, D., & Pollock, J. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Mazur, E. (2009, January 2). Farewell, lecture? Science, 323, 50–51.
Source: Wiggins, G. (2012). 7 keys to effective feedback. Educational Leadership. 70(1), 10–19. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Copyright © Grant Wiggins.
Summary
Wiggins calls for feedback to be stable, accurate, and trustworthy. He highlights the difference between feedback, evaluation, and grading, implicitly challenging teachers to expand their repertoire to include all three processes on a regular basis.
Wiggins also calls for frequent feedback, claiming that the more feedback students receive, the more learning will occur. He concludes the article by acknowledging the difficulty of finding the time to provide such feedback in today’s classrooms; he suggests that teachers consider teaching less and providing more feedback through technology, peers, and other educators. If the goal is to enhance and improve learning, then time providing direct feedback is well spent.
Wiggins also proposes more pre- and postassessments, more item analysis on tests in which students are provided specific information about their errors, and more early practice testing (i.e., in the fall for spring tests) that could provide individualized feedback as part of classroom practice.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. What do you think about the concept of teaching less in order to provide more feedback? What might that look like in today’s classrooms, whether face to face or online?
2. Providing feedback that actually contributes to learning is not easy and is not a skill that educators necessarily learn through preservice teacher education. How do teachers learn to provide feedback that is useful?
3. Wiggins claims that feedback is not the same as evaluation. Yet, feedback can be part of a formative assessment process that does provide information to learners before it is too late. When should evaluation or judgment be avoided, and when is it important to give evaluative comments that help students learn from their mistakes?
4. Design a research study in which you and your colleagues would examine feedback to students provided online. Determine how you would explore the connections between feedback provided and subsequent student work improvement.
3.4 Feedback and Feed Forward, by Nancy Frey and Doug Fisher
Introduction
Nancy Frey and Doug Fisher are both professors of educational leadership at San Diego State University. They are the founders of Literacy for Life and have written and presented about reading, collaborative learning, and, most recently, the common core English language arts standards in PLCs. They are also the authors of the 2011 text, The Formative Assessment Action Plan: Practical Steps to More Successful Teaching and Learning.
The evocative title of this article indicates a new perspective on what happens after teachers provide feedback to individual students. Frey and Fisher propose that it is not enough to monitor at the individual level; rather, teachers need to look for patterns across students’ work in order to design interventions and targeted teaching approaches to address group needs.
Frey and Fisher make the connection between feedback, assessment, and “feeding forward” to inform instruction. In their view, any one of these practices is incomplete without the other two. The authors also discuss the issue of the focus of feedback, noting that feedback about the assigned task is the most familiar to teachers and students. Other types of feedback, from the work of Hattie and Timperley (2007) include feedback about the process, about self-regulation, and about “the self as a person” (p. 90).
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (2011). Feedback and feed forward. Principal Leadership, 11(9), 90–93.
Internet searches often yield surprising results. In preparation for writing this column, we searched one of our favorite sayings: “You can’t fatten sheep by weighing them.” One of the results was an article from the April 1908 issue of the Farm Journal on early spring lambs. Among the advice to sheep farmers was to take care in apportioning their rations so as not to overfeed, to provide healthy living conditions so they can grow, and to take careful measure of their progress—and this piece of wisdom: “Study your sheep and know them not only as a flock but separately, and remember that they have an individuality as surely as your horse or cow” (Brick, 1908, p. 154).
Students are not sheep, of course, but our role as cultivators of young people has much in common with that of livestock farmers. As educators, we recognize the importance of a healthy learning climate and seek to create one each day. In addition, we apportion information so that students can act upon their growing knowledge. And we measure their progress regularly to see whether they are making expected gains. As part of effective practice, teachers routinely check for understanding through the learning process. This is most commonly accomplished by asking questions, analyzing tasks, and administering low-stakes quizzes to measure the extent to which students are acquiring new information and skills. But it’s one thing to gather information (we’re good at that); it’s another thing to respond in meaningful ways and then plan for subsequent instruction.
Without processes to provide students with solid feedback that yields deeper understanding, checking for understanding devolves into a game of “guess what’s in the teacher’s brain.” And without ways to look for patterns across students, formative assessments become a frustrating academic exercise. Knowing both the flock and the individuals in it are essential practices for cultivating learning.
Knowing the Individual: Effective Feedback
Most of us have received poor feedback: The teacher who scrawled “rewrite this” in the margin of an essay we wrote. The coach who said, “No, you’re doing it wrong; keep practicing.” The coworker who took over a task and did it for us when our progress stalled. The frustration on the learner’s part matches that felt by the teacher, the coach, or the coworker: why can’t he or she get this? That shared vexation produces a mutual sense of defeat. On the part of the learner, the internal dialogue becomes, “I can’t do this.” The teacher thinks, “I can’t teach this.” Over time, blame sets in, and the student and the teacher begin to find fault with each other.
Hattie and Timperley (2007) wrote about feedback across four dimensions: “Feedback about the task (FT), about the processing of the task (FP), about self-regulation (FR), and about the self as a person (FS)” (p. 90). For example, “You need to put a semicolon in this sentence” (FT) has limited usefulness and is not usually generalized to other tasks. On the other hand, “Make sure that your sentences have noun-verb agreements because it’s going make it easier for the reader to understand your argument” (FP) gives feedback information about a writing convention necessary in all essays. The researchers go on to note that feedback that moves from information about the process to information about self-regulation is the best of all: “Try reading some of your sentences aloud so you can hear when you have and don’t have noun-verb agreement.” The researchers go on to say that FS (“You’re a good writer”) is the least useful, even when it is positive in nature, because it doesn’t add anything to one’s learning.
Done carefully, FT can have a modest amount of usefulness, as when editing a paper. Yet feedback about the task is by far the most common kind we offer. The problem is that the task offers only end-game analysis and leaves the learner with little direction on what to do, particularly when there isn’t any recourse to make changes. Most writing teachers will tell you that it is not uncommon for students to engage in limited revision, confined to the specific items listed in the teacher feedback—more recopying than revising. But feedback about the processes used in the task and further advice about one’s self-regulatory strategies to make revisions can leave the learner with a plan for next steps.
Consider the dialogue between English teacher John Goodwin and Alicia, a student in his class. Alicia has drafted an essay on bullying, and Goodwin is providing feedback about her work. Careful to frame his feedback so that it can result in a plan for revision, he draws her attention to her thesis statement and says, “It’s helpful for writers to go back to the main point of the essay and read to see if the evidence is there. I highlight in yellow so I can see if I’ve done that.” The two of them reread her first three paragraphs and highlight where she has provided national statistics and direct quotes from teachers she knows.
Goodwin goes on to say, “Now what I want you to do is look for ways you’ve provided supporting evidence, like citing sources. Let’s highlight those in green.” Alicia quickly notices that while she has made claims, she hasn’t capitalized on any authoritative sources. And by confining her direct quotes to teachers at her school, she has limited the impact of her essay by failing to quote more widely known sources. The little bit of green on her essay illustrates what she needs to do next: strengthen her sources. Goodwin ends the conversation by saying, “It sounds like you have a plan for revising the content. Let’s meet again on Wednesday and you can update me on your progress.”
Feedback of this kind takes only a few minutes, yet it can add up in a crowded classroom. For this reason, many teachers rely on written forms of feedback instead of direct conversations. Even in written form, the guidelines about feedback remain the same: focus on the processes needed for the task, move to information about behaviors within the student’s influence to make changes, and steer clear of comments that are either too global or too minute to be of much use. Wiggins (1998) advises constructing written feedback so that it meets four important criteria: first, it must be timely so that it is paired as closely as possible with the attempt; second, it should be specific in nature; third, it should be written in a manner that it understandable to the student; and fourth, it should be actionable so that the learner can make revisions.
Knowing the Flock: Feed Forward
Although feedback is primarily at the individual level, feed forward describes the process of making instructional decisions about what should happen next (Frey & Fisher, in press). Data about student progress is commonly gathered using common formative assessments—either commercially produced or made by the teacher. In addition, many school teams engage in consensus scoring with colleagues to calibrate practices, especially with tasks that have a significant qualitative component, such as writing (Fisher, Frey, Farnan, Fearn, & Petersen, 2004). Lack of time to work with other colleagues can limit these practices, however. The good news is that a teacher’s own classroom can serve as the unit of analysis as well.
With all the solid feedback provided to students, it seems natural to take it one step further by recording results and some pattern anaIysis. For example, mathematics teacher Ben Teichman keeps track of student progress across several dimensions of instruction. As he provides written or verbal feedback to his students, he notes which skills they have mastered and which ones are still proving difficult for them. His error analysis record sheet enables him to make decisions about who needs reteaching and when it needs to occur (see Figure 3.1). “All the feedback in the world isn’t going to do much good if what they really need is more instruction,” said Teichman, an insight Hattie and Timperley (2007) share.
Figure 3.1: Error analysis sheet in Algebra II: Introduction to complex numbers
Teachers can use an error analysis sheet to record the initials of students who have not mastered instructional goals.
Unlike a checklist to track mastery, Teichman’s error analysis sheet is used to identify the students who are struggling. He logs the initials of students in each period who are still having difficulty with major concepts after initial instruction, then makes decisions about follow up and reteaching. For example, the error analysis sheet shows that all of his classes are still having difficulty with understanding the relationship between different forms of representing imaginary numbers. That tells him that reteaching to the whole group is in order. On the other hand, smaller groups of students are having trouble with other concepts. “I need to pull those students into small groups, because the majority of the class is doing fine otherwise,” he said. Fourth period is another story. “I’ve got lots of students all across the board who are struggling with this whole unit,” he said. “Time for me to take a few steps back and revisit what they know already about radicals before we dive back into imaginary numbers.”
Conclusion
“To be successful, [the sheep farmer] must also be gentle, with a watchful eye for little things . . . and a hundred minor details upon which success depends,” wrote Brick (1908, p. 154) more than a century ago. Feedback and feed-forward processes in the classroom should be used to cultivate learning, and not just simply measure it. By providing students with feedback they can use to revise and by tracking student progress to determine who needs subsequent instruction and when it should occur, educators can ensure that they feed and not merely weigh.
References
Brick, H. (1908). Early spring lambs. The Farm Journal, 32(4), 153–154.
Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (in press). The formative assessment action plan: Practical steps to more successful teaching and learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Fisher, D., Frey, N., Farnan, N., Feam, L., & Petersen, F. (2004). Increasing writing achievement in an urban middle school. Middle School Journal, 36(2), 21–26.
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77, 81–112.
Wiggins, G. (1998). Educative assessment: Designing assessments to inform and improve student performance. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Source: Frey, N. & Fisher, D. (2011). Feedback and feed forward. Principal Leadership, 11(9), 90–93. Copyright (2014) National Association of Secondary School Principals. For more information on NASSP products and services to promote excellence in middle level and high school leadership, visit
www.nassp.org
.
Chapter 5
.1 TED Talk, by Alan November
Introduction
The first reading for this chapter is the partial transcript of a TED Talk given in 2011 by Alan November. November is a Harvard-University–trained educational technologist and consultant. He is best known for his two books, Empowering Students With Technology and Who Owns the Learning? Preparing Students for Success in the Digital Age.
In his TED talk, November tells stories about his former students and the evolution of his thinking about learning that resulted in a course he called “Community Problem Solving With Technology.” He explains how enthusiastic students become when they discern a problem and apply the appropriate tools to solve that problem for real audiences, rather than using tools in isolation and hoping to be able to apply them sometime later.
November’s experiences contribute to the larger discussion of the content of curriculum and what it takes to develop creative content with students, not for them, in order to purposefully work to make the world a better place. November calls this “leaving a legacy.”
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from November, A. [TED Talks]. (2011, March 5). TEDxNYED [Video file].
I’m going to tell a bunch of stories and I at first don’t expect that they’re going to have any connection at all and then in the end, I’m going to try to bring them together. First story is in 1975 and I am a teacher of biology and chemistry in Roxbury High School in Boston and I find out that the local subway line, which is elevated at the time, is going to be put underground, and the local, huge, subway terminal bus station, called Dudley Station, is auctioning off various storefronts to the community because over the next 10 years they’re going to dismantle it. No more investment. So I am probably one of the only teachers in the country who’s ever bid, and won, for a dollar—I got a barbershop. And the barbershop, I needed the barbershop because a couple of months before that, my roommate at medical school had one of my students arrive in an ambulance, who had never really had any medical care in his life. And he tells me this, and I’m teaching biology, and he says, “You know, you really ought to teach your kids some practical stuff, because too many of kids in your neighborhood—there where you are teaching—don’t have good medical care, but it’s free. And if they only knew about it, they could, they could have better wellness. So, see what you can do.” So the barbershop was this great location in the center of the community and I sent kids out to all the hospitals, all the health centers, they gathered information left and right, and we turned the barbershop into a health-information neighborhood center. After school, kids would sign up, march down, I marched with them three blocks from the school, and we had a blast handing out information to probably thousands of people from our barbershop. Played music, ran ads, and it was just an absolute blast. That was in 1975. And then I learned, from that, that if you give kids involvement in a community along with their schooling, if it goes hand in hand, you can make meaning out of what they’re learning in class, if you have them involved in the community after class.
Years later I am teaching at Lexington High School, a phenomenally different environment than Roxbury High School, and designed a course called “Community Problem Solving With Technology,” based after the barbershop. And so all my students were asked to go out in the world and find a real problem to solve first. Then we’ll figure out what technologies you need to learn later. The reverse basically of what we do today. And so one of my students—gotta tell you this one story—she had a disabled friend, and in a wheelchair, and she found out that there was no yellow pages for handicapped people in Greater Boston. So she decided her project was going to be similar to the barbershop, organize this massive amount of information. It turned out to be 97 agencies providing service to the disabled, across Greater Boston, and she built a database.
And in ‘94 I had some business connections and that went online in 1984. I get a call a couple weeks later from a professor at Boston University Medical School saying that one of his interns is working at an agency and my student’s database shows up linking all the agencies together online. They had never seen anything like this and, in fact, could he come and meet with my high school student who built the database. And I said, “Well I’m very busy, it’s the end of the school year.” And he said, “I don’t want to meet with you, I want to meet with your student.” And I, I kind of had to take a retake there; yeah, that was a moment. And, you know, how often does a professor call and ask to meet with one of your students? So the guy comes in, he brings a couple of his masters’ students in public health, one of them had experienced the database and they offer her a job. They want to know, if during the summer, this is spring time, during the summer, if she would run a seminar teaching his students how to design databases for the handicapped. And they want to take it across Massachusetts and into upstate New York. They want to greatly expand it.
