Creative ways to use ActivExpressions

Check out this cool video about how the Ron Clark Academy makes use of Promethean’s ActivExpressions to differentiate instruction.  The very passionate and energetic founder, Ron Clark, highlights ten ways to creatively use the ActivExpressions.  What struck me?  The pace of learning and the integration of movement.  Powerful stuff.

Common Core Assessments – so many questions

As I try and wade through the Common Core ocean of information, this Curriculum Matters post provides an excellent summary of the challenges of developing through-course summative assessments.  The post is dense with information and links to resources.  I highly recommend it.

21st Century Skills Assessment – gets even better

Learning.com has enhanced its 21^st Century Skills Assessment… yet again.  The assessment now integrates a 12 question survey for students that asks questions about online safety, technology access outside of school, and how technology is used for schoolwork.  This data allows the state/district or complex area (or even school) the ability to correlate technology proficiency to access and use, and to flag needs for online safety education and/or counseling at the individual, school, or district level. 

Imagine the possibilities for a school/complex area/district that is ready and eager to leverage data to inform action.  With one online performance-based assessment, educators and administrators can gather psychometrically-valid data to inform instructional, curricular, technology, and counseling decisions to foster students who are prepared (both in ethics and skills) to contribute to our ever-changing society.  Never before have such powerful tools been available to schools – it’s now a question of if and how schools use them.  For more information about Learning.com’s 21^st Century Skills Assessment visit the website or call 487-5437.

Motivating seniors to perform on NAEP

End of year state or national assessments are complex.  They supposedly provide reliable data on students’ proficiency – all via one, standardized assessment – which supposedly reflects the effectiveness of teachers and, in turn, schools.  Hence, the term “high-stakes” assessments.  For students, however, they don’t mean much.  What is going to motivate a high school senior to give it his/her all?  The results are not factored into grades or reviewed for college admission.  It’s always been an interesting dilemma.  A study authored by Boston College’s Henry Braun and Irwin Kirsch and Kentaro Yamamoto of the Educational Testing Service explored the effect of monetary incentives on students’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).  The results?  Offering an immediate incentive motivated students to do perform better than they might have otherwise.  

Researchers focused on a sample of 2,600 high school students from 59 schools in seven states taking NAEP tests in reading.  Within each school, students were randomly assigned to one of the three test-taking conditions:

1. Students were paid $20 at the beginning of the test.
2. Students were paid $5 in advance and $30 at the end of the session if they correctly answered two randomly chosen questions on the test.
3. Students received no incentives (control group).

Interestingly, the second condition, which factored performance into the incentive proved to be the stronger incentive.  “Under both conditions, though, scores for both male and female students were, on average, at least 5 points higher than the scores for the no-incentive group.”  The researchers are smart to mention that it probably is not be feasible to offer monetary incentives to all seniors taking NAEP.  My main takeaway from this study:  It is essential for educators to help high school students see the value of performing on such high-stakes assessment.  Using incentives is one way to make the value concrete and immediate.  However, since offering monetary incentives to all high school seniors is not economically feasible, why not leverage the proven power of recognition to drive performance.  Think about the endless possibilities!

Games, not Grades

Since Daniel Pink recommended this Edutopia video interview with James Paul Gee, professor at Arizona State University, I thought I’d give it a quick review.  It is definitely worth the time – dense with powerful messages.  While most of his messages align with good learning theory (constructivism) and pedagogy, he frames his messages in a 21^st century context, urging the need for educational reform.  Here are my big take-aways:

• We need a major reform in the design of our schools.  Today’s schools are “test prep academies”.  Schooling must focus on helping students learn how to solve problems, collaboratively, so they are able to compete in today’s global economy.  “The group is smarter than the smartest person in the group.”  This aligns with project-based and problem-based learning (not new)… but demands a shift in assessment as well (which leads to his next point about games as assessment)… 
• Games are wonderful models of learning problem-solving skills – essentially, in a game, the player is constantly assessed.  Games do not make the mistake of separating the learning from the assessment.  The use of continuous and immediate feedback helps the player learn as he/she solves a problem.  In this way, knowledge is something that is produced not consumed.
• In games, language is presented “just in time”, allowing the player to immediately apply the language to solve the task at hand.
• Digital tools, including social networking tools, enable youth to easily and quickly join communities centered on their passions.  These “passion communities” are very different than school in that anyone can teach and learn, essentially, roles are fluid.  He mentions that there are very high standards within these communities. 
• Kids seem to understand (better than the baby boomer generation) that media is converging.
• Teachers need to be rewarded for innovation.  The need exists to “re-professionalize” teaching, empowering teachers to build their own curriculum, develop their own practices, etc. – instead of using what the “top” pushes down. 
• We need to make teaching a sexy job.  It isn’t right now because schools are not cool.  Until we design different, innovative educational environments, teaching will not be a “cool” job. 
• Encouragingly, he states that the U.S. does a good job at reform when they are really scared (references the Sputnik period), and we could be at a tipping point.  The new competition schools have coupled with the innovation crisis could lead to a paradigm shift in education.

Are you motivated to join the reform movement?  I am!  It starts within a classroom… so, let’s go for it!

Discussion brews over NAEP’s tech-lit framework

The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) cautions that the proposed framework is very different from how states currently define and assess technology literacy, saying that it will “cause confusion across the nation” and ultimately “not have a positive impact on students and education”. 

All states have already created their own definition of technology literacy, most based on definitions provided by SETDA and ISTE.  Keep in mind that states are required to report their definitions as part of NCLB, Title II, Part D, and in the ARRA.  NAEP’s framework divides tech literacy into three, interconnected areas:  design and systems, information and communication technology, and technology and society.  However, one test score is reported to the public.  SETDA recommends that NAEP divide the test into three sections and report scores for each.

We will continue to follow this very interesting discussion.  It seems at the core of the issue is a common dilemma – how do you nationally assess students via standardized tests on state defined and specific content?