Is accuracy enough?

This is my route from a walk I took last weekend as mapped by MapMyWalk on my iPhone.

I am stunned by how accurate this map is. The little red bumps where the arrows point are where I strayed from my regular route - by about ten feet in each instance.

When I look at my house in GoogleMaps, the blinking blue dot is on the left when I am in the family room and on the right when in the bedroom. Somehow the technology, bouncing a signal from cell tower to satellite and back a few times, knows precisely where my phone - and by extension - I am.

Increasingly we have data on our students that can pinpoint their skills location as well. In reading, writing (or writing mechanics anyway), and math, we test our students using NWEA MAPS assessments - up to three times a year for some kids. Making sure labs are ready, students are entered into the tracking system, and training proctors are all part of the tech department's job - and we do it well and with a smile on our faces, being good team players.

But I have personal concerns. Since we have so much and hopefully such accurate data on these very basic skills, will we be content in assessing only what children will one day find on the ACT or SAT? The assessments that quantify how many "right answers" can be mustered? 

Angela Duckworth, among others, study and report on "grit" as a more accurate predictor of student success, than ACT/SAT scores. But can we say we value characteristics like grit (and creativity and innovation and problem-solving and critical-thinking and transliteracy and artistic/athletic talent and ...) when all we measure is readin', writin' and 'rithmatic?

The program that generated the map above also showed me my gains and losses of elevation, my speed in one mile increments, how far to the .01 of a mile the distance I traveled, and even how many calories I burned. And I have no reason to doubt those number were any less accurate than the path it showed I walked - including the pit stop. 

But the data did not show if the sky was blue, if I saw a rare bird, or if the visit I had with my neighbor was pleasant. They don't tell if the 2.89 miles I walked was a challenge for me or simply a slacker's stroll. The data don't predict if walking is something I do out of joy or compulsion. 

When I read of kindergartens dropping play time so they can spend more hours on "pre-literacy" activities, elementary schools eliminating recess to gain time for test prep, and secondary schools closing computer labs for weeks on end to accommodate online testing, I shudder. I want another educational environment for my grandchildren - and yours.

Join a learning safari this fall

I am extremely excited to be a part of this learning adventure in Addis Ababa in September. Learning 2.0 conferences describe themselves as:

... not a static “read-only” conference with experts presenting to attendees. The intention is that participants are actively engaged and contributing to the learning that happens at the conference. The name also reveals that it is not technology or tools that is the focus, but learning and teaching. Learning 2.014 website

There is an amazing group of facilitators joining this conference, including my friends Jeff Utecht and Kim Cofino with whom I had the pleasure of working in Bangkok a few years ago. I am also very pleased to see many educators working in African schools leading "extended sessions" as well. 

Registration is going well already with participants from three continents. 

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This is will be my fifth trip to Africa - the first since the AISA conference in Nairobi in 2010. That conference, while more traditional in terms of keynotes, breakout sessions, etc, was absolutely fascinating. I've never encountered a more compassionate group of teachers, librarians, technologists, and administrators working under some very challenging conditions. 

I also used to the trip to do a little sightseeing - an 8 day hike up Kilimanjaro. If anyone is interested, I plan to extend my stay in Ethiopia a week after the conference to do some trekking again (less taxing than Kili). Let me know if you have an interest forming a group to see some history and do some day hiking.

Simple rules for posting online grades

From the Orlando Sentinal story "Online gradebooks earn A for info, F for stress":

Foster Starks checks his grades most every day on his phone, logging into a website where teachers at Celebration High post marks for tests, papers and other assignments.

The 18-year-old senior likes that the online grade book helps him keep tabs on how he's doing. But the constant checking and the occasional unnerving mark — whether it's a flubbed quiz or a grade entered in error — "induces a lot of stress," he said.

In most schools, online grade sites have replaced traditional grade books, and unlike the books once kept in a teacher's desk, the Internet versions are available to parents and students most anytime.

They aid parents looking to help their kids keep on top of schoolwork, alerting them to problems in real time, long before a printed report card would go home. But the ability to see grades 24/7 can fuel parental hovering and student anxiety.

....

Matt, now a 10th-grader at Lake Brantley High, and his parents still check Skyward regularly.

"Obviously, I may not enjoy it. I recognize it's probably a good thing," he said.

What irks him, though, is when his parents see a bad grade and then text or call to say, "What went wrong here?"

Often, he doesn't know because the grades are online before the teacher has handed back the test.

...

A common complaint from students and parents is that the sites are not up to date.

We've had a parent/student portal into our InfiniteCampus grade book since the 2004-05 school year. Adding apps that made the site accessible from a smartphone increased its usage. But we've also experienced the problems that the Sentinel article lists above: inconsistent or slow grade reporting, slow or nonexistent assignment posting, and reporting done online prior to work returned to students. The complaints from parents about these issues have decreased over the years, but they still crop up now and then.

Quite honestly, our district has not adopted any guidelines for teachers on the use of the online, student/parent accessible grade book. If anyone is to blame for poor implementation, it's me as tech director for not being more firm about setting such guidelines.

I don't think they need to be too complicated:

1. Each school will adopt a reasonable expectation of teacher posting assignments, grades, and other information in the online gradebook and make sure those expectations are clearly communicated in the parent, student, and teacher handbooks. (For example, all assignments will be posted no later than one week before they are due and no grades will be posted later than five days after the assignment has been turned in.)
2. No grades on assignments will be posted until after the original work with grade and comment is returned to the student.
3. All teachers will follow these guidelines in a consistent manner with gradebook use being an item included in teacher evaluations. 

Again, rule #1 above is best developed at the building level by the teaching staff, but once agreed upon, needs to rapidly become part of the building culture - an expectation of all teachers, period.

Does your building or district have any sample rules for teacher using parent/student accessible gradebooks?

See also: Parent portals: are we encouraging helicopter parenting?