They offer her a pretty good salary. She says she’ll take the job but not the salary, no money, and I’m saying, take the money, take the money. And she’s saying, no money. And afterwards, I talk to her and I said, “Why didn’t you take the money?” That was a lot of—and she needed the money. She said, “That’s my project, they’re helping me build on my project, I should be paying them.” So she taught me a lot about dignity and integrity of work. That if a kid is adding value to the world, using technology to make the world a better place, it’s absolutely fascinating what they’ll do without a grade, without money, just because they own the problem. They identified it, they own it, they built it; she felt responsible for it.
So what I want to do now is go further along in the stories. One of the questions I think is really important is, Are your students leaving a legacy? Are they contributing to the world? Are they creating content, creative content, technical content, any kind of content that adds value? Helps other people learn? Helps build a yellow pages for a database for the handicapped? There’s just unlimited numbers of real problems that connect all the way across the curriculum. There’s no limit but the imagination.
So another story. My daughter, about 2002, 2003, loves Harry Potter. And she’s the one who goes to the store at midnight, dressed up in character—I got to wait in line—and we buy the book. We come home, she’s reading the book in the car. By breakfast, the 750 pages is done and she wants another one. She came down and says “Daddy, when do you think J. K. Rowling is going to do another one?” I said, “Honey, I have no influence over J. K. Rowling, I just don’t know.” So she solves that problem by going on to
fanfiction.net
, she discovers fanfiction.net. Fanfiction.net, if you don’t know, is an early website where if you want to write in the style of any author, you go for it. And you publish it, and people around the world comment.
So she’s reading one chapter after another in the style of J. K. Rowling by kids around the world. Building network, this is before Facebook, this is before MySpace, before a whole bunch of stuff. My 13-year-old is busy doing all this. And then I said, “Honey, you should write one of these chapters, you’re a great writer.” She says, “No, Daddy, I’m a better critic than I am an original writer. I’m just criticizing.” That’s what she did; she just criticized other people. She loves that. And then one day she comes down and she says, “Dad, I have a great idea. I’m going to give the Golden Cauldron Award.” I said, “What’s the Golden Cauldron?” She said, “I made that up. I’m gonna put out on FanFiction that this award is up for the best absolute writer honoring the style of J. K. Rowling.” And I said, “Well who’s on your committee?” She said, “I’m the Golden Cauldron; no one’s on the committee, just me.”
So she gives the award and I look at the finalists, and one of these is a 13-year-old girl who has 10 chapters. And I am fascinated by how she gets better and better and better, the writing just clearly progresses. So I start showing this in workshops (bet there’s some people in the room who’ve seen me do that). And one day I am giving a workshop to middle school kids and their teachers and you’re not going to believe this: As I’m showing the work of this chapter, there’s a buzz in the middle of the auditorium with these middle school kids and their teachers. The girl is sitting in the room and I don’t know it. I’m showing her work to her and the rest of the faculty. So that’s quite an embarrassing moment.
And I took advantage of it, and she came up and did a cameo and explained to the assembled how she gets an account, how she writes, how she builds networks of other writers, and how she promotes, and it was fantastic. Afterwards, there was a line of kids wanting to talk to her about getting a free account in fanfiction.net. The most remarkable part of that story, though, is that the teacher, the English teacher’s waiting for me. And the English teacher says, “I just want you to know she’s not a great student.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Well, she doesn’t get her homework in, she doesn’t participate as much as she used to, it’s going down.”
And that was one of those schools where I had to stay overnight, so I found that girl later at dinner and I said, “What’s with your homework? You’re doing all this work on FanFiction, clearly you can get your homework done.” And she said, “Well, I decided that when I wake up I have to make a decision now. Do I write for my teachers or do I publish for the world? That’s a really important decision and more and more, the answer is, publish for the world.” And that was in 2003, again, before lots of kids had that kind of global capacity. But I realized, oh my gosh, what if all kids get a voice? What if all kids figure out they can do something like FanFiction? Now they are. Now I get it, that lots of kids want to have a global voice.
A lot of technology is about improving teaching, which is why so many teachers show up in staff development without kids. That has to change. We have to get a lot more kids into staff development. And teach them how to build that same capacity with whatever tools we are giving teachers, kids to kids.
In the United States, if you ask teachers, “Who works harder, students or teachers?” lots of teachers will tell you the teachers work harder than the kids. This has been the tipping point. I talked to Silvia this morning. The teacher in this class now understands that the kids work harder than she does for the first time in her career, because she shifted the ownership of learning to the kids. And every kid is making a contribution every day. That’s much better than the barbershop. You don’t need a barbershop anymore.
Give me more work. This is not like students asking for more homework; it’s more work to make a contribution. That’s when I think students will ask for a lot more work. And my time is up and I want to just point out none of this means that teachers are less important. What it really means is teachers are more important than ever, because this is a change in the culture, a change in the ecology of learning. This is not about adding technology; it’s a fundamental shift in relationships and roles and the feeling of empowerment that students have when they create a legacy. Thanks for listening.
Source: November, A. (2011). TEDxNYED. March 5. Ted Talk given in 2011 by Alan November. Used with permission of Alan November.
Summary
Alan November’s TED Talk is a chronological view of what he has learned from his students over the past 30 years. He proposes the idea that real work that is purposeful and creative results in authentic products that engage students in their learning, as well as with the technological tools required to solve problems. When students are engaged in this way, they work harder and ultimately leave a global legacy.
November provides examples of problem-based learning as a means to think about the evolving role for teachers as the culture of learning changes. He challenges educators to acknowledge the inevitable shifts in power, authority, and audience when students take responsibility for their own learning.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. November describes classrooms in which students are actually asking for more work—not homework specifically—but more work that “makes a contribution.” Teachers and school leaders might argue that the fast and sometimes standardized pacing that demands learning basic skills precludes too much of this kind of curricular innovation. How might you argue for a curriculum that enables both skill building and making a contribution through creative problem solving?
2. One of the central tenets of November’s argument is that it is essential for schools and teachers to help students engage with their communities. How might teachers think about what constitutes a community in which students can find, name, and work on real problems in and through social networks? How might teachers assist students in exploring those communities?
3. November asserts that professional development for educators should include students. What would such professional development look like? What would be the goals of teacher/student professional development? What kinds of tasks and activities might occur?
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5.2 Mapping the Journey: Seeing the Big Picture, by Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss
Introduction
This excerpt is from the first chapter of Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss’ 2007 book, Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age. Suzie Boss is a founding board member of the Learning Innovation and Technology Consortium. She is also a writer and editor at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, for which she co-authored the book, Learners, Language, and Technology, which focuses on technology to support early literacy.
A former teacher in Oregon schools, Jane Krauss has long been an advocate for technology integration practices in elementary education. As director of professional development services at the International Society for Technology in Education, Krauss has traveled internationally, delivering professional development workshops and presentations focused on technology integration.
Boss and Krauss underscore the importance of real-world learning that engages students with their communities. They note the importance of such projects that are “powered by contemporary technologies.” The authors discuss how new generations of students are already “plugged in,” providing 21st century educators with new platforms for engaging with them and their worlds.
These approaches are not new in K–20 education. Projects and problem-based outcomes have been topics of curriculum designers and researchers for more than 100 years, beginning with the work of William H. Kilpatrick and the Project Method in 1918. These authors suggest that educators need to look more closely at how and when such projects occur, and how they are or are not integrated into the lived curriculum in classrooms. Projects are often relegated to culminating activities or extra credit artistic products that are add-ons rather than integral elements in teaching and learning. Boss and Krauss recommend otherwise.
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from Boss, S., & Krauss, J. (2007). Mapping the journey: Seeing the big picture. In Reinventing project-based learning: Your field guide to real-world projects in the digital age (pp. 11–24). Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.
Project-based learning—powered by contemporary technologies—is a strategy certain to turn traditional classrooms upside down. When students learn by engaging in real-world projects, nearly every aspect of their experience changes. The teacher’s role shifts. He or she is no longer the content expert, doling out information in bite-sized pieces. Student behavior also changes. Instead of following the teacher’s lead, learners pursue their own questions to create their own meaning. Even the boundaries of the classroom change. Teachers still design the project as the framework for learning, but students may wind up using technology to access and analyze information from all corners of the globe. Connections among learners and experts can happen in real time. That means new kinds of learning communities can come together to discuss, debate, and exchange ideas.
The phrase “21st-century learning” slipped into use long before the calendar rolled over to 2000. A robust debate about the needs of digital-age learners and the workforce needs of the new century continues to engage a global audience. The business world demands employees who know how to work as a team, access and analyze information, and think creatively to solve problems. In the academic world and the blogosphere, educators routinely call for new strategies to better connect with the plugged-in generation known as the millennials. But with the new century now well underway, the shift in teaching necessary to realize this vision is far from complete.
You may already be familiar with traditional project-based learning, which has been shown to be effective in increasing student motivation and improving students’ problem-solving and higher-order thinking skills (Stites, 1998). In project-based learning, students investigate open-ended questions and apply their knowledge to produce authentic products. Projects typically allow for student choice, setting the stage for active learning and teamwork.
Reinventing the project approach doesn’t mean discarding this venerable model. Rather, we advocate building on what we already know is good about project-based learning. By maximizing the use of digital tools to reach essential learning goals, teachers can overcome the boundaries and limitations of the traditional classroom. Some tools open new windows onto student thinking, setting the stage for more productive classroom conversations. Others facilitate the process of drafting and refining, removing obstacles to improvement. Still others allow for instant global connections, redefining the meaning of a learning community. When teachers thoughtfully integrate these tools, the result is like a “turbo boost” that can take project-based learning into a new orbit.
What are the hallmarks of this reinvigorated approach to projects?
· Projects form the centerpiece of the curriculum—they are not an add-on or extra at the end of a “real” unit.
· Students engage in real-world activities and practice the strategies of authentic disciplines.
· Students work collaboratively to solve problems that matter to them.
· Technology is integrated as a tool for discovery, collaboration, and communication, taking learners places they couldn’t otherwise go and helping teachers achieve essential learning goals in new ways.
· Increasingly, teachers collaborate to design and implement projects that cross geographic boundaries or even jump time zones.
Source: Boss, S. & Krauss, J. (2007). Mapping the journey: Seeing the big picture. In Reinventing project based learning: Your field guide to real-world projects in the digital age. Washington, DC: ISTE.
Summary
Boss and Krauss present familiar elements of project-based learning while introducing new elements engendered by the integration of technology into the process. They emphasize the importance of relevance and collaboration among teachers as well as students. They claim that it is time for a more contemporary, cutting-edge perspective on project-based learning that extends the classroom parameters, noting the potential for project-based learning to involve students, teachers, and other experts from around the world.
The excerpt mentions technological tools that extend students’ thinking and can prepare students to engage in new types of conversations in classrooms, both virtually and face to face. Boss and Krauss propose that technology can remove obstacles that teachers and students face in project-based learning initiatives.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. Researchers have proposed that in order to fully understand the impact of collaborative problem solving such as Boss and Krauss suggest, we need to assess participation, teacher support, and information search capability. In order to be successful in a project-based or problem-based learning curriculum, students need all three of these components. How would you collect evidence of these three characteristics in a project-based, technology-rich learning environment? How would you use the results of such evidence to improve the experience for and with students?
2. One of the key concepts for this chapter is the increasing need for authentic audiences in the 21st century curriculum. Imagine that you are presenting to a school board or board of trustees about problem-solving approaches in a technologically supported learning classroom. How would you describe who such authentic audiences might be for students’ work?
3. What portion of curriculum that you currently teach or have taught is problem- or project-based, using technological tools in the way that Boss and Krauss describe? What would be required to increase the time and attention to such approaches in your curriculum?
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5.2 Mapping the Journey: Seeing the Big Picture, by Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss
Introduction
This excerpt is from the first chapter of Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss’ 2007 book, Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age. Suzie Boss is a founding board member of the Learning Innovation and Technology Consortium. She is also a writer and editor at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, for which she co-authored the book, Learners, Language, and Technology, which focuses on technology to support early literacy.
A former teacher in Oregon schools, Jane Krauss has long been an advocate for technology integration practices in elementary education. As director of professional development services at the International Society for Technology in Education, Krauss has traveled internationally, delivering professional development workshops and presentations focused on technology integration.
Boss and Krauss underscore the importance of real-world learning that engages students with their communities. They note the importance of such projects that are “powered by contemporary technologies.” The authors discuss how new generations of students are already “plugged in,” providing 21st century educators with new platforms for engaging with them and their worlds.
These approaches are not new in K–20 education. Projects and problem-based outcomes have been topics of curriculum designers and researchers for more than 100 years, beginning with the work of William H. Kilpatrick and the Project Method in 1918. These authors suggest that educators need to look more closely at how and when such projects occur, and how they are or are not integrated into the lived curriculum in classrooms. Projects are often relegated to culminating activities or extra credit artistic products that are add-ons rather than integral elements in teaching and learning. Boss and Krauss recommend otherwise.
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from Boss, S., & Krauss, J. (2007). Mapping the journey: Seeing the big picture. In Reinventing project-based learning: Your field guide to real-world projects in the digital age (pp. 11–24). Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.
Project-based learning—powered by contemporary technologies—is a strategy certain to turn traditional classrooms upside down. When students learn by engaging in real-world projects, nearly every aspect of their experience changes. The teacher’s role shifts. He or she is no longer the content expert, doling out information in bite-sized pieces. Student behavior also changes. Instead of following the teacher’s lead, learners pursue their own questions to create their own meaning. Even the boundaries of the classroom change. Teachers still design the project as the framework for learning, but students may wind up using technology to access and analyze information from all corners of the globe. Connections among learners and experts can happen in real time. That means new kinds of learning communities can come together to discuss, debate, and exchange ideas.
The phrase “21st-century learning” slipped into use long before the calendar rolled over to 2000. A robust debate about the needs of digital-age learners and the workforce needs of the new century continues to engage a global audience. The business world demands employees who know how to work as a team, access and analyze information, and think creatively to solve problems. In the academic world and the blogosphere, educators routinely call for new strategies to better connect with the plugged-in generation known as the millennials. But with the new century now well underway, the shift in teaching necessary to realize this vision is far from complete.
