In the end, what will be evaluated is a complex portfolio of a student’s online activities. (Syverson & Slatin, 2006)These will include not only the results from games and other competitions with other people and with simulators, but also their creative work, their multimedia projects, their interactions with other people in ongoing or ad hoc projects, and the myriad details we consider when we consider whether or not a person is well educated.Though there will continue to be ‘degrees’, these will be based on a mechanism of evaluation and recognition, rather than a lockstep marching through a prepared curriculum. And educational institutions will not have a monopoly on such evaluations (though the more prestigious ones will recognize the value of aggregating and assessing evaluations from other sources).Earning a degree will, in such a world, resemble less a series of tests and hurdles, and will come to resemble more a process of making a name for oneself in a community. The recommendation of one person by another as a peer will, in the end, become the standard of educational value, not the grade or degree.
Eric Calvert on 06 May 09The intent of this study is to document K-12 Web 2.0 policies, practices, and perspectives in American schools from the perspective of school district administrators. The study was made possible through the generous support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The CoSN study methodology included: 1) the design and field testing of a Web 2.0 survey for three respondent groups: school district superintendents, curriculum directors, and technology directors; 2) the constructing of a representative, random sample from the 14,199 public school districts in the U.S. stratified by four locales (e.g., urban, suburban, town, and rural); 3) the data collection through online surveys; 4) the weighting of findings to ensure demographic representativeness; and 5) analysis and reporting of the results. The report is based on the surveys from nearly 1200 district administrators, including 389 superintendents, 441 technology directors, and 359 curriculum directors. The reader will note that throughout the report, Metiri identifies the respondent group(s) and the associated weighted number of respondents who answered any particular question or series of questions. The complete methodology for the survey is included in the Appendix.
