AFL - not Assessing Facts Lots

What are we going to ask on our tests when students are
walking in with Google in their pockets?

David Warlick

I was working on a presentation connecting technology and Assessment for Learning after reading a blog post by Konrad Glogowski. His blog, blog of proximal development

often has interesting ideas on it, and he is wrestling with some of the big questions of Collegiate Renewal. Most recently, the connection between what technology does the classrooms and the role of assessment for learning have been merging in his thinking. I lifted this quotation from his blog:

As Michael Wesch recently argued,

All of this vexes traditional criteria for assessment and grades. This is the next frontier as we try to transform our learning environments. When I speak frankly with professors all over the world, I find that, like me, they often find themselves jury-rigging old assessment tools to serve the new needs brought into focus by a world of infinite information. Content is no longer king, but many of our tools have been habitually used to measure content recall. For example, I have often found myself writing content-based multiple-choice questions in a way that I hope will indicate that the student has mastered a new subjectivity or perspective. Of course, the results are not satisfactory. More importantly, these questions ask students to waste great amounts of mental energy memorizing content instead of exercising a new perspective in the pursuit of real and relevant questions (Wesch, 2009).

Wesch, M. (2009, January 7). From knowledgeable to knowledge-able: Learning in new media environments. Academic Commons.

Warlick's point regarding those mini computers we call cell phones is a valid one and Welch's point about how we assess connects in a critical way. For many teachers, testing is still an act of checking to see which invertebrates traits a student can correctly identify. I know I've given more than one exam where students had to define poetic devices.

The question of what is robust and compelling for student to learn shaped not only by what students will give their heads and hearts to (as my boss always says), but also by what things they need, given that the facts are already there.

There is an ongoing debate in educational technology circles about how much knowledge you need to be able to engage in media and information literacy. I actually happen to think you need quite a bit. But "testing" is one of the worst ways to see what students can do with information they know, and testing low-level factual recall is more than a little pointless.

When learning is shaped around real questions and assessed through an interactive process that is collaborative and designed to promote growth, then we actually have alignment between our technical reality, our teaching philosophy, and how we assess.

Now all we need is a mark book that can keep up new types of evidence and use specific descriptive feedback instead of numbers. . .

Digging out

Saskatoon was hit with a substantial snowfall of 30 cm over the weekend, and we are still digging out. Since school and city buses aren't running , my husband has been driving us all through a quagmire of snow over the last three days. As I was looking at this slide from John Pederson yesterday (made by Saskatchewan's own, Dean Shareski), I realized that the trudging I have been doing inside my work and in the great outdoors is eerily connected.

Many divisions in the province still operate using an 80s-90s mentality about technology. (Solomon and Schrum, 2007) lay out the shift to Web 2.0 this way:

• Application based to web based
• Isolated to Collaborative
• Offline or in labs to online anywhere
• Purchased to free online
• Single creator to multiple creators
• Proprietorial/copyrighted to Open source or shared content

The implications of this shift are far reaching and difficult for school divisions to make. However, by looking at this list, it is clear which world view is closer to student engagement and life long learning.

This week (close to a year after we decided to), we are finally opening our filters to allow access to web 2.0 applications for students in our high schools. It has been a really difficult transition. We are worried about safety, digital footprints, bandwidth - all the things that could be problems in this new reality.

I contend we are thinking about it wrong. Let's try the metaphor of the school bus here. In order to travel in the winter we need to keep roads clear, we need certified drivers, we need safety protocols, permission forms and a massive communications infrastructure. But no one says we should not bus kids to school. We understand that as a reality.

Web 2.0 is our magic school bus. Like Miss Frizzle's class, our kids need to be warned about dangers, but they also need to do it for themselves in order to really understand it. We need to teach kids to use web 2.0 tools safely, because they are using Web 2.0 now and will continue to. Thinking about and teaching information and media literacy is just smart teaching in the 21st century.

But, it is bigger than that. A school bus can only travel a short distance from the school. Virtual field trips, simulations, gaming, blogging and wikis have a travel radius that spans the globe. The opportunities for web 2.0 learning vastly exceed those offered by the school bus, but the smaller barriers are still too immense for use to feel safe venturing out.


We are snowed into a 80s-90s view of technology because schools are slow to change. Teachers and administrators are careful people. But like this snow storm, the perfect storm of Web 2.0 technologies is not a choice. It is here.

We can be snowed in.

Or we can we can help our neighbors shovel out, go tobogganing, and remember that all this precipitation will grow our crops this summer.

Teacher as learner

We always say that if we want deeply engaged learners, we need deeply engaged teachers. Growth mindset, commitment to renewal, a focus on each learner - these are all things that we value. I recently came across a power point by Wes Fryer on Slideshare that articulates many of the things I aspire to be and hope that my children have.

Things I Want To Model As Your Teacher

View more documents from Wesley Fryer.

The problem is, Wes picks so many things. I'd have a hard time picking ones I don't think are important, and I know that teachers are busy people and we are always adding to the list of things we want them to be and do. And they can't do them because we compel them too, it has to be because they really want to or it is not enough. Teachers have to really want it.

What can I do to create the conditions where teachers want to engage in the way Wes suggests? What barriers do we need to address?

Learning in CLASSrooms or Communities

I watched an interesting video tonight - it connects to all the pondering I have been doing about how we rethink school to engage our students. Take a look and let me know what you think. What makes the best connection between Collegiate Renewal and technology?

Choice as pain killer

Patterson (et al) argue that there is a critical difference between punishment and sacrifice. They both have pain, but you have no choice with punishment and choice with sacrifice. That's the nugget, Patterson argues, that leads to personal engagement.

