Group items tagged

Traditional summative functions. This is using badges to indicate that the earner previously did something or knows something. This is what the educational assessment community calls assessment of learning. Newer formative functions. This is where badges are used to enhance motivation, feedback, and discourse for individual badge earners and broader communities of earners. This is what is often labeled assessment for learning. Groundbreaking transformative functions. This is where badges transform existing learning ecosystems or allow new ones to be created. These assessment functions impact both badge earners and badge issuers, and may be intentional or incidental. I believe we should label this assessment as learning

They're Watching You at Work: What happens when Big Data meets human resources? The emerging practice of "people analytics" is already transforming how employers hire, fire, and promote.

"Academic environments are artificial environments," Laszlo Bock, Google's senior vice president of people operations, told The New York Times in June. "People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they're conditioned to succeed in that environment," which is often quite different from the workplace.

"...administered a battery of tests to a group of corporate presidents, he found that not one of them scored in the "acceptable" range for hiring. Such assessments, he concluded, measured not potential but simply conformity." I would build on this with the statement that current assessment and graduation requirements are great at measuring a student's ability to excel at conformity and irrelevant knowledge sets while doing little to encourage that student's individuality and personal skill sets. Current assessment and graduation requirements are great at measuring a student's ability to memorize what others think important, but not in assessing and fostering the important act of thinking for themselves. Current assessment and graduation requirements are great at measuring who a student is according to an antiquated framework defined within the walls of a school. But, scripted versions of success and knowledge don't allow for assessing and promoting student potential for a world where there are no boundaries or false constraints of whom he/she might become. JF

Here's the slideshow from the "Keepin' It Real: Authentic Assessment" session as a free download. It has several useful links and a few funny videos too. More conference materials from other sessions coming soon!

Charlie MacFadyen & Robin Fawcett, two very talented colleagues, gave this presentation at the CVU School Transformation in 2010 with support from the Rowland Foundation. While you need Charlie & Robin to get the full effect, the slides alone provide one of the best explanations of authentic assessment I know of. It's also a terrific example of "zen presentation".

"The best advice that I have ever been given to help me create good quality summative comments when assessing pupils' work came from Darren Mead. He explained that if the comments made are kind, specific and helpful, the pupil will be able to progress to the next level."

This is a great challenge to all of us to make better assessments of learning, not memorization.  

Thanks, I enjoyed this article-

This blog post provides clear response to a few common complaints about allowing students to redo or retake an assessment on which they did not do well. 

Succinct and useful advice on giving feedback which is "kind, specific, and helpful."  With the point being that you need all three to help students progress and learn from their work. Has implications for administration as well.

Pulling this back out. One of my favorite blog posts about what I feel makes for the best teachers...giving great feedback. "Learning" should not be a one-off event, it should be a process of feedback and improvement.

"...at the structural level, companies need to be constantly reflective, assessing their relevance... And they should expect to constantly change without fear of their own identity--because it's better to be an adaptive (school) than a well-recognized fossil."

"The best way to promote change is to constantly challenge talent. And the only way to do that is to never act like the learning process is done."

"...by all means ask a team to do something new. But right when you do, make sure to call in experts for roundtable lunches to answer questions. People will be less afraid of change if they know it's expected, and if the (school) provides the right resources to enable it. And those old habits? Let them die.

"... one of the world's leading psychologists, Professor Carol Dweck visited the RSA to discuss how students' mindsets shape their motivation and learning. She discussed new research showing: a) how parents' and teachers' praise can create fixed mindsets and undermine children's motivation, b) how fixed-mindset school environments can decrease the representation of women and minorities, and c) how teaching students a growth mindset increases their success in school."

Is "grit" something that educators need to develop in students? Or rather, is grit inherent in all children? If so, instead of asking if it needs to be developed in their learning, should we be more introspective and work on not suppressing it through our teaching?

Praising a student on process and effort contributes to their learning and their desire to learn more. Praising success based on intelligence has the opposite effect...it actually inhibits growth. What implications does this have on how we assess student learning and communicate those assessments?

