Wow. This is a great example of learning with student choice that has incredible value but this risk is real and a reason that many schools would likely shy away from this type of encouragement.

As a parent, community member, and educator, I love this type of authentic learning. But how does this fit into the standards, required curriculum, high-stakes testing education system we have today? Do these partnerships with the community bring more support to schools or do they open up schools to even more criticism if test results aren't a piece of the puzzle?

True of the system or district as well...

This is true for a lot of teachers--I think we are often slow to set up our own professional learning tools whether that's joining a professional learning network via an LMS, Twitter, or just tools to help us organize our own resources.

Yes, passive learning doesn't get far in personal learning so we have to find ways to change the narrative and train learners to understand a new set of "success criteria." What used to look like being a good student won't work as well.

I've used symbaloo as a way to organize myself and I've even put together webmixes on a specific professional development topic before. Reading about Symbaloo in this context makes me rethink how this tool might be helpful in personalized learning. Building in interaction is a really interesting idea I had never considered.

I love Alfie Kohn but this is a scathing assessment of the data-based movement. I get that not all things can and should be reduced to numbers and I tend to agree with his assessment of the dangers of these things being our focus. However, there has to be some way to see if we're making progress other than just individual feelings.

I think this is a very important point as I think about personalized learning and what it might look like. My understanding of personalized doesn't exclude collaboration, but there are models that have the potential to be isolating.

To me, this is the most important point in all three of these articles. But this is such a complex issue in schools today. The pressure of all that students must learn and be prepared for has led us to a place where there is far less personal learning in schools. And at the same time, it would probably be more efficient (time-wise) to let project-based, personal learning meet the standards BUT we've also gotten to a place where funding cuts mean it's almost impossible to move away from the industrial model because the more personal project-based model requires more and different human resources. In other words, at the same time that there is more to learn and more concern about students having the engagement and perseverance to get there, we have less money to rebuild a system that currently gets us by with high student to teacher ratio.

This seems on point as we reach a point where are our tools are far more than we can possibly use, but we are getting much better at being strategic selectors of tech tools.

Yes! We have one building in our district that basically has no mobile service. But even in other buildings, speed can be a big problem.

This is huge--no one wants to wait with a classroom of students while the spinning rainbow circles.

This is really key. I found especially with HS kids, they can get easily frustrated with self-assessment because they've been trained to just turn it in and pray. Going through the process with them explicitly helps them feel more comfortable with the process.

All of these are worthy goals that I think almost every HS teacher I know would like to see more of in their students.

This is really true. In teaching writing, I've found that having them do some peer assessment first gives them better perspective and fresh eyes to come back to their own writing. They have a much clearer view of their own strengths and weaknesses after seeing some of their peers' attempts at the same task.

Many teachers do a lot of formative assessment in the way of observation, listening, even questioning. In an online setting, this is the part that harder. But as standards move more to skills and concepts rather than just knowledge, those "embedded techniques" might be a piece that's missing. Many times when students "miss the mark" on the test, it's because there was a disconnect in what they thought they were supposed to know or lack of feedback on what they were supposed to do.

Yes, exactly! We can even the playing field for students by being explicit in our expectations.

I think a lot of times we default to "for a grade" but there are lots of other reasons to consider.

I thought the assessment brainstorming we did at the end of last week with ways to assess face-to-face vs. online was an interesting way to think of all the ways we can assess. I think as teachers we often default to a couple content-specific norms and it would be good to open up to other alternatives on occasion.

I was a part of a John Hattie book study this year. In Visible Learning he talks a lot about success criteria being so clear that students can accurately self-assess their work. I think that's a really great goal for any rubric or learning target.