I first encountered Paterson reading an article in December's issue of Teacher Librarian. The whole issue is about teaching and learning with technology. My favorite article is by Vicki Davis, whose blog I have followed for a while. Davis ask, "How do we unleash the intrinsic desire of teachers to help students learn and help teachers make the sacrifices it will take to get there? "(p. 9). Yup, sacrifices. She argues we want to teachers to act as teacherpreneurs: "someone who organizes a classroom venture for learning and assumes the risk for it" (p. 8). Sounds a lot like Collegiate Renewal.

When discussing Collegiate Renewal, we also talk about how engaged learners need engaged teachers. We know what we are asking is actually a really big shift. Sometimes I think we forget about how painful it is.

I think we always need to come back to that intrinsic desire to help kids learn. That's why we are teachers - we make the decision to do things with that desire in mind. Ask two teachers with opposite practices why they do things, and they will both tell you they do it for the learning.

So if choice is the pain killer we need, we have a problem. It is antithetical to "prescribe" choice. And yet, choice in a vacuum is often uninformed or outright wrong.

I have been willing to do a lot of gruelling, devastating and tedious things when I see results for my students. I'm even more willing to do these things when other teachers encourage me to do so. I got my copy of this article from a teacher librarian friend of mine, on the recommendation of another TL. I've shared it with 5 other educators. I went out today to interview a teacher and he talked about why Collegiate Renewal was the only way to go, and then he talked about how hard it is. The choices he is making in his classroom sacrifice his time and energy, but in talking to him, I was reminded that I was prepared to engage, even knowing the pain.

Patterson is right that choice is key, and it is really hard to make a change . Davis quotes Herold et al in the article: "There is no such thing as an 'organizational change...'. When we say an organization has made the transition from 'point A' to 'point B', we really mean individuals within the organization have changed their behaviour, so that collectively the organization now reflects these changes" (p. 70). I guess that means we need to keep talking about what is happening in our classrooms, and about what difference it made for our students. That choice to engage is the only balm.

Google Jockey - a simple step in the opposite direction

A teacher I was working with today asked me about a simple thing she could do. She has a new data projector in her history classroom. Like many teachers, she feels pressured to create presentations to show in her students. I told her the best thing she can do it put the technology in the hands of the kids and appoint a Google Jockey each day when they are discussing or looking at notes.

To the best of my knowledge, the term originates in 2006. A Google Jockey is a student who has Google open and looks up terms, ideas and events as the class is working. This frees the teachers to work at the front facilitating discussion and provides the other students with visuals and ideas to extend what is happening in class.

4 great tools for playing with Google in this way:

• Use the Wonder Wheel to find related terms or ideas to the one you are discussing
• Pull up Google Earth and search for resources connected to your topic - you can find maps, stats and historical images.
• Do a standard image search and show pictures of the people, places and ideas you are discussing. Be sure to set your filter to strict filtering to avoid inappropriate images.
• Current events? Use time lines, twitter searches and comparison sites to give a real sense of what is being said by people or news organizations around the world.
  

Collegiate Renewal is about creating opportunities for students to be deeply engaged and be responsible and caring citizens in our community, nation and world. A google jockey models some of the skills to be a life long learner, and the stream of visualizations, different world views and people's thoughts help us really be a part of something beyond the classroom. A google jockey also meets the needs of our digital native students, who prefer image and video to text and want many rapid pieces of information.

If we don't think about how to use our data projectors, they become just another tool that the teacher uses to transmit to students. A google jockey is a simple step in the opposite direction.

Of course we believe collaboration is a good idea – right?

For the last two decades, education journals have been publishing studies that extol the virtues of professional collaboration. In fact, creating a collaborative culture has been identified by some educational researchers as the most important factor in successful school renewal.

Research is clear that, for teachers, working collaboratively:

· inspires the desire to renew professional practices,
· increases instructional competence and confidence,
· makes complex professional tasks more manageable,
· promotes coherence and consistency in instructional practices

Together, teachers have more energy, skills, resources and ideas than an individual teacher and their synergy leads to higher quality planning and instruction.

Thus it is not surprising that we are all familiar with Professional Learning Communities, inquiry teams, PGN’s, teacher learning groups and many other structures designed to promote collaboration. Also, countless sub-days are provided and many detailed facilitation plans are developed so that teachers can work together. These are prevalent in our schools because we want to realize the benefits of collaboration in our division.

However effective these structures and expenditures are, I do wonder if collaboration - an idea with such wide acceptance - requires so many extra efforts and supports. If collaborating is such a good idea, it seems to me that planning and teaching together would occur naturally as a part of our day-to-day work. Does it?

Do we plan instruction together on a regular basis? Is team-teaching common in our schools? Do we develop common assessments with colleagues? Do we invite other teachers into our classrooms as an extra set of eyes and ears to provide feedback on something we can’t take note of while we are teaching? Are our actions evidence of our belief in and commitment to collaboration?

If the answer is yes, let’s share examples of teachers collaborating and the benefits of their work together – to reinforce this as a core element of our professional culture. If the answer is no, let’s find out how to grow a collaborative culture in our division.

Based on what I have read and experienced, I know that time and courage are required for meaningful collaboration. Collaborative planning and instruction take more time and deprivatizing our practice is a professional risk that may be uncomfortable.

To realize the benefits of collaboration we can overcome those two factors:
· Do we already have time built into our work lives that we could use for collaboration?
· Do we have trusted colleagues with whom we can establish a more collaborative professional relationship?

To enhance the quality of our instruction and our students’ learning, we can find the time and the courage required to collaborate.

We believe that collaboration is a good idea – right?


More: Read an “old school” DuFour perspective on collaboration.