You may already be familiar with traditional project-based learning, which has been shown to be effective in increasing student motivation and improving students’ problem-solving and higher-order thinking skills (Stites, 1998). In project-based learning, students investigate open-ended questions and apply their knowledge to produce authentic products. Projects typically allow for student choice, setting the stage for active learning and teamwork.
Reinventing the project approach doesn’t mean discarding this venerable model. Rather, we advocate building on what we already know is good about project-based learning. By maximizing the use of digital tools to reach essential learning goals, teachers can overcome the boundaries and limitations of the traditional classroom. Some tools open new windows onto student thinking, setting the stage for more productive classroom conversations. Others facilitate the process of drafting and refining, removing obstacles to improvement. Still others allow for instant global connections, redefining the meaning of a learning community. When teachers thoughtfully integrate these tools, the result is like a “turbo boost” that can take project-based learning into a new orbit.
What are the hallmarks of this reinvigorated approach to projects?
· Projects form the centerpiece of the curriculum—they are not an add-on or extra at the end of a “real” unit.
· Students engage in real-world activities and practice the strategies of authentic disciplines.
· Students work collaboratively to solve problems that matter to them.
· Technology is integrated as a tool for discovery, collaboration, and communication, taking learners places they couldn’t otherwise go and helping teachers achieve essential learning goals in new ways.
· Increasingly, teachers collaborate to design and implement projects that cross geographic boundaries or even jump time zones.
Source: Boss, S. & Krauss, J. (2007). Mapping the journey: Seeing the big picture. In Reinventing project based learning: Your field guide to real-world projects in the digital age. Washington, DC: ISTE.
Summary
Boss and Krauss present familiar elements of project-based learning while introducing new elements engendered by the integration of technology into the process. They emphasize the importance of relevance and collaboration among teachers as well as students. They claim that it is time for a more contemporary, cutting-edge perspective on project-based learning that extends the classroom parameters, noting the potential for project-based learning to involve students, teachers, and other experts from around the world.
The excerpt mentions technological tools that extend students’ thinking and can prepare students to engage in new types of conversations in classrooms, both virtually and face to face. Boss and Krauss propose that technology can remove obstacles that teachers and students face in project-based learning initiatives.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. Researchers have proposed that in order to fully understand the impact of collaborative problem solving such as Boss and Krauss suggest, we need to assess participation, teacher support, and information search capability. In order to be successful in a project-based or problem-based learning curriculum, students need all three of these components. How would you collect evidence of these three characteristics in a project-based, technology-rich learning environment? How would you use the results of such evidence to improve the experience for and with students?
2. One of the key concepts for this chapter is the increasing need for authentic audiences in the 21st century curriculum. Imagine that you are presenting to a school board or board of trustees about problem-solving approaches in a technologically supported learning classroom. How would you describe who such authentic audiences might be for students’ work?
3. What portion of curriculum that you currently teach or have taught is problem- or project-based, using technological tools in the way that Boss and Krauss describe? What would be required to increase the time and attention to such approaches in your curriculum?
5.3 Power Up Their Imaginations, by Jane McGonigal
Introduction
Jane McGonigal is a world-renowned game developer for organizations such as the World Bank, the New York Public Library, the American Heart Association, and the International Olympics Committee. As a future forecaster, she advises companies such as Microsoft, Disney, Activision, and Wells Fargo.
In this excerpt, she describes the Quest to Learn charter school in Chicago, Illinois, which opened its doors in 2009 after two years of curriculum design and strategic planning, directed by a joint team of educators and professional game developers, and made possible by funding from the MacArthur Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. At this school, for half of the school day, students receive points instead of letter grades and conduct missions, reaching levels of success and exchanging expertise with other players. In short, part of the school’s curriculum is based on game theory. McGonigal contends that schools in the 21st century would benefit from paying attention to the video games that so many young people and children play.
This article builds on the November and Boss and Krauss pieces in that it supports the notion of problem-based learning in which students pace themselves and seek out the tools and skills that they need in order to achieve their own levels of success. The focus for McGonigal remains on real-world situations and issues, but she addresses them specifically through the lens of gaming. Game theory is beginning to influence curriculum in the 21st century; just how much teachers and school leaders are able to learn and integrate into teaching and learning remains to be seen.
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from McGonigal, J. (2011). Power up their imaginations. Times Educational Supplement, (4966), 4.
Quest to Learn is a public charter school in New York City for students in Grades 6–12 (equivalent to years 7–13). It’s the first game-based school in the world—but its founders hope it will serve as a model for schools worldwide.
* * *
It’s run by principal Aaron B. Schwartz, a graduate of Yale University and a 10-year veteran teacher and administrator in the New York City Department of Education. Meanwhile, the development of the school’s curriculum and schedule has been led by Katie Salen, a 10-year veteran of the game industry and a leading researcher of how kids learn by playing games.
In many ways, the college-preparatory curriculum is like any other school’s—the students learn math, science, geography, English, history, foreign languages, computers and arts in different blocks throughout the day. But it’s how they learn that’s different: students are engaged in gameful activities from the moment they wake up in the morning to the moment they finish up their final homework assignment at night. The schedule of a sixth-grader named Rai can help us better understand a day in the life of a Quest student.
7.15 a.m. Rai is “questing” before she even gets to school. She’s working on a secret mission, a math assignment that she discovered hidden in one of the books in the school library yesterday. She exchanges text messages with her friends, Joe and Celia, as soon as she gets up, in order to make plans to meet at school early. Their goal: break the mathematical code before any of the other students discover it.
This isn’t a mandatory assignment—it’s a secret assignment, an opt-in learning quest. Not only do they not have to complete it, they actually have to earn the right to complete it, by discovering its secret location. Having a secret mission means you’re not learning and practicing fractions because you have to do it. You’re working toward a self-chosen goal, and an exciting one at that: decoding a secret message before anyone else. Obviously, not all schoolwork can be special, secret missions. But when every book could contain a secret code, every room a clue, every handout a puzzle, who wouldn’t show up to school more likely to fully participate, in the hopes of being the first to find the secret challenges?
9.00 a.m. In English class, Rai isn’t trying to earn a good grade today. Instead, she’s trying to level up. She’s working her way through a storytelling unit and she already has five points. That makes her just seven points shy of a “master” storyteller status. She’s hoping to add another point to her total today by completing a creative writing mission. She might not be the first student in her class to become a storytelling master, but she doesn’t have to worry about missing her opportunity. As long as she’s willing to tackle more quests, she can work her way up to the top level and earn her equivalent of an A grade.
Levelling up is a much more egalitarian model of success than a traditional letter-grading system based on the bell curve. Everyone can level up, as long as they keep working hard. Levelling up can replace or complement traditional letter grades that students have just one shot at earning. And if you fail a quest, there is no permanent damage done to your report card. You just have to try more quests to earn enough points to get the score you want. This system of “grading” replaces negative stress with positive stress, helping students focus more on learning and less on performing.
11.45 a.m. Rai logs on to a school computer to update her profile in the “expertise exchange,” where all the students advertise their learning superpowers. She’s going to declare herself a master at mapmaking. She didn’t even realize mapmaking could count as an area of expertise. She does it for fun, outside of school, making maps of her favorite 3D virtual worlds to help other players navigate them better.
Her geography teacher, Mr. Smiley, saw one of her maps and told her that eighth-graders were just about to start a group quest to locate “hidden histories” of Africa: they would look for clues about the past in everyday objects like trade beads, tapestries and pots. They would need a good digital mapmaker to help them plot the stories about the objects according to where they were found, and to design a map that would be fun for other students to explore.
The expertise exchange works just like video-game social-network profiles that advertise what games you’re good at and like to play, as well as the online matchmaking systems that help players find new teammates. These systems are designed to encourage and facilitate collaboration. By identifying your strengths and interests publicly, you increase the chances that you will be called on to do work that you’re good at. In the classroom, this means students are more likely to find ways to contribute successfully to team projects. And the chance to do something you’re good at as part of a larger project helps students build real esteem among their peers—not empty self-esteem based on nothing other than wanting to feel good about yourself, but actual respect and high regard based on contributions you have made.
2.15 p.m. On Fridays, the school always has a guest speaker, or “secret ally.” Today, the secret ally is a musician named Jason, who uses computer programs to make music. After giving a live demonstration with his laptop, he announces that he’ll be back in a few weeks to help the students as a coach on their upcoming “boss level.”
For the boss level, students will form teams and compose their own music. Every team will have a different part to play—and rumor has it that several mathematical specialists will be needed to work on the computer code. Rai really wants to qualify for one of those spots, so she plans to spend extra time over the next two weeks working harder on her math assignments.
As the Quest website explains, boss levels are “two-week ‘intensive’ (units) where students apply knowledge and skills to date to propose solutions to complex problems.”
“Boss level” is a term taken directly from video games. In a boss level, you face a boss monster, or some equivalent thereof—a monster so intimidating it requires you to draw on everything you have learned and mastered in the game so far. It’s the equivalent of a mid-term or final exam. Boss levels are notoriously hard but immensely satisfying to beat. Quest schedules boss levels at various points in the school year, in order to fire students up about putting their lessons into action. Students get to tackle an epic challenge—and there’s no shame in failing. It’s a boss level, and so, just like any good game, it’s meant to whet your appetite to try harder and practice more.
Like collaborative quests, the boss levels are tackled in teams, and each student must qualify to play a particular role—”mathematical specialist,” for example. Just as in a big World of Warcraft raid, each participant is expected to play to his or her strengths. This is one of Quest’s key strategies for giving students better hopes of success. Beyond the basic core curriculum, students spend most of their time getting better at subjects and activities—ones they have a natural talent for or already know how to do well. This strategy means every student is set up to truly excel at something, and to focus attention on the areas in which he or she is most likely to one day become extraordinary.
6.00 p.m. Rai is at home, interacting with a virtual character named Betty. Rai’s goal is to teach Betty how to divide mixed numbers. Betty is what Quest calls a “teachable agent”—”an assessment tool where kids teach a digital character how to solve a particular problem.” In other words, Betty is a software program designed to know less than Rai. And it’s Rai’s job to “teach” the program by demonstrating solutions and working patiently with Betty until she gets it.
At Quest, these teachable agents replace quizzes, easing the anxiety associated with having to perform under pressure. With a teachable agent, you’re not being tested to see if you have really learnt something. Instead, you’re mentoring someone because you really have learned something and this is your chance to show it. There’s a powerful element of naches—vicarious pride—involved here: the more a student learns, the more he or she can pass it on. This is a core dynamic of how learning works in good video games and, at Quest, it’s perfectly translated into a scalable assessment system.
Secret missions, boss levels, expertise exchanges, special agents, points, and levels instead of letter grades—there’s no doubt that Quest to Learn is a different kind of learning environment, about as radically different a mission as any charter school has set out in recent memory. It’s an unprecedented infusion of gamefulness into the state school system. And the result is a learning environment where students get to share secret knowledge, turn their intellectual strengths into superpowers, tackle epic challenges and fail without fear.
Source: McGonigal, J. (2011). Power up their imaginations. Times Educational Supplement, 4966 (Nov. 4, 2011): 4. © 2011 Jane McGonigal. Reproduced by the kind permission of the author and TES.
Summary
McGonigal describes a typical day in the life of a student named Rai at the Quest to Learn school in Chicago. As she does so, she introduces the key practices in game-based learning: (a) secret missions with student-driven goals; (b) leveling up, a self-assessment tool for students to gauge their progress; (c) expertise exchange through which students “advertise their superpowers,” thereby building capacity for all to learn from each other; and (d) boss levels in which students “get to tackle an epic challenge—and there’s no shame in failing. It’s a boss level, and so, just like any good game, it’s meant to whet your appetite to try harder and practice more.” For Rai, learning continues beyond the school day as she becomes the teacher for her virtual student who must also solve a problem.
All of these practices reflect a philosophy for curriculum and instruction in which students participate fully and collaboratively in traditional curriculum design components—quite simply, why (goals) what (content), how (instruction), and how well (assessment). But in this school, these components are structured in the context of games. This shift necessitates changes in language as well as substance. Futurist Jane McGonigal writes that this approach is unprecedented in a public school system.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. McGonigal is a futurist who looks forward in order to promote educative practices that can be implemented in the present. On her website, she recommends Superstruct, a 10-year forecast tool to help leaders, designers and innovators stay ahead of current trends and prepare for the future. How can educators prepare themselves as instructors, mentors, and researchers for the next decade? How might schools and universities embed futurist dialogue, led by thinkers such as McGonigal, into their strategic planning?
2. Charter schools are designed to be sites in which innovative educators can test ideas to reach students. Sometimes those ideas work well in the charter school context but do not seem to adapt well to scaling up to a large number of schools or an entire school district. Why might that be the case with a school based on a game theory such as Quest to Learn? Further, what resources (people, time, space, materials) would be necessary to scale up a game-oriented approach to 21st century curriculum?
3. One theme in McGonigal’s text is the necessity and value of failing. Schools have traditionally had specific approaches and interventions to address failure that often involve remediation, retention, suspension, and dismissal. What does gaming teach the educational community about the nature, impact, and positive outcomes related to failure that is intentional and part of a learning environment culture?
4. Imaginative approaches to curriculum and instruction, such as the approach at Quest to Learn charter school require new skills, language, and dispositions for educators, particularly those who have not been raised in a video game household. If you were a team leader or district curriculum coordinator, how would you approach professional development to seek and support teachers as they take risks and learn to teach using gaming approaches?
5.4 Digital Citizenship for Educational Change, by Mike Ribble
Introduction
In this article, Mike Ribble explicitly relates the expertise and commitment to digital technology with educational change. He names the specific components of digital citizenship that we must focus on in order to move toward a more broadly defined educational change. Ribble reminds readers that students are increasingly savvy with digital tools, including smart phone, tablets, and social networking applications. He asserts that teachers and school leaders must catch up with their own students.
Ribble’s argument in the ongoing discussion of the curriculum for the 21st century is that the elements of digital citizenship, including digital access, commerce, communication, literacy, etiquette, law, rights and responsibilities, health and wellness, and security are all skills that must be addressed by adults both in and outside the traditional classroom.
Ribble’s article articulates why digital citizenship is important for this century. He responds to objections by describing students who are excessively immersed in media and Internet consumption as sometimes failing in school because digital citizenship has not been explicitly addressed as part of the curriculum. He claims that many school leaders are unwilling to construct curriculum related to digital citizenship because of their own lack of familiarity with these elements, and thus business continues as usual.
