Group items tagged

by Nick Anderson, Washington Post, September 2 2010. As part of the Race to the Top, grants were made to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers ($170 million) and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium ($160 million). The Partnership "would potentially replace a single, high-stakes test with a series of assessments to be averaged into one score for accountability purposes." SMARTER "would assess students through computer-adaptive technology..." Both assessments hope to do away with the existing "bubble tests" and hope to roll out in the 2014-15 school year.

By Ros Smith, published by JISC, Sept 6 2010. Announcement and podcast posted on the JISC site. This newly published guide raises questions about the meaning of assessment, and how more effective assessment (ideally taking advantage of current technologies) might also promote the idea of students becoming lifelong learners. There is a 13 minute podcast with Ros Smith, the author. The new guide can be downloaded by chapter, of full guide (as PDF or Word docs). Also, until Oct 31, 2010, printed copies can be ordered for free.

Interesting approach by PARCC on through-course assessments for K-12 students with particular significance for HS students as they assess how college ready they are, how they are growing content and skills to analyze, understand the content and apply, and how through-course assessments drive interventions, classroom practice, and support needed for teachers to understand CCSS and help their students to achieve them. Really like logic model on p 17. How does this, should this, could this affect MCNC's epi modeling? I-Lab practicum?

This course, offered by P2PU (Peer to Peer University) looks at Mozilla's upcoming release of an Open Badges framework and asks questions about how community/peer-rated online badges might stand in for more formal assessment/recognition of learning, particularly in new or non-traditional fields. This is formally a 4-week course which began August 13 2011.

Sharing both for the look & feel of this course and for the ideas around "badge" assessment.

By Will Richardson, on his blog "weblogg-ed: learning from the read/write web," posted 22 June 2010. Richardson's main focus seems to be K-12 (as is the focus of many of the very interesting comments that this post has received), but the questions he asks are relevant to students of all ages and at all levels: how do we measure more esoteric qualities like the ability to follow "passion," how to "earn...a living solving problems and helping to make the world a better place." It's as much about the quality of education as of assessment.

iRubric is a tool that helps faculty design rubrics for assessment. This tool is part of the Rcampus suite of opensource tools.

Published by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET), March 2012. This paper argues that, based on two recent studies, "job-embedded PD can be highly effective, but only when there is a sufficient infrastructure in place to support it." NIET's own program, TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement, is such a program. Cited studies: Biancarosa, G., Bryk, A.S., & Dexter, E.R. (2010, September). Assessing the value-added effects of Literacy Collaborative professional development on student learning. The Elementary School Journal, 111(1), 7-34. -- and -- Saunders, W.M., Goldenberg, C.N., & Gallimore, R. (2009, December). Increasing achievement by focusing grade-level teams on improving classroom learning: A prospective, quasi-experimental study of Title I schools. American Educational Research Journal, 46(4), 1006-1033

While this analysis seems somewhat biased (clearly written in support of NIET's own program), many of the characteristics of their program match work that KPI has done in PD.

"MindTap is a new personal learning experience that combines all your digital assets - readings, multimedia, activities, and assessments- into a singular learning path to improve student outcomes."

By Beth Fertig, reported on WNYC March 24, 2010. In this education feature, Fertig reports on an experimental afterschool program called School of One, an individualized math program where students work online with math tutors and also occasionally work together. Their self-paced work plan is based on frequent online assessments. Daniel Willingham is quoted for his work on learning styles. MP3 is available, in addition to the transcript.

Chris Dede research projects include: Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) based ecosystems science curriculum models for middle school, virtual performance assessments and multi-user virtual environments.

from the U.S. Department of Education. Plan calls for applying the advanced technologies used personally and professionally to the U.S.'s entire education system. The plan presents five goals with recommendations for states, districts, the federal government, and other stakeholders. Goals address the five essential components of learning powered by technology: Learning, Assessment, Teaching, Infrastructure and Productivity. This page has a link to the plan (PDF).

From their home page, "Agilix delivers formative assessment and individualized learning solutions."

Blog post about her company/community, Powerful Learning Practice, on the blog Connected Educators, posted Dec 18 2011. Nussbaum-Beach founded Powerful Learning Practice, with creates virtual CoPs, primarily with K-12 educators. Their model is to collect teams from several schools to work together in a larger CoP. In the first year, participants share in an action research project; if they chose to continue for a second year, they "collaboratively create" a classroom unit.

Many of the ideas here -- specifically those around engagement and various assessments/measures of success -- seem akin to KPI's own findings. Interesting project and interview.

By Jarret Cummings in Jarret's blog, Educause, Nov 9 2011. Review of education policy briefing led by Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter, in which she discussed her department's on-going commitment to open educational resources (OER). Her statement included a wide-ranging definition of OER and information about how OER will tie-in with recently announced government grants.

Presented by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, April 2010. This guide, "is the result of a year-long cross-foundation effort to develop common principles, approaches, and taxonomies to help staff decide how best to allocate time and resources for data collection and analysis." Link to the PDF of the full guide from this page.

By Carl May in Institute of Health and Society, July 7, 2006. This paper presents a normalization model that enables analysis of conditions necessary to support the introduction of complex interventions.

Common Core State Standards development underway in 25-state consortium headed by Florida PARCC-- Note timeline and type of PD envisioned for teachers on CC--who will facilitate the use of modules with practicing professionals?