Bridging two mