I just finished reading one of the most personally and professionally relevant books I've read in a long time - The Element by Ken Robinson. I attended the PETE&C conference in Hershey this past February and Sir Ken was a keynote. I had not heard of him before this event. When I went to the keynote, I was surprised to find that Mike Hardy and Pam Francis were attending. I later learned that The Element was assigned reading for the A-Team. After attending the keynote address I went to a follow-up session with Sir Ken then went to a book signing and bought the book.
The book touched me in a personal way living with a person who is still searching for his element and also being a person who easily slips into her element. I don't think I'm always very understanding of the struggle to find the element.
Professionally, I was touched by the wide variety of life stories where students who were not well served by our schools went on to do great things. We've all heard some of the more common stories of intelligent kids who didn't do well in school - perhaps with ADHD - but Sir Ken's stories encompass so many more forms of intelligence. During the keynote I found myself thinking about how this should impact what we do in schools. If I were in the classroom how would it change what I do? How could I engage all students more effectively? How could I build the confidence of students who have not experienced success in school? How could I help students feel good about themselves and to discover their element.
My final thoughts about this book relate to the A-Team reading assignment. The superintendent felt the book a worthwhile read but what does that mean? How does that transfer from the superintendent to the classroom? Would I have known about this book were it not for seeing 2 administrators at the keynote address? How do we reconcile the need for meeting students' needs, learning styles, talents, intelligences, etc. with the accountability imposed by standardized testing?
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Free tool lets students participate during class
I read an article today from eschool news regarding a new tool released by Microsoft. Here's the URL for the article: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/04/30/free-tool-lets-students-participate-during-class/ It was interesting to read the rationale and the specifics. A few thoughts come to mind.
There are so many Web 2.0 tools that teachers easily become overwhelmed. Many have really neat whistles and bells that make them really attractive. Many of the tools do the same sorts of things with some different details. How do we help teachers decide which Web 2.0 tool is the best for what they're trying to accomplish? I think there are two important considerations - what are the curricular objectives and who is your audience? Once those questions are answered teachers can start to whittle down the choices or even offer students a large menu of choices, continually bearing in mind the answers to the two questions. Have students demonstrated deep understanding of the content and have they chosen a tool that is appropriate for their audience?
The large array of options available to teachers are very attractive but present some obstacles. Is access to the tool blocked by our internet filter and if it is, why? Does each student need to create an account to use the tool? How can the accounts be managed?
The next aspect of this article that caught my attention is that it's all about data capturing. I think the catch phrase that I've heard most this year in education is data driven decision making. Making decisions based on data is something new - we all do it every day both formally and informally. The best decisions are based on good data. What concerns me is that we are putting all our eggs in the standardized, multiple choice basket when it comes to data collection. This format is certainly one of many ways of gathering data but to place so many important decisions in the lap of this data collection is frightening. MicroSoft has jumped on the band-wagon to give us a new tool to gather this same sort of data.
The final thing that torqued my rotors is that Microsoft releases this incredible new educational tool and it's only for Windows. What are they thinking? We are fortunate to have other tools for taking this little snapshots within our SCASD technology arsenal.
There are so many Web 2.0 tools that teachers easily become overwhelmed. Many have really neat whistles and bells that make them really attractive. Many of the tools do the same sorts of things with some different details. How do we help teachers decide which Web 2.0 tool is the best for what they're trying to accomplish? I think there are two important considerations - what are the curricular objectives and who is your audience? Once those questions are answered teachers can start to whittle down the choices or even offer students a large menu of choices, continually bearing in mind the answers to the two questions. Have students demonstrated deep understanding of the content and have they chosen a tool that is appropriate for their audience?
The large array of options available to teachers are very attractive but present some obstacles. Is access to the tool blocked by our internet filter and if it is, why? Does each student need to create an account to use the tool? How can the accounts be managed?
The next aspect of this article that caught my attention is that it's all about data capturing. I think the catch phrase that I've heard most this year in education is data driven decision making. Making decisions based on data is something new - we all do it every day both formally and informally. The best decisions are based on good data. What concerns me is that we are putting all our eggs in the standardized, multiple choice basket when it comes to data collection. This format is certainly one of many ways of gathering data but to place so many important decisions in the lap of this data collection is frightening. MicroSoft has jumped on the band-wagon to give us a new tool to gather this same sort of data.
The final thing that torqued my rotors is that Microsoft releases this incredible new educational tool and it's only for Windows. What are they thinking? We are fortunate to have other tools for taking this little snapshots within our SCASD technology arsenal.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)