A familiar response to the call for digital citizenship is that technology is changing so fast that curriculum design cannot keep pace. Ribble maintains that a careful integration of digital citizenship within and across disciplines can meet the needs of students and teachers as a focus of ongoing, dynamic study in which everyone learns.
Finally, Ribble emphasizes that, “Digital citizenship is not a topic separate from the rest of the curriculum, but spans across all areas of education.” If one of the concepts driving 21st century curriculum is that content is both integrative as well as discipline-specific, Ribble’s comments deserve thoughtful consideration for schooling.
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from Ribble, M. (2012). Digital citizenship for educational change. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 48(4), 148–151.
Students are coming to school with more and more exposure to digital tools, such as smartphones, tablets, and social networking apps (Rideout, Foehr, and Roberts 2010). Though teachers are trying to “catch up” with their students, many were not provided instruction in these skills during their preservice training, and technology is only one among many topics in competition for district in-service time. Schools have an increasing need to provide not only the tools, but also the training for technology in the classroom. As technology changes the foundation of education, new issues emerge. Among these is the appropriate and responsible use of technology in the educational field-digital citizenship.
In 2008, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) updated its National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for teachers. In that revision, ISTE (2008, 2) identified “Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility” among five technology standards. For many educators, digital citizenship is not a familiar term. Most are not trained on this topic and are unprepared to teach it to their students. Yet, they should be.
So why are educators encouraged to understand and teach digital citizenship? First, as more schools move to 1:1 initiatives, it has become clear that educators and-in extension? their students must understand digital citizenship and the issues it entails (Kiker 2011). In addition, the changes that are occurring at the governmental level are now beginning to require that schools address the issues of digital citizenship or risk loss of funding. On June 4, 2010, the Online Safety and Technology Working Group (OSTWG) released its report titled Youth Safety on a Living Internet (2010). That group submitted its recommendations to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which in turn identified the promotion of digital citizenship in P–12 education as a national priority. The OSTWG (2010, 20) report advocated that educators “in the process of teaching regular subjects, teach the constructive, mindful use of social media enabled by digital citizenship and new-media-literacy training.”
Moreover, with new recommendations being submitted to Congress, educators need to help their students become more technologically literate. As organizations such as the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) begin to look at addressing skills for 21st century citizenship, schools and districts will need to focus on these needs (P21 2012). Teachers, therefore, must acquire and learn to teach the skills to be applied in their classrooms.
New Technology Skills
What basic proficiencies in digital citizenship do teachers need? Because the scope of digital citizenship is wide-ranging, educators may be hesitant to attempt teaching digital-age skills in their classrooms. This breadth of knowledge, as well as the sensitivity of the subject matter, concerns teachers, who may view digital citizenship as a technology problem rather than a societal issue that affects everyone. Indeed, the subject matter is sensitive, with concerns ranging from cell phone etiquette to cyberbullying and sexting. Further, these topics often become sensationalized in the popular press and confused with other technological topics affecting students, such as identity protection, online theft, and information privacy—all of which are concerns for users of digital technology.
What educators need to recognize are the concerns that are affecting their school and students, whether these are technology related or not. Too often schools hide behind their Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) in an attempt to address technology problems of a few students without identifying the underlying needs. Teachers are using these tools, but also must understand how students are affected by these technologies over time. Districts must begin a process of educating students as OSTWG has recommended. A process needs to be in place so that all teachers can learn and understand the skills and concepts involved in digital citizenship.
Though the issues are broad, various groups and organizations have attempted to give the topic of digital citizenship clearer definition. The prior NETS for teachers defined this area as “social, ethical, legal, and human issues surrounding the use of technology” (ISTE 2000, 9). In its update, ISTE (2008, 2) recognized the importance of addressing this issue on an even larger scale. In the background of this goal, NETS states, “Teachers understand local and global societal issues and responsibilities in an evolving digital culture and exhibit legal and ethical behavior in their professional practices.” In another far-reaching definition, Collier (2009) expressed digital citizenship as “critical thinking and ethical choices about the content and impact on oneself, others, and one’s community of what one sees, says, and produces with media, devices, and technologies.”
One of the most encompassing and succinct definitions comes from Digital Citizenship in Schools, in which Ribble and Bailey (2007, 10) described digital citizenship as the “norms of appropriate, responsible behavior with regard to technology use.” While this definition is broad, it covers many aspects of technology and the people that use it. To help focus the conversation, this definition also includes a framework of nine elements that help to define and organize the topics being addressed with regard to technology. The nine elements of digital citizenship (Ribble and Bailey 2007) are outlined here.
Digital Access: full electronic participation in society—allowing all technology users to participate fully in a digital society if they choose. Educators can help students understand this topic by identifying what technology tools are available at school as well as in the student’s home. Then discuss how these tools can help students in the classroom.
Digital Commerce: electronic buying and selling of goods—providing the knowledge and protection to buy and sell in a digital world. Help students identify safe websites when providing sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, by looking for https: or a lock on the URL bar or in the bottom corner of a webpage. Have students talk with their parents to identify safe sites if they purchase items online.
Digital Communication: electronic exchange of information—understanding the options of the digital communication methods and when they are appropriate. Help students understand when different tools might be most effective, such as using e-mail for more formal communication and tweeting for casual conversations with friends.
Digital Literacy: process of teaching and learning about technology and the use of technology—learning about and teaching others how to use digital technologies appropriately. Provide explanations on how to use the technology tools in the classroom. Do not assume that all students are familiar with them or know how to use them appropriately. Also, take advantage of any opportunity for a “flipped classroom” moment, where students may be able to support the teacher as well as other students in the classroom.
Digital Etiquette: electronic standards of conduct or procedure—being considerate of others when using digital technologies. Explain that technology use is often personal, but its use can affect others (e.g., talking loudly on a cell phone around others). Allow students to provide experiences they have had with technology and discuss how situations might have been handled better.
Digital Law: electronic responsibility for actions and deeds—having an awareness of laws (rules, policies) that govern the use of digital technologies. Discuss with students the technology rules that are in the school as well as in their homes. Have them explain why these rules are necessary.
Digital Rights and Responsibilities: those requirements and freedoms extended to everyone in a digital world—protecting the digital rights of others while defending individual rights. Help students to see that technology provides many privileges; and to keep those privileges, students need to facilitate their own and others’ use of technology in an appropriate manner.
Digital Health and Wellness: physical and psychological well-being in a digital technology world—understanding the risks (both physically and psychologically) that may accompany the use of digital technologies. Identify with students how much technology may be too much (e.g., sitting for long periods of time, eye strain) and how they can balance its use with other activities.
Digital Security (self-protection): electronic precautions to guarantee safety—protecting personal information while taking precautions to protect others’ data as well. Provide examples of not sharing and protecting information online; define how much information may be too much.
These nine elements provide a scaffold for addressing the needs that are arising with respect to technology in schools. These elements also identify skill areas that can be addressed in the classroom. By breaking this topic into these nine areas, educators can begin to discuss the information in an organized way. Also, teachers can talk about digital communication on topics such as when and where to send a text message and the perception of others when texting is being used.
Too often educators do not want to begin discussing these issues because they themselves are not well-informed of the recent developments and events related to technology. But parsing the discussion into manageable topics can allow one idea to build on another over time. While identifying these elements is important, it is not enough. Educators need to provide resources to students (and sometimes to parents) that build understanding of what would be considered appropriate to a digital citizen. Using examples from the nine elements of digital citizenship helps define the types of inappropriate activities that might occur.
Skills for the Future
Why is the topic of digital citizenship important to students and their future? This is the world that these students are growing up in, and schools need to be a part of this process. In a Kaiser Family Foundation study (Rideout et al., 2010) of students that were heavy users of media (more than 16 hours a day), nearly half earned only fair to poor grades. Students need to understand the long-term impact of excessive media consumption.
Perhaps not all of these topics dealing with appropriate technology use will fit within the curriculum, but educators need to be aware that their students are coming to school with these questions and concerns. There may be situations where students use their technology inappropriately outside of school, which become issues for the teacher and school community. Now that Internet and social networking applications can be used on a cell phone, these events can occur at any time, both in school and out. While the technologies may change, the concepts of using these tools appropriately will remain the same. This is why teaching these skills to students (even as young as prekindergarten) may become a priority for schools.
Technology Skills Development
Teachers must learn more about digital citizenship. There are a growing number of resources that are being made available on this topic. The book Digital Citizenship in Schools (Ribble and Bailey 2007) and its companion book for parents, Raising a Digital Child (Ribble, 2009), cover the concepts of the nine elements in much more detail. The website
http://www.digitalcitizenship.org
also has some basic information.
Common Sense Media has updated its website to include topics and information related to digital citizenship. This site provides information and activities for educators and students to better understand the topics surrounding technology. Another site launched more recently by the U.S. government is
http://www.admongo.gov
. That website helps students discern the information of digital commerce and decide what information is true and what is not. Other resources provide educators with a wealth of information. Most of the content on these pages is free and available to educators.
Once the information about digital citizenship has been identified, the concepts and ideas can be integrated into the classroom and discussed in an organized fashion. By understanding the elements of digital citizenship, teachers will be able to address the issues that students are having with technology both in the classroom and at home. Connecting with other teachers to discuss the problems they may be having in the classroom can help to find strategies that work in other schools or districts. Digital citizenship is not a topic separate from the rest of the curriculum, but spans across all areas of education. Today, more than any time in history, students need to become global citizens, and the use of technology provides a conduit for those connections. The themes within digital citizenship help educators to explain these ideas to students.
Closing Thoughts
Now is the time to begin making changes in the classroom. Students already are coming to school with this knowledge, and now teachers need to catch up. Educators need to look to the tools that are available and work with their technology personnel to set a path for where and what they want to do to ensure digital citizenship in their schools. It is true that technology continues to change, but schools and districts need to begin setting a direction for how to use the tools of technology and provide the best education for students. The technology is only part of the equation; it needs to be coupled with solid, tested educational curriculum.
Ideally, the focus on areas such as digital citizenship in schools will begin the process of creating an organized plan for how to integrate these ideas into lessons. As the impact of technology continues to grow, both inside schools and out, the skills needed to become effective digital citizens will be ever increasing. Educators can no longer wait for the next digital tool or federal mandate to be released. Digital citizenship education is needed today.
References
Collier, A. (2009). A definition of digital literacy & citizenship. NetFamily News, September 15. Available at:
http://www.netfamilynews.org/2009/09/definition-of-digital -literacy.html
Common Sense Media. (2010). Digital citizenship. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense Media. Available at:
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/curriculum/k-5
International Society for Technology in Education. (2000). National education standards. Washington, DC: ISTE. Available at:
http://www.iste.org/standards/standards-for-teachers
International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education standards. Washington, DC: ISTE. Available at:
www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers.aspx
Kiker, R. 2011. 5 strategies for 1 to 1 classroom management. 1 to 1 Schools website, March 18 post. Available at:
http://1to1schools.net/2011/03/5-strategies-for-1-to-1-class room-management/
Online Safety and Technology Working Group. 2010. Youth safety on a living Internet. Washington, DC. OSTWG. Available at:
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/reports/2010/OSTWG_Final_Report_060410.pdf
Partnership for 21st Century Skills. 2012. Website home page. Washington, DC: P21. Available at:
www.p21.org
Ribble, M. 2009. Raising a digital child. Eugene, OR: HomePage Books/International Society for Technology in Education.
Ribble, M., and G. Bailey. 2007. Digital citizenship in schools. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.
Rideout, V., U. G. Foehr, and D. F. Roberts. 2010. Generation M2: Media in the fives of 8- to 18-year-olds. Menlo Park, CA: The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Source: Ribble, M. (2012). Digital citizenship for educational change. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 48(4), 148–151. Routledge Informa Ltd.
Summary
Ribble’s article defines digital citizenship in several ways, using the language from ISTE, NETS, and his own book, Digital Citizenship in Schools. He then names nine general elements that constitute digital citizenship for most in these domains.
Ribble notes that Congress continues to examine skills needed more generally for students in the 21st century, and technology skills remain central to that dialogue. Because students need digital citizenship skills, teachers obviously do too. The author writes that the subject is overwhelming to many educators; thus there is a need to break the topic down into essential elements, which he briefly reviews in this excerpt. The nine elements are relevant at the school, district, and classroom level, suggesting the need for an organized plan to address them at both the macro- and microlevel.
The attention to digital citizenship underscores the responsibility of educators to allow access for all in the 21st century world. Ribble concludes by noting that educators cannot or perhaps should not wait for a mandate; these skills need to be integrated now.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. What are the challenges for integrating the elements of digital citizenship in your particular state or local area?
2. Design a 5-minute proposal for a school board or board of trustees outlining an action plan for a professional learning community process devoted to the elements of digital citizenship. What would be the incentives for membership? What would the benefits be for the board to approve such an action plan? How would the board know that the plan was successful?
3. How could students play an active role in designing integrative curriculum for the 21st century in which the digital citizenship elements were evident?
4. Develop, with colleagues, a best practice bullet list that demonstrates how digital citizenship contributes to a 21st-century curriculum in a particular content area.
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5.5 Teacherpreneur Spotlight: Adam Bellow, by Jessie Arora
Introduction
Adam Bellow is a former teacher and the founder of eduClipper, a website that has become a source of material and ideas for innovative teachers around the world. He designed the site originally as a place where teachers could share their innovative ideas and cull ideas from others teaching in the online environment. Such sites are necessary as teachers develop pedagogies that are particularly tailored to digital tools. Many technology sites offer links, tools, apps, and lessons for teachers, but few provide the kind of “visual curation” or the visual representation and dissemination of work that eduClipper provides. Bellow deems this public exhibition of inherently visual work essential to the most imaginative and innovative teaching and learning.
He also argues that it is not enough to make and produce; it is also important to share immediately and as widely as possible. Teachers who are also entrepreneurs embrace innovation and consider themselves innovators in their field. They learn more about their teaching as they showcase tools and approaches to using those tools with students. Learning how to actually document and visually represent teaching and learning is also a crucial aspect of evidence-based practice, which is more and more demanding in contemporary schools. Supporting these sites in which teachers share, view, critique, and contribute visual representations of their work is an innovative and essential part of professional development in the digital environment. This is part of Bellow’s vision for the dynamic curriculum in the 21st century.
Bellow affirms the importance of community and of envisioning learning that is not bound by the traditional discipline of education, but rather taps expertise that can help educators focus on a problem and address it, not just for teachers and students in classrooms, but for a larger network of participants. He reminds potential teacherpreneurs that it is crucial to embrace failure, see mistakes, and then move ahead quickly. Bellow exemplifies an emerging role for teacher–entrepreneurs who break new ground without waiting for new standards, new mandates, or new policies.
The term teacherpreneur provides a compelling opportunity for discussion about the relationship between the roles of teacher and entrepreneur, not just for Bellow, but for other 21st-century educators.
The following interview with Bellow provides some biographical information and culminates in his current role as speaker, advocate, and educational technologist.
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from Arora, J. (2013, April 9). Teacherpreneur spotlight: Adam Bellow, former teacher, eduClipper founder [Blog post]. Retrieved from
https://www.edsurge
.
com/n/2013-04-09-teacherpreneur-spotlight-adam-bellow-former-teacher-current-founder
Adam Bellow decided early on in life that he wasn’t going to be a teacher, even though both his parents were respected educators. As a self-proclaimed ‘nerd,’ Adam started programming BASIC when he was 7 years old on an Apple IIe.
But life plans aren’t set in stone. After completing film school with a minor in sociology in 2003 he was an assistant teacher at The Churchill School (a school in Manhattan for students with language-based learning disabilities). In 2005, Adam took over teaching a class, “Technology in the Special Ed Classroom,” to 22 eager graduate students at Hunter College. Over the next couple of years, he started to piece together a “terrible catalogue of sites using iWeb,” in his words, and in 2007 the first version of eduTeacher was born. “I thought of it simply as a place to organize resources for my class,” Bellow remembers, “and then when I eventually saw hits coming in from Australia and China I realized was meeting a need for a larger community.” His entrepreneurial spirit began to blossom.
Evolution of eduClipper
The countless positive testimonials motivated Bellow to continue eduTecher as a side project while he worked full time with a series of teaching jobs, technology training positions, and as Director of Technology for the College Board Schools. In 2009 Bellow launched one of the first edtech iPhone apps, eduTecher Backpack, and the momentum continued. “I was curating the web for educators and it was cool to see the community organically grow.”
In 2011 he added a custom social network component and began spending more and more time building in new features. “I thought about what it would mean to work on this full time. I put out a survey to my edtech friends to get their input on what aspects of eduTecher I should rebuild and possibly even build a business around.”
The feedback was overwhelming and he learned that what educators valued most was the simple, visual curation element that eduTecher had offered. Around this time, Pinterest was gaining popularity, which led him to think about how he could optimize the “clipboard” experience specifically for educators.
Bellow built initial mockups for the rechristened eduClipper in Keynote and in early 2012 outsourced the project to developers in India through Elance. He convinced his wife to let them put some money into this project, and worked night owl hours to test out his idea. “It was rough. . . . On a typical day, I’d wake up around 3 a.m. to work on my startup until 5 a.m., before I left for a full day of work. Then once I’d tucked the kids in at night I’d jump back online. I was sleeping around 3 hours a night and it was not sustainable.”
However, all that hustling paid off by June 2012. He had hoped that the first iteration of the site, intended to be a proof of concept, would attract 200 users. Instead, he got 20,000 a month. He realized he was onto something and decided to pursue the project full time.
He was blown away. “The number of accounts created and positive buzz around the potential was a clear indication that I had to explore the possibilities. I made the transition from educator to entrepreneur. However I had no knowledge of startups beyond watching The Social Network and religiously reading TechCrunch and other related blogs.” Connecting with the growing ed tech community was a significant driver in his success and after a serendipitous encounter with Jeff O’Hara, co-founder of Edmodo, during a trip to Chicago, Bellow was more motivated than ever to build his own product and company. Bellow is currently gearing up for a major re-launch of eduClipper, slated for June 2013, and expand his user base beyond the 25,000 that he currently supports. At last count, there were 16,000 on the waitlist.
* * *
Lessons Learned
Consistent with the Valley’s spirit to embrace failure, Bellow is quick to admit that he made a ton of mistakes along the way. “The trick is to learn quickly and keep going.”
In thinking back on what helped eduClipper come to life, Bellow offers these few bits of advice:
· Focus on real pain points. “Don’t just set out to build something cool. If I set out to build Pinterest for educators that would suck. Start with a real problem and understand that pain point that you’re trying to resolve.”
· Community is at the core of everything. “Even before there was a real product, I focused on talking to people and being accessible. Growing my network in the startup space, especially around ed tech, has been invaluable especially fumbling through our failures.”
· Education is about people. “Our core values, as you can see from the sign on our door, is that teachers and students come first. If we started from the perspective of trying to make a ton of money it would never work.”
Source: Teacherpreneur Spotlight: Adam Bellow, Former Teacher, eduClipper Founder, by Jessie Arora, for EdSurge. Copyright © 2013 Jessie Arora; reprint courtesy of EdSurge (April 9, 2013). Image © eduClipper and used by permission of Adam Bellow.
https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013
-04-09-teacherpreneur-spotlight-adam-bellow-former-teacher-current-founder
Summary
Adam Bellow discusses his own biography, from his classroom teaching and working with special needs children to his prominence as an educational technologist and founder of the website eduClipper, a resource for teachers around the world. The article focuses on three pieces of advice for teachers, entrepreneurs, or, as this article calls Bellow, “teacherpreneurs”: (a) find the problem to be solved, (b) seek out community, and (c) start with people, not money.
Bellow argues that creative thinking is never static, but rather responds to and works with trends, changes, and responses in order to improve, which is why teachers need websites such as eduClipper in which they can see what other teachers are doing. Bellow notes that much of innovation is about trial and error; repeated failures serve to achieve success. EduClipper is a model of “visual curation,” specifically for educators, meaning that it is an explicit demonstration of the power of sharing practice, innovation, and approaches to enhance teaching and learning beyond an individual classroom.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. What are some other examples of teacherpreneurship that are accessible through web-based networks?
2. How could local, global, and online communities foster more teacherpreneurship, as Bellow describes it, and support teacher creativity explicitly?
3. How does “visual curation,” that is, the visual representation and dissemination of work, shape and reshape curriculum for the 21st century?
4. Some have argued that there are already so many tools, applications, and approaches available for teachers on the Internet that it is difficult to ascertain what is effective and high quality and what is not. How can individual teachers and communities of teachers weigh the effectiveness of what is available on the Internet in order to determine how it might affect student learning?
5.6 Curriculum Data Mapping: 21st Century Education, by Heidi Hayes Jacobs
Introduction
Heidi Hayes Jacobs is a veteran educator and professional designer. She is most well-known for her work in curriculum integration and curriculum mapping.
One of the core concepts for curriculum in the 21st century underscores the importance of both integration and mapping as processes for revisioning and rethinking curriculum that is dynamic and responsive to diverse learners. Jacobs’ website is
www.Curriculum21.com
; the title itself demonstrates her commitment to curriculum for a new age. This excerpt offers Jacobs’ advice for leading 21st century technology-integrated educational practices.
The author recounts specific components necessary in schools if technology is to play a central role. She notes the importance of mapping curriculum for a school with obvious and explicit technology applications. She emphasizes the need for flexibility, ongoing professional development, and intensive collaboration among teacher colleagues.
For Jacobs, 21st century education extends learning and teaching beyond school walls and incorporates curriculum that is both content-area specific and integrative. She relates the effective use of teaching strategies with skill-based, problem- and project-based learning approaches. Finally, she supports common assessments that encourage a demonstration of skills as well as higher order thinking. In this Wikispace, Jacobs provides a succinct and thoughtful, though perhaps ambitious and daunting, overview of the future for curriculum and instructional planners.
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from H. H. Jacobs’ Curriculum Data Mapping [Website]. Retrieved from
http://curriculummaps.wikispaces.com/Heidi+Hays+Jacobs
· Create time during the school day for teachers to collaborate around 21st century curriculum and instruction. Partner reluctant teachers with trailblazers. Make technology integration a priority in the professional development budget.
· Help teachers make the connections between best-practice teaching (including project- and problem-based learning) and the potential for web tools and other digital technologies to magnify the effects of teaching strategies that emphasis 21st century skills and “learning by doing.”
· Develop strategies, based on district and school size, that ensure every teacher has engaged in a deep conversation about the need to prepare students for life and work in the 21st century.
· Ask each teacher to complete at least one highly engaging technology-infused project with his or her students during a specified time period.
· Sponsor a substantive day-long technology conference for teachers at least once a year. Include a blend of thoughtful conversation about the rationale behind 21st century learning, presentations by real teachers of successful 21st century projects, and opportunities for hands-on experimentation with at least one collaborative web tool (blog, wiki, social network, podcast, etc.). Build a follow-up plan that helps ensure teachers will go back to their own classrooms and try some of what they’ve learned.
· Kids also must learn to think across disciplines, since that’s where most new breakthroughs are made. It’s interdisciplinary combinations—design and technology, mathematics and art—”that produce YouTube and Google,” says Thomas Friedman, the best-selling author of The World Is Flat.
· Without mastering the fundamental building blocks of math, science or history, complex concepts are impossible.
· Teachers need not fear that they will be made obsolete. They will, however, feel increasing pressure to bring their methods—along with the curriculum—into line with the way the modern world works. That means putting a greater emphasis on teaching kids to collaborate and solve problems in small groups and apply what they’ve learned in the real world. Besides, research shows that kids learn better that way than with the old chalk-and-talk approach.
· Teach 21st century skills discretely in the context of core subjects and 21st century interdisciplinary themes.
· Focus on providing opportunities for applying 21st century skills across content areas and for a competency-based approach to learning.
· Enable innovative learning methods that integrate the use of supportive technologies, inquiry- and problem-based approaches and higher order thinking skills.
· Encourage the integration of community resources beyond school walls.
· How do we do this when so many of our colleagues are so resistant to change? Is it fair to our students to have one teacher that allows natural and authentic use of technology in their classroom and 7 others that do not? How do we implement this change when we are so entrenched in our system of standards and standardized assessments. It’s just so much easier to keep doing things the way we’ve always done them.
For technology integration to be a success:
· A clearly articulated, documented mandate for teacher expectations.
· Understanding what IT integration is (and isn’t) and how the Facilitator can be utilized to enhance the teaching and learning experience.
· Ability to flexibly utilize technology tools and infrastructure to meet the needs of global 21st century teaching strategies.
· Transparent curriculum infrastructure (wiki)—clear, easy to access documentation for the entire school curriculum.
· Clearly articulated Year at a Glance maps from teachers and the establishment of static units, building on experiences from past years.
· Understanding that collaboratively planned units with authentic learning experiences that embed the backward design process result in higher achievement of the Standards & Benchmarks.
· Flexibility with the classroom dynamic and teaching is an essential component of 21st century teaching and learning.
· Creating, documenting and sharing common assessment practices.
· Sharing successes with technology, both internally and through external visionaries on site
· Common planning time with IT Facilitator—grade level teams (framework requires grade level planning time)
· Classroom technology support
· Revision of curriculum map format to embed IT integration.
· Equitable access to technology resources.
· Professional Development to increase teacher comfort level with technology
· Purchase of peripherals and software to enhance the teaching and learning experience
Source: Hayes-Jacobs, H. (2008). Curriculum data mapping. Permission granted by Curriculum Designers, Inc.
www.curriculum21.com
Summary
Heidi Hayes Jacobs proposes a succinct approach to planning for curriculum and instruction in the 21st century that integrates technology into planning, professional development, teaching, and assessment. In doing so, she promotes key principles of curriculum for the modern age, including the need for students to have experiences that cross disciplines as well as deep-skill and problem-solving activities that enhance core-knowledge disciplines specifically. Her approach is both student and teacher focused, demonstrating her awareness that attending to the skills and capacities of teachers will inevitably enhance the abilities of students to become independent learners.
Jacobs maintains that technology integration, as well as standards and benchmarks for student academic achievement, must be mandated and not optional. This does not mean that the design of curriculum for the 21st century will be standardized. On the contrary, in order to respond to global and student-specific needs and demands, the process in this century’s educational environments must be flexible, adaptive, and collaborative. She affirms the basics of backward design to plan learning experiences with the end goals in mind. Finally, the author affirms the importance of documentation, from mapping the design of the curriculum content and sequence to multiple levels of assessments that reflect and also transcend disciplinary boundaries.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. Propose a set of assessments for a specific concept or question that both addresses one or more specific disciplines and also encourages students to think across those disciplines. What would the visual organizer or map look like to demonstrate the assessment activities and the standards that either one is intended to reflect?
2. What is new and original about Jacobs’ proposal for 21st century education, if anything? If nothing is new, what is perhaps a new approach to something that is familiar in education?
3. Name three objections to Jacobs’ notion that technology integration should be mandated. Respond to each objection with clarity, coherence, and specifics.
4. Jacobs writes: “Teachers need not feel they will become obsolete.” How would you speak to a teacher who has exactly that fear and is years from retirement?
5. The title of this Wikispace is “Curriculum Data Mapping.” What does Jacobs mean by curriculum data and why is it important?
5.7 Standardized Curriculum and Loss of Creativity, by Nel Noddings
Introduction
Nel Noddings is a well-known scholar, philosopher, and researcher in the field of education. She is best known for her work on the ethics of caring and the necessity of fostering caring in schools and classrooms. In this excerpt, Noddings raises important issues with respect to national standards and the potential negative impact on creativity.
Her cautions are important to include in a chapter focused on contemporary curriculum and instruction. Teachers and school leaders continue to work under pressure to make curriculum decisions to address accountability and standardized testing goals. In doing so, teaching for creativity is easily lost. The first concept she proposes for guiding a dynamic approach in the 21st century suggests the critical role of creating and making in an environment that fosters problem solving and critical thinking. Some of the most innovative transformations in early 21st-century schooling involve democratic, collaborative practices that redefine what it means to work in a community of learners.
Noddings’ concerns are that national standards, that is, the CCSS, represent a risk of standardization of content that would ultimately result in less creativity, less problem solving, and less meaningful and critical thinking. In this excerpt, Noddings reminds readers that in order to foster such creative thinking in students, teachers and school leaders need to have experience and repeated practice in creativity.
Readers might consider whether standards themselves represent a risk of standardization and, if not, how policy makers can use standards to meet the needs of all learners without losing teacher and student innovation and imagination in designing learning and learning environments for the future. It is not a matter of abolishing standards, as Noddings says. Rather, it is a question of acknowledging the need for quality teachers who consistently interrogate content, process, and the standards themselves.
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from Noddings, N. (2013). Standardized curriculum and loss of creativity. Theory Into Practice, 52(3), 210–215.