"Competency-based learning is a proposed alternative to traditional K-12 advancement that allows students to progress at their own pace as they master the subject matter rather progressing after a fixed interval--a pre-defined amount of "seat time" in the classroom"

Often in groups such as this multiple variations of a tag topic are created by different users. To help ensure that our collective bookmarks are easily searchable, here is a list of preferred tags for the Rowland Foundation Group's library. When entering a tag that is more than one word, please use "quotes" around that tag. This will keep your tag singular, such as Achievement Gap rather than separating them into Achievement and Gap. Preferred Tags Achievement Gap Authentic Assessment Collaborative Teaching Community Partnerships Confrence document Experiential Education External Learning Opportunities Family and Parent Partnerships Formative Assessment Grant Opportunity PDF Place-based Education School Change Service Learning Sir Ken Robinson Student Voice Thematic Instruction video

Events & trainers for training in School Transformation, PLCs, Common Assessments, SMART Goals, RTI, etc.

The Rigor/Relevance Framework is a tool to examine curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The Rigor/Relevance Framework is based on two dimensions of higher standards and student achievement.

This is great! Thanks Adam. I feel like so often schools have aspirations of quadrant D, but spend so much time focusing on quadrant A that they never reach those aspirations. This reminds me a lot of Stephen Covey's time management matrix...schools spend so much time in quadrant 1 being reactive (Putting out fires aka chasing standardized test scores.) that they never get to focus on being proactive (quadrant 2) and really think about what we want our students to learn in school.

What if we applied the principles of Formative Assessments to the district level rather than just in classroom practices? "...like unemployment statistics. Scores on standardized tests ... usually arrive too late to help individual children or schools that are struggling." "Leading indicators - indicators that provide early signals of progress toward academic achievement - enable education leaders ... to make more strategic and less reactive decisions about services and supports to improve student learning."

Implications for PLPs around bias engrained in unconscious mental models and in commonly accepted practices for guiding students in their interests/choices around coursework in high school, college majors, and career interests. "Cultural beliefs about gender are argued to bias individuals' perceptions of their competence at various career-relevant tasks, controlling for actual ability. To the extent that individuals then act on gender-differentiated perceptions when making career decisions, cultural beliefs about gender channel men and women in substantially different career directions."

"The model, now in practice or under consideration in states including Louisiana, Michigan, Arizona and Utah, allows students to build a custom curriculum by selecting from hundreds of classes offered by public institutions and private vendors. A teenager in Louisiana, for instance, might study algebra online with a private tutor, business in a local entrepreneur's living room, literature at a community college and test prep with the national firm Princeton Review - with taxpayers picking up the tab for it all."

With little to no oversight this would be a disaster. But, what if...

What if there were a regional "school" that oversaw these External Learning Opportunities and Diplomas with Certificates of Focus? A student would be assigned to a Mentor Teacher who would help to: Design a plan to graduation...and beyond, Give prior approval and determine assessments of learning experiences, Provide awareness and approve formal online opportunities such as VTVLC, VHS, Aventa Learning/K12, Provide awareness and approve formal online and traditional courses through Dual Enrollment at CVV and other local colleges, Connect students to local Internships, Apprenticeships, Connect students to programs such as TIPS, Medquest, etc., Guide students in inquiry-based Independent Studies, Guide students in developing and implementing Service-Learning projects, Bringing together like-minded students, community members, employers, educators together around specific college and career goals, and the list could go on. This could be a big draw for all students. This is could be a way to provide a highly individualized learning experience for students. With the right framework it could be amazing.

"A badge is a validated indicator of accomplishment, skill, quality or interest that can be earned in any of these learning environments. Badges can support learning, validate education, help build reputation, and confirm the acquisition of knowledge. They can signal traditional academic attainment or the acquisition of skills such collaboration, teamwork, leadership, and other 21st century skills."

Great exploration of types/kinds of badges and badge characteristics/skill set indicators.