The current emphasis on national standards in core content areas works against three laudable goals of 21st-century education: cooperation, critical thinking, and creativity. I focus on creativity as a critical 21st-century skill and argue that the preoccupation with curriculum standards that are overly prescriptive undermines efforts at facilitating creative processes and outcomes. I propose that, rather than abandoning standards, policy makers must embrace their role and purposes in more creative ways. I also argue that to inspire creativity in curriculum, it is important that society foster creativity among teachers and their teaching practice. Teachers do not need to find a method or theory that they will follow slavishly. Rather, they need to analyze a multiplicity of ideas and put their creative powers to work in answering questions such as: Where could I use this? For what purpose? With whom? In what context? If people want to promote creativity in students, they should also encourage it in teachers.
* * *
Creativity
When he was asked what national standards should look like—if schools were forced to have them—Harold Howe, former commissioner of education, responded that “they should be as vague as possible” (quoted in Kohn, 1999, p. 48). He wanted schools and teachers to have the freedom to use professional judgment in responding to differences in abilities, interests, and needs. I add that the standards should be consonant with standards already established in the various disciplines. At the most general level, they should be vague enough to address the needs of all students. The current core standards in mathematics do this quite nicely, e.g., “Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.” (One notes, however, that there is nothing new here; such statements appeared in math education articles back in the 1930s.) At the next level, one needs something like a textbook’s table of contents for each subject, and one already has that for each subject in the college preparatory curriculum. At the classroom level, teachers need room for the exercise of professional judgment. At this level, the idea of one set of standards for all is patently ridiculous and irresponsible. Probably the best idea is to reject national content standards entirely and concentrate on opportunity-to-learn standards that will encourage states to provide adequate resources for vocational education and other forms of education designed to prepare students for the workplace or alternative forms of postsecondary education.
At the state, local, and classroom levels, there should be a facilitative vagueness in the establishment of content. Needs vary. But also, the methods chosen by teachers may suggest different content to provide motivation, to broaden interest, to offer possible topics and projects. The best teachers, at least occasionally, offer material from which students create their own learning objectives. When content is narrowly specified, this mode of teaching is severely handicapped.
Being Creative With Standards
E. D. Hirsch is a strong advocate of content specificity. He expresses admiration for the specificity in a sixth-grade curriculum that requires students:
to identify the Hwang, Yangtze, and Hsi rivers; the Himalaya Mountains, the Tlin Ling Mountains, the Central Mountains of Japan, and Mount Fuji; the Gobi Desert, the East China Plains, and the Manchurian Plain; Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Yokohama; the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Japan, and the Yellow Sea. (Hirsch, 1996, p. 31)
He then exclaims admiringly of the same curriculum: “There are similarly explicit geographical specifications for Southeast Asia, India, and Africa!” (p. 31).
What would motivate children to learn these things? The answer is probably a test. But when the test has been successfully completed, it would be logical to forget this material. Students need not only a purpose for learning but, even more, a reason for remembering, building, using. Further, in an era of high technology, information in the form of facts is easily obtained, but one needs a reason for seeking it.
The Harvard biologist, E. O. Wilson, recommended organizing instruction from the top down; that is, detailed instruction should be preceded by an intriguing outline of a big idea or problem—”show why it matters to them and will matter for a lifetime” (Wilson, 2006, p. 131). Wilson directed his advice to the teachers of undergraduate and graduate students, but I have used the approach successfully with high school students in mathematics. The teacher starts with a significant, challenging problem and invites the class to explore ways of tackling it. Usually, because they lack the knowledge and skills soon to be taught, they are unable to solve the problem, but the attempt gets their creative juices flowing, and the challenge motivates them to learn the necessary details.
When the unit is well underway, a creative teacher will “proceed laterally . . . into the consequences of the phenomenon to history, religion, ethics, and the creative arts” (Wilson, 2006, p. 131). Always? Of course not, but as often as the teacher’s resources and the students’ interests allow. How do teachers evaluate such lessons? They do not often use a test. They watch for engagement, for expressions of interest.
If some students show interest in one of these lateral excursions, the teacher must be prepared to offer further guidance. For many, these opportunities generate the great joy of teaching—the excitement of continued learning, of building a repertoire, of sharing elements of that repertoire with students. The material thus shared is, again, not subjected to formal testing. It is a free gift that some students will use creatively to further their own learning. All of this is put at risk when the curriculum is narrowly prescribed and teachers are held tightly to a specific learning objective for every lesson.
References
Hirsch, E. D. (1996). The schools we need: And why we don’t have them. New York: Doubleday.
Kohn, A. (1999). The schools our children deserve. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Wilson, E. O. (2006). The creation: An appeal to save life on earth. New York: Norton.
Source: Noddings, N. (2013). Standardized curriculum and loss of creativity. Theory into Practice, 52(3): 210–215. © 2013 Routledge.
Summary
Nel Noddings raises issues related to cooperation, critical thinking, and creativity in view of the advent of national standards in the 21st century. She advocates for vague standards that afford teachers the opportunities to tailor learning for individual students’ interests and needs. Although this excerpt does not fully address assessment, Noddings objects to designing curricular content that is overly specific and is assessed only on traditional tests. She suggests that the repertoire that is built when students and teachers engage creatively and collaboratively need not be formally tested in order to be absorbed and used by participants.
Noddings cites examples from biology and mathematics to suggest how curriculum might be organized sequentially and hierarchically, beginning with a major problem. She claims that the students in such a setting will realize the skills and facts that they need to know in order to solve the problem. Vaguely worded standards, rather than specific behavioral objectives, are best suited to this approach in which learners and teachers can explore and find the tools and approaches necessary to address the issue or problem.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. When asked about standards for curriculum, Harold Howe asserted that they should be “as vague as possible.” What might happen when teachers “are tightly held to a specific learning objective for every lesson”? Conversely, what happens when standards are not specified in specific lesson objectives but are open to interpretation by individual teachers, school systems, and content disciplines? How do you and your peers view this dichotomy?
2. Noddings addresses the effect of students’ learning very specific facts in order to do well on tests. She proposes that students typically soon forget such specificity but would not do so if they had a true and larger purpose for learning from the outset. Now frame the counterargument. Is there justification for learning facts and being tested on them, even if the ultimate purpose is not clear to the learner? Finally, is there a balance between these two positions?
3. Noddings is critical of unilateral testing in this excerpt. Can testing ever be creative?
4. Creativity is not a term that is used often to describe learning goals. Noddings contends that a creative teacher watches for interest and engagement and then seeks to integrate content with other disciplines accordingly. This is of course just one aspect of creativity. What are some other indicators of creative teaching? How do creative teachers address standards to meet the needs of all students?
5. This excerpt proposes designing curriculum “from the top down,” beginning with a big idea or central program. Is such a design discipline specific or can such an approach be used regardless of the topic, theme, or subject area?
Previous section
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5.8 From Common Core Standards to Curriculum: Five Big Ideas, by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins
Introduction
The 21st-century dynamic stance for curriculum and instruction is integrally related to the contemporary commitment-to-learning standards in the United States. These standards have traditionally been developed by each state board of education in the country. With the passing of the No Child Left Behind legislation in 2001, all 50 states adopted curriculum standards. These standards and the requisite state tests were unique to the individual states. The impetus had already been established to consider a national framework for student learning, in part due to the increasing focus on graduation rates across the country. A 2004 American Diploma Project report titled “Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma That Counts” (
http://www.achieve .org/ReadyorNot
) and the yearly reports on graduation rates from Education Week known as “Diploma Counts” (
http://www.edweek.org/ew/dc
/
) both focused on the need for states to form further initiatives to address high school dropout rates and inform policy decisions across states. Some consistency in curriculum standards is the logical next step.
The CCSS emerged from the initiative of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. They have been adopted by more than 40 states and are intended to prepare high school graduates for college and careers regardless of where they have been educated. The CCSS is also intended to afford all students the opportunity to be successful, literate and competitive internationally. Because these national standards are central to what schools will address in the 21st century, it is important for educators to explore exactly how they function and inform curriculum and instruction.
Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins are accomplished writers, speakers, and scholars in curriculum and assessment. They are best known for the approach to curriculum development known as backward design, which is referenced in this excerpt. The authors first assert that these standards are in many ways new and distinctly different from previous sets of standards adopted in the United States, particularly because they are grounded in long-term outcomes rather than short-term objectives. They remind readers that standards are not the same thing as curriculum and further discuss the relationship between these two terms.
McTighe and Wiggins also affirm that these standards need careful deliberation or “unpacking” in order to be fully understood. Finally, the authors suggest that Common Core is best utilized in a backward mapping design for learning coupled with meaningful and authentic assessments practices.
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from McTighe, J., & Wiggins, G. (2012). From common core standards to curriculum: Five big ideas. Retrieved from
http://grantwiggins.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/mctighe_wiggins_final_common_core_standards.pdf
In this article, we explore five big ideas about the Common Core State Standards and their translation into a curriculum. As with most big ideas, these Standards are in some ways obvious, but may also be counter-intuitive and prone to misunderstanding. We highlight potential misconceptions in working with the Standards, and offer recommendations for designing a coherent curriculum and assessment system for realizing their promise.
Big Idea # 1—The Common Core Standards Have New Emphases and Require a Careful Reading
In our travels around the country since the Common Core Standards were released, we sometimes hear comments such as, “Oh, here we go again”; “Same old wine in a new bottle”; or “We already do all of this.” Such reactions are not surprising given the fact that we have been here before. A focus on Standards is not new. However, it a misconception to assume that these Standards merely require minor tweaks to our curriculum and instructional practices. In fact, the authors of the Mathematics Standards anticipated this reaction and caution against it: “These Standards are not intended to be new names for old ways of doing business” (p 5). Merely trying to retrofit the Standards to typical teaching and testing practices will undermine the effort.
* * *
The Common Core Standards have been developed with long-term outcomes in mind (e.g., College and Career Anchor Standards in English Language Arts), and their components are intended to work together (e.g., Content and Practice Standards in mathematics). It is imperative that educators understand the intent and structure of the Standards in order to work with them most effectively. Accordingly, we recommend that schools set the expectation and schedule the time for staff to read and discuss the Standards, beginning with the “front matter,” not the grade-level Standards. We also recommend that staff reading and discussion be guided by an essential question: What are the new distinctions in these Standards and what do they mean for our practice? Since the Standards are complex texts and demand a “close” reading, we recommend that staff carefully examine the table of contents and the organizational structure; the headers (e.g., Design Considerations; What is Not Covered, etc.), the components (e.g., Anchor Standards and Foundational Skills for ELA; Standards for Mathematical Practice), and the Appendices (ELA).
* * *
We cannot overemphasize the value of taking the time to collaboratively examine the Standards in this way. Failure to understand the Standards and adjust practices accordingly will likely result in “same old, same old” teaching with only superficial connections to the grade level Standards. In that case, their promise to enhance student performance will not be realized.
Big Idea # 2—Standards Are Not Curriculum
A Standard is an outcome, not a claim about how to achieve an outcome (i.e. a curriculum). Thus, the Introduction to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Mathematics states: “These Standards do not dictate curriculum or teaching methods” (p 5). A similar reminder is found in the ELA Standards:
The Standards define what all students are expected to know and be able to do, not how teachers should teach. For instance, the use of play with young children is not specified by the Standards, but it is welcome as a valuable activity in its own right and as a way to help students meet the expectations in this document. . . . The Standards must therefore be complemented by a well-developed, content-rich curriculum consistent with the expectations laid out in this document. (p 6)
Indeed, these statements highlight the intent of any set of Standards; i.e., they focus on outcomes, not curriculum or instruction. The implication is clear—educators must translate the Standards into an engaging and effective curriculum. So, what is the proper relationship between the Standards and curriculum? Consider another analogy with home building and renovation: The standards are like the building code. Architects and builders must attend to them but they are not the purpose of the design. The house to be built or renovated is designed to meet the needs of the client in a functional and pleasing manner—while also meeting the building code along the way.
Similarly, while curriculum and instruction must address established Standards, we always want to keep the long-term educational ends in mind—the development of important capabilities in the learner as a result of engaging and effective work. In other words, a curriculum works with the Standards to frame optimal learning experiences. To shift analogies, the Standards are more like the ingredients in a recipe than the final meal; they are more like the rules of the game rather than a strategy for succeeding at the game.
* * *
Big Idea # 3—Standards Need to be “Unpacked”
As suggested above, the first step in translating the Common Core Standards into engaging and outcome-focused curriculum involves a careful reading of the documents in order to insure clarity about the end results and an understanding of how the pieces fit together. This idea is not new. Over the years, we have suggested various ways of unpacking standards in conjunction with our work with the Understanding by Design framework-. (See, for example, Wiggins & McTighe 2011, 2012).
When working with the Common Core, we recommend that educators “unpack” them into four broad categories—1) Long term Transfer Goals, 2) Overarching Understandings, 3) Overarching Essential Questions, and 4) A set of recurring Cornerstone Tasks.
The first category, Transfer Goals, identifies the effective uses of content understanding, knowledge, and skill that we seek in the long run; i.e., what we want students to be able to do when they confront new challenges—both in and outside of school. They reflect the ultimate goals, the reason we teach specific knowledge and skills. Unlike earlier generations of standards where transfer goals were implicit at best, the Common Core Standards have made them more overt. Indeed, the College and Career Anchor Standards in ELA specify long-term transfer goals, while the Mathematics Standards strongly suggest a goal such as, Students will be able to use the mathematics they know to solve “messy,” never-seen-before problems using effective mathematical reasoning.
The second and third unpacking categories—overarching Understandings and Essential Questions—are like two sides of a coin. The Understandings state what skilled performers will need in order to effectively transfer their learning to new situations, while explorations of the Essential Questions engage learners in making meaning and deepening their understandings.
* * *
The term overarching conveys the idea that these understandings and questions are not limited to a single grade or topic. On the contrary, it is expected that they be addressed across the grades with application to varied topics, problems, texts and contexts.
The fourth category, Cornerstone Tasks, are curriculum-embedded tasks that are intended to engage students in applying their knowledge and skills in an authentic and relevant context. Like a cornerstone anchors a building, these tasks are meant to anchor the curriculum around the most important performances that we want learners to be able to do (on their own) with acquired content knowledge and skills. Since these tasks are set in realistic contexts, they offer the natural vehicle for integrating the so-called 21st century skills (e.g., creativity, technology use, teamwork) with subject area content knowledge and skills. They honor the intent of the Standards, within and across subject areas, instead of emphasizing only the content measured more narrowly on external accountability tests. These rich tasks can be used as meaningful learning experiences as well as for formative and summative purposes.
Cornerstone tasks are designed to recur across the grades, progressing from simpler to more sophisticated; from those that are heavily scaffolded toward ones requiring autonomous performance. Accordingly, they enable both educators and learners to track performance and document the fact that students are getting progressively better at using content knowledge and skills in worthy performances. Like the game in athletics or the play in theater, teachers teach toward these tasks without apology.
* * *
Big Idea # 4—A Coherent Curriculum Is Mapped Backwards From Desired Performances
The key to avoiding an overly-discrete and fragmented curriculum is to design backward from complex performances that require content. A return to the linguistic roots of “curriculum” reveals the wisdom in this outcome-focused view. The Latin meaning of the term is a “course to be run.” This original connotation helpfully suggests that we should think of a curriculum as the pathway toward a destination.
* * *
Thus, the first question for curriculum writers is not: What will we teach and when should we teach it? Rather the initial question for curriculum development must be goal focused: Having learned key content, what will students be able to do with it?
Our long-standing contention applies unequivocally to the Common Core Standards as well as to other Standards: The ultimate aim of a curriculum is independent transfer; i.e., for students to be able to employ their learning, autonomously and thoughtfully, to varied complex situations, inside and outside of school. Lacking the capacity to independently apply their learning, a student will be neither college nor workplace ready.
* * *
Big Idea #5—The Standards Come to Life Through the Assessments
A prevalent misconception about standards in general is that they simply specify learning goals to be achieved. A more complete and accurate conception, in line with the colloquial meaning of the term, recognizes that standards also refer to the desired qualities of student work and the degree of rigor that must be assessed and achieved.
Think about what we mean when we talk about “high standards” in athletics, music or business: we refer to the quality of outcomes, not the inputs. We ask if work is up to standard, not whether we “covered” such standards as teachers. In this sense, the standards are at their core a set of criteria for building and testing local assessment. They tell where we must look and what we must look for to determine if student work is up to standard. Such information is crucial to guide local assessments and insure that these are validly anchored against national standards.
* * *
This performance-based conception of Standards lies at the heart of what is needed to translate the Common Core into a robust curriculum and assessment system. The curriculum and related instruction must be designed backward from an analysis of standards-based assessments; i.e., worthy performance tasks anchored by rigorous rubrics and annotated work samples. We predict that the alternative—a curriculum mapped in a typical scope and sequence based on grade-level content specifications—will encourage a curriculum of disconnected “coverage” and make it more likely that people will simply retrofit the new language to the old way of doing business.
References
National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers (2010). Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Washington DC: Author.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2011). Understanding by Design Guide to Advanced Concepts in Creating and Reviewing Units. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2012). Unpacking The Common Core Standards Using The UbD framework [DVD]. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Source: McTighe, J. & Wiggins, G. (2012). From common core standards to curriculum: Five big ideas. © 2012 Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins. Reprinted with permission.
Summary
McTighe and Wiggins offer five “big ideas” to keep in mind when exploring, implementing, and evaluating CCSS. First, the authors argue that these standards are different from previous standards and require careful inspection. Then, they remind readers that standards are not the same as curriculum. Standards are outcomes, and they do not dictate curriculum. It is the responsibility of educators to design the curriculum to address the standards.
These standards also need to be viewed in terms of a set of categories: (a) Long-term transfer goals, (b) overarching understandings, (c) overarching essential questions, and (d) a set of recurring cornerstone tasks. These categories clearly indicate that Common Core is focused on big ideas as well as cross-grade and ability-level growth and depth.
McTighe and Wiggins’ last two big ideas to deconstruct CCSS relate to assessment. Teachers can apply the authors’ backward design framework for making curriculums. They can also integrate assessment that encourages students to perform or exhibit what they know in order to address issues of quality and rigor in student work. Such performance assessments allow multiple audiences to determine the degree to which students have really learned the material and are able to apply it.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. McTighe and Wiggins are adamant about the fact that CCSS is not like sets of standards that have been previously introduced in education. As they further remind readers, “Merely trying to retrofit the Standards to typical teaching and testing practices will undermine the effort.” If we accept their premise, how can educational technology accept this challenge and contribute to a different approach to teaching and testing to address these new standards?
2. List alternatives to typical scope and sequence curriculum plans that might respond to the categories of “long-term transfer goals” and “a set of recurring cornerstone tasks.” How do these two patterns in CCSS demand something different from scope and sequence? What would curriculum look like that embeds each of these experiences?
3. The authors assert: “The ultimate aim of a curriculum is independent transfer; i.e., for students to be able to employ their learning, autonomously and thoughtfully, to varied complex situations, inside and outside of school.” Outline a set of assessments that would display this kind of transfer using an online environment as part of the context for the exhibition. How do those assessments provide evidence of increasingly independent transfer?
4. What kind of professional development might be most beneficial as teachers and leaders grasp and then implement CCSS?
5.9 A Comprehensive List of Strategies that Relate to Effective Teaching, by Robert J. Marzano
Introduction
This excerpt is a table designed by Robert J. Marzano. Marzano has received national and international attention for his work in educational assessment, cognition, supervision, leadership, and, most recently, effective teaching strategies to inform teaching. The table is from his 2009 article in Kappan, titled “Setting the Record Straight on ‘High-Yield’ Strategies,” in which the author cautions educators to consider the complexity of rushing to conclusions about the direct correlations between the use of effective teaching strategies and student achievement. He also notes the dangers of focusing on a very narrow set of strategies and assuming that specific strategies should be used in every classroom every day.
With those comments in mind, review the table and analyze the categories as well as the subsections of strategies that Marzano proposes. Begin to develop a theory of action for decisions on how and when as well as how often to use these strategies in a given content area, grade level, or school context. It is the intelligent, informed decision maker or teacher who can reasonably assume connections between the application of strategies and subsequent impact on student learning.
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from Marzano, R. J. (2009). Setting the record straight on “high-yield” strategies. Phi Delta Kappan, 91(1), 30–37.
A Comprehensive List of Strategies that Relate to Effective Teaching
I. CONTENT
A. Lessons Involving New Content
STRATEGY
A. Identifying critical information (e.g., the teacher provides cues as to which information is important) A&S
A. Organizing students to interact with new knowledge (e.g., the teacher organizes students into dyads or triads to discuss small chunks of content) CITW
A. Previewing new content (e.g., the teacher uses strategies such as: K-W-L, advance organizers, preview questions) CITW
A. Chunking content into “digestible bites” (e.g., the teacher presents content in small portions that are tailored to students’ level of understanding) A&S
A. Group processing of new information (e.g., after each chunk of information, the teacher asks students to summarize and clarify what they have experienced) CITW
A. Elaborating on new information (e.g., the teacher asks questions that require students to make and defend inferences) CITW
A. Recording and representing knowledge (e.g., the teacher ask students to summarize, take notes, or use nonlinguistic representations) CITW
A. Reflecting on learning (e.g., the teacher asks students to reflect on what they understand or what they are still confused about) CAGTW
B. Lessons Involving Practicing and Deepening Content That Has Been Previously Addressed
STRATEGY
0. Reviewing content (e.g., the teacher briefly reviews related content addressed previously) CITW
1. Organizing students to practice and deepen knowledge (e.g., the teacher organizes students into groups designed to review information or practice skills) CITW
2. Practicing skills, strategies, and processes (the teacher uses massed and distributed practice) CITW
3. Examining similarities and differences (e.g., the teacher engages students in comparing, classifying, creating analogies and metaphors) CITW
4. Examining errors in reasoning (e.g., the teacher asks students to examine informal fallacies, propaganda, bias) A&S
5. Using homework (e.g., the teacher uses homework for independent practice or to elaborate on information) CITW
6. Revising knowledge (e.g., the teacher asks students to revise entries in notebooks to clarify and add to previous information) CITW
C. Lessons Involving Cognitively Complex Tasks (Generating and Testing Hypotheses)
STRATEGY
0. Organizing students for cognitively complex tasks (e.g., the teacher organizes students into small groups to facilitate cognitively complex tasks) CITW
1. Engaging students in cognitively complex tasks (e.g., the teacher engages students in decision-making tasks, problem-solving tasks, experimental inquiry tasks, investigation tasks) CITW
2. Providing resources and guidance (e.g., the teacher makes resources available that are specific to cognitively complex tasks and helps students execute such tasks) A&S
II. ROUTINE ACTIVITIES
D. Communicating Learning Goals, Tracking Student Progress, and Celebrating Success
STRATEGY
4. Providing clear learning goals and scales to measure those goals (e.g., the teacher provides or reminds students about a specific learning goal) CAGTW
4. Tracking student progress (e.g., using formative assessment, the teacher helps students chart their individual and group progress on a learning goal) CAGTW
4. Celebrating student success (e.g., the teacher helps student acknowledge and celebrate current status on a learning goal as well as knowledge gain) CAGTW, CITW
1. Establishing and Maintaining Classroom Rules and Procedures
STRATEGY
5. Establishing classroom routines (e.g., the teacher reminds students of a rule or procedure or establishes a new rule or procedure) CMTW
5. Organizing the physical layout of the classroom for learning (e.g., the teacher organizes materials, traffic patterns, and displays to enhance learning) CMTW
1. BEHAVIORS THAT ARE ENACTED ON THE SPOT AS SITUATIONS OCCUR
F. Engaging Students
STRATEGY
6. Noticing and reacting when students are not engaged (e.g., the teacher scans the classroom to monitor students’ level of engagement) CMTW
6. Using academic games (e.g., when students are not engaged, the teacher uses adaptations of popular games to reengage them and focus their attention on academic content) A&S
6. Managing response rates during questioning (e.g., the teacher uses strategies to ensure that multiple students respond to questions such as: response cards, response chaining, voting technologies) A&S
6. Using physical movement (e.g., the teacher uses strategies that require students to move physically such as: vote with your feet, physical reenactments of content) CMTW
6. Maintaining a lively pace (e.g., the teacher slows and quickens the pace of instruction in such a way as to enhance engagement) CMTW
6. Demonstrating intensity and enthusiasm (e.g., the teacher uses verbal and nonverbal signals that he or she is enthusiastic about the content) CMTW
6. Using friendly controversy (e.g., the teacher uses techniques that require students to take and defend a position about content) A&S
6. Providing opportunities for students to talk about themselves (e.g., the teacher uses techniques that allow students to relate content to their personal lives and interests) CMTW
6. Presenting unusual information (e.g., the teacher provides or encourages the identification of intriguing information about the content) A&S
1. Recognizing Adherence and Lack of Adherence to Classroom Rules and Procedures
STRATEGY
7. Demonstrating “withitness” (e.g., the teacher is aware of variations in student behavior that might indicate potential disruptions and attends to them immediately) CMTW
7. Applying consequences (e.g., the teacher applies consequences to lack of adherence to rules and procedures consistently and fairly) CMTW
7. Acknowledging adherence to rules and procedures (e.g., the teacher acknowledges adherence to rules and procedures consistently and fairly) CMTW
1. Maintaining Effective Relationships with Students
STRATEGY
8. Understanding students’ interests and backgrounds (e.g., the teacher seeks out knowledge about students and uses that knowledge to engage in informal, friendly discussions with students) CMTW
8. Using behaviors that indicate affection for students (e.g., the teacher uses humor and friendly banter appropriately with students) CMTW
8. Displaying objectivity and control (e.g., the teacher behaves in ways that indicate he or she does not take infractions personally) CMTW
1. Communicating High Expectations
STRATEGY
9. Demonstrating value and respect for low-expectancy students (e.g., the teacher demonstrates the same positive affective tone with low-expectancy students as with high-expectancy students) A&S
9. Asking questions of low-expectancy students (e.g., the teacher asks questions of low-expectancy students with the same frequency and level of difficulty as with high-expectancy students) A&S
9. Probing incorrect answers with low-expectancy students (e.g., the teacher inquires into incorrect answers with low-expectancy students with the same depth and rigor as with high-expectancy students) A&S
Source: Marzano, R. J. (2009). A comprehensive list of strategies that relate to effective teaching. Phi Delta Kappan, 91(1), 30–37. © Robert J. Marzano (2009). Used by permission.
Summary
Marzano’s list suggests three general categories of strategies: (a) content, (b) routine activities, and (c) behaviors that are enacted on the spot. Within those categories, specific strategies are arranged in subsections. For example, the content category proposes strategies for introducing new content, lessons that deepen content, and lessons that involve “cognitively complex tasks,” such as problem solving and inquiry investigations. Such strategies are separated in Marzano’s typology from those that focus on student engagement, classroom management, and maintaining relationships. Those strategies are outlined in the other two categories in the table: routine activities, and behaviors that are enacted on the spot.
Marzano’s suggestion is that, per the title of the table, the intentional use of these strategies can relate to effective teaching that may contribute to student achievement. Marzano’s strategies have been used by policy leaders, web-based and traditional textbook publishers, and district curriculum directors to inform professional development as well as teacher evaluation systems in schools and districts. The practical and authentic use of these strategies is of concern not only to educators and policy makers, but also to Marzano himself.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. There are only two of 41 specific strategies in Marzano’s table related to “establishing and maintaining classroom rules and procedures.” One pertains to establishing classroom routines and one addresses the organization of the physical classroom for face-to-face group learning. Why might that be intentional and why might that be an important observation?
2. Note that “content strategies” and “engaging students strategies” are in different categories in Marzano’s table. Why might that be important for educators to understand? How might this separation be useful for beginning teachers as they learn to teach? How might the categorization of strategies in general be used in professional development for experienced teachers?
3. There is much discussion among teachers about the role of high expectations in student learning. Marzano proposes three strategies to communicate high expectations to students. He suggests that teachers obviously demonstrate value and respect for low-expectancy students and that they ask the same questions with the same frequency and level of difficulty for all students. Marzano suggests that teachers then probe and inquire into incorrect answers for all students. What do these strategies look like in an online environment? Is the distinction between “high expectancy” and “low expectancy” students different online? Is there a way to think about frequency, difficulty, and probing using questioning that is different online than in face-to-face classrooms?
4. Design a long-term plan for collaborative and interactive professional development for a group of educators focused on some aspect of the table.
5. What are your views about the relationship between the use of these strategies and student achievement? Ask peers and colleagues about their views. How might a school or learning environment offer a clear statement for stakeholders about the relationship between these two important factors in teaching and learning?
Summary and Resources
Chapter Summary
There are four themes in this chapter:
· Curriculum must engage students in creativity and making real-world products; such processes constitute purposeful work that involves learners in problem-based learning.
· Authentic audience and student voice in local and global communities of practice are crucial to teaching and learning in the modern world. Such an approach to curriculum and instruction requires careful attention to digital-citizenship learning among teachers and students.
· Deliberate practice and teachers’ intentional use of effective teaching strategies contribute to deep and flexible understanding of content.
· Curriculum content is integrative and discipline specific. As such, the process of backward curriculum design incorporates mapping standards in specific contexts for diverse learners.
In addition, the chapter suggests the following:
· New roles are emerging for teachers as collaborators, entrepreneurs, and problem solvers.
· Students and teachers need audiences for their work in order to learn from each other.
· Digital citizenship professional development is essential as teachers often find themselves less knowledgeable than their students in technological spaces.
· Standards need not be antithetical to creativity and engaging students in purposeful work. But standards will thwart such ways of teaching and learning if educators do not consciously cultivate problem-based approaches that allow multiple interpretations of standards and varied ways of representing learning.
· The educational technologists are teaching teachers and administrators by showcasing creative and innovative examples of projects and approaches in curriculum and instruction.
· The “classroom” cannot be bound by four walls.
A Closer Look: The 21st Century Classroom
Engaged learning, where the students are in charge of their learning, sees more collaboration between students and has the teacher playing the role of facilitator.
00:00
00:00
1. Watch the 21st Century Classroom video several times and make notes about what you actually see students doing that reflect the themes in this chapter.
2. Now watch the video at least one more time and write or explain to a peer what the teacher needs or needed to do to enable students to participate in such 21st Century Classrooms. What do you see the teacher doing in such classrooms?
Tying It All Together
The excerpts for this chapter could be viewed in three distinct, though clearly connected, categories. Mike Ribble and Adam Bellow speak specifically to the role for digital citizenship and active engagement among educators in technology integration for 21st-century teaching. They provide a new perspective on how teachers and students learn through sharing of ideas and digital educational content in order to promote literacy skills for an online environment.
The authors of three articles offer specific strategies for active engagement and real-world curriculum products, whether in digital or face-to-face learning environments. Jane McGonigal describes gaming as a means to creative expression; November advocates for autonomous, purposeful student work products with wide audiences; Jane Boss and Suzie Krauss suggest that project-based learning is a means to integrate technology, meaningful learning, and solutions that are relevant in the real world.
Then there are the veteran educational leaders who have been engaged in teacher development, curriculum design discussions, and the production of educational materials for decades. Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Nel Noddings, Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, and Robert Marzano are probably the most well-known authors in this chapter among educators and scholars across the spectrum of grade levels, content fields, and geographic areas. In these selected excerpts, they reveal their consistent ability to make connections with current trends, issues, and topics of concern in school improvement. They react and respond with clear guidelines for practice, acknowledging trends but also calling for integrative, high-quality teaching that responds to those trends and policy directives with intelligence and creativity.
This chapter focused on curricular trends, with an emphasis on roles for technology and creative thinking, and provided a lens through which chapters on leadership, pedagogy, assessment, and content knowledge can be viewed. Curriculum represents the “what” of school learning, but curriculum cannot be viewed in a vacuum. The “what” of school learning depends on and is related to “how” (pedagogy) content is taught and “how well” (assessment) it is taught. Curriculum emerges from the disciplines of knowledge and how teachers and school leaders organize and manage that content; curriculum is the foundation for meaningful professional development and action research to improve teaching and learning. Finally, curriculum discussions must be integrated with questions about whose knowledge is of value and how curriculum standards meet—and do not meet—the needs of students with diverse backgrounds and contexts for learning.
End of Chapter Critical Thinking Questions
1. Which concepts in this chapter do you feel would be most useful as part of your own individual professional development plan for the next year?
2. How would you design a needs assessment to discern where creativity is most evident in the curriculum that you currently work with? How would you target opportunities to enhance or increase creativity while attending to standards for all students?
3. The dynamic curriculum and instruction model for the 21st century proposed in this chapter seems to blur the lines between traditional teacher and student roles. Comment on this in terms of the positive and negative implications.
4. Some teachers currently in the profession are not well versed in technology integration as a function of engaging curriculum for students. Propose a plan for addressing this lack of proficiency and competencies in digital citizenship among some educators. What should be done?
Further Reading
Berrett, D. (2013). Creativity: A cure for the common curriculum. Education Digest, 79(2), 13–20.
Duvall, S., Jaaskelainen, K., & Pasque, P. (2012). Essential Google: Curriculum integration and e–portfolio in assessment. Library Media Connection, 30(6), 52–54.
Ghamrawi, N., & Shal, T. (2012). Let us teach them the way they learn: A vision on using social networking and mobiles in teaching and learning. Educational Research (2141-5161), 3(12), 921–926.
Grant, M. (2011). Learning, beliefs, and products: Students’ perspectives with project-based learning. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 5(2), 37–69.
Marzano, R. J. (2010). What teachers gain from deliberate practice. Educational Leadership, 68(4), 82–85.
McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world. New York: Penguin.
McTighe, J., & Wiggins, G. (2012). Misconceptions about common core. Phi Delta Kappan, 94(4), 6.
Noddings, N. (2012). The language of care ethics. Knowledge Quest, 40(5), 52–56.
November, A. C. (2010). Empowering students with technology (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
November, A. C. (2012). Who owns the learning? Preparing students for success in the digital age. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.
Ribble, M., & Bailey, G. (2007). Digital citizenship in schools. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.
Silseth, K. (2012). The multivoicedness of game play: Exploring the unfolding of a student’s learning trajectory in a gaming context at school. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 7(1), 63–84.
Tambouris, E., Panopoulou, E., Tarabanis, K., Ryberg, T., Buus, L., Peristeras, V., . . . Porwol, L. (2012). Enabling problem based learning through Web 2.0 Technologies: PBL 2.0. Journal of Educational Technology and Society, 15(4), 238–251.
Van Scoter, J., & Boss, S. (2002). Learners, language, and technology: Making connections that support literacy. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.
Veltri, N. F., Webb, H. W., Matveev, A. G., & Zapatero, E. G. (2011). Curriculum mapping as a tool for continuous improvement of IS curriculum. Journal of Information Systems Education, 22(1), 31–42.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
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authentic audiences
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e. Embedded Entrepreneurship
f. Three Social Entrepreneurship Models
g. Social-Founder Identity
h. Micros-enterprise Development
Outcomes
Subset 2. Indigenous Entrepreneurship Approaches (Outside of Canada)
a. Indigenous Australian Entrepreneurs Exami
Calculus
(people influence of
others) processes that you perceived occurs in this specific Institution Select one of the forms of stratification highlighted (focus on inter the intersectionalities
of these three) to reflect and analyze the potential ways these (
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When considering both O
lassrooms
Civil
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ions
Identify a specific consumer product that you or your family have used for quite some time. This might be a branded smartphone (if you have used several versions over the years)
or the court to consider in its deliberations. Locard’s exchange principle argues that during the commission of a crime
Chemical Engineering
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aragraphs (meaning 25 sentences or more). Your assignment may be more than 5 paragraphs but not less.
INSTRUCTIONS:
To access the FNU Online Library for journals and articles you can go the FNU library link here:
https://www.fnu.edu/library/
In order to
n that draws upon the theoretical reading to explain and contextualize the design choices. Be sure to directly quote or paraphrase the reading
ce to the vaccine. Your campaign must educate and inform the audience on the benefits but also create for safe and open dialogue. A key metric of your campaign will be the direct increase in numbers.
Key outcomes: The approach that you take must be clear
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nment
Topic
You will need to pick one topic for your project (5 pts)
Literature search
You will need to perform a literature search for your topic
Geophysics
you been involved with a company doing a redesign of business processes
Communication on Customer Relations. Discuss how two-way communication on social media channels impacts businesses both positively and negatively. Provide any personal examples from your experience
od pressure and hypertension via a community-wide intervention that targets the problem across the lifespan (i.e. includes all ages).
Develop a community-wide intervention to reduce elevated blood pressure and hypertension in the State of Alabama that in
in body of the report
Conclusions
References (8 References Minimum)
*** Words count = 2000 words.
*** In-Text Citations and References using Harvard style.
*** In Task section I’ve chose (Economic issues in overseas contracting)"
Electromagnetism
w or quality improvement; it was just all part of good nursing care. The goal for quality improvement is to monitor patient outcomes using statistics for comparison to standards of care for different diseases
e a 1 to 2 slide Microsoft PowerPoint presentation on the different models of case management. Include speaker notes... .....Describe three different models of case management.
visual representations of information. They can include numbers
SSAY
ame workbook for all 3 milestones. You do not need to download a new copy for Milestones 2 or 3. When you submit Milestone 3
pages):
Provide a description of an existing intervention in Canada
making the appropriate buying decisions in an ethical and professional manner.
Topic: Purchasing and Technology
You read about blockchain ledger technology. Now do some additional research out on the Internet and share your URL with the rest of the class
be aware of which features their competitors are opting to include so the product development teams can design similar or enhanced features to attract more of the market. The more unique
low (The Top Health Industry Trends to Watch in 2015) to assist you with this discussion.
https://youtu.be/fRym_jyuBc0
Next year the $2.8 trillion U.S. healthcare industry will finally begin to look and feel more like the rest of the business wo
evidence-based primary care curriculum. Throughout your nurse practitioner program
Vignette
Understanding Gender Fluidity
Providing Inclusive Quality Care
Affirming Clinical Encounters
Conclusion
References
Nurse Practitioner Knowledge
Mechanics
and word limit is unit as a guide only.
The assessment may be re-attempted on two further occasions (maximum three attempts in total). All assessments must be resubmitted 3 days within receiving your unsatisfactory grade. You must clearly indicate “Re-su
Trigonometry
Article writing
Other
5. June 29
After the components sending to the manufacturing house
1. In 1972 the Furman v. Georgia case resulted in a decision that would put action into motion. Furman was originally sentenced to death because of a murder he committed in Georgia but the court debated whether or not this was a violation of his 8th amend
One of the first conflicts that would need to be investigated would be whether the human service professional followed the responsibility to client ethical standard. While developing a relationship with client it is important to clarify that if danger or
Ethical behavior is a critical topic in the workplace because the impact of it can make or break a business
No matter which type of health care organization
With a direct sale
During the pandemic
Computers are being used to monitor the spread of outbreaks in different areas of the world and with this record
3. Furman v. Georgia is a U.S Supreme Court case that resolves around the Eighth Amendments ban on cruel and unsual punishment in death penalty cases. The Furman v. Georgia case was based on Furman being convicted of murder in Georgia. Furman was caught i
One major ethical conflict that may arise in my investigation is the Responsibility to Client in both Standard 3 and Standard 4 of the Ethical Standards for Human Service Professionals (2015). Making sure we do not disclose information without consent ev
4. Identify two examples of real world problems that you have observed in your personal
Summary & Evaluation: Reference & 188. Academic Search Ultimate
Ethics
We can mention at least one example of how the violation of ethical standards can be prevented. Many organizations promote ethical self-regulation by creating moral codes to help direct their business activities
*DDB is used for the first three years
For example
The inbound logistics for William Instrument refer to purchase components from various electronic firms. During the purchase process William need to consider the quality and price of the components. In this case
4. A U.S. Supreme Court case known as Furman v. Georgia (1972) is a landmark case that involved Eighth Amendment’s ban of unusual and cruel punishment in death penalty cases (Furman v. Georgia (1972)
With covid coming into place
In my opinion
with
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The ability to view ourselves from an unbiased perspective allows us to critically assess our personal strengths and weaknesses. This is an important step in the process of finding the right resources for our personal learning style. Ego and pride can be
· By Day 1 of this week
While you must form your answers to the questions below from our assigned reading material
CliftonLarsonAllen LLP (2013)
5 The family dynamic is awkward at first since the most outgoing and straight forward person in the family in Linda
Urien
The most important benefit of my statistical analysis would be the accuracy with which I interpret the data. The greatest obstacle
From a similar but larger point of view
4 In order to get the entire family to come back for another session I would suggest coming in on a day the restaurant is not open
When seeking to identify a patient’s health condition
After viewing the you tube videos on prayer
Your paper must be at least two pages in length (not counting the title and reference pages)
The word assimilate is negative to me. I believe everyone should learn about a country that they are going to live in. It doesnt mean that they have to believe that everything in America is better than where they came from. It means that they care enough
Data collection
Single Subject Chris is a social worker in a geriatric case management program located in a midsize Northeastern town. She has an MSW and is part of a team of case managers that likes to continuously improve on its practice. The team is currently using an
I would start off with Linda on repeating her options for the child and going over what she is feeling with each option. I would want to find out what she is afraid of. I would avoid asking her any “why” questions because I want her to be in the here an
Summarize the advantages and disadvantages of using an Internet site as means of collecting data for psychological research (Comp 2.1) 25.0\% Summarization of the advantages and disadvantages of using an Internet site as means of collecting data for psych
Identify the type of research used in a chosen study
Compose a 1
Optics
effect relationship becomes more difficult—as the researcher cannot enact total control of another person even in an experimental environment. Social workers serve clients in highly complex real-world environments. Clients often implement recommended inte
I think knowing more about you will allow you to be able to choose the right resources
Be 4 pages in length
soft MB-920 dumps review and documentation and high-quality listing pdf MB-920 braindumps also recommended and approved by Microsoft experts. The practical test
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One thing you will need to do in college is learn how to find and use references. References support your ideas. College-level work must be supported by research. You are expected to do that for this paper. You will research
Elaborate on any potential confounds or ethical concerns while participating in the psychological study 20.0\% Elaboration on any potential confounds or ethical concerns while participating in the psychological study is missing. Elaboration on any potenti
3 The first thing I would do in the family’s first session is develop a genogram of the family to get an idea of all the individuals who play a major role in Linda’s life. After establishing where each member is in relation to the family
A Health in All Policies approach
Note: The requirements outlined below correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. At a minimum
Chen
Read Connecting Communities and Complexity: A Case Study in Creating the Conditions for Transformational Change
Read Reflections on Cultural Humility
Read A Basic Guide to ABCD Community Organizing
Use the bolded black section and sub-section titles below to organize your paper. For each section
Losinski forwarded the article on a priority basis to Mary Scott
Losinksi wanted details on use of the ED at CGH. He asked the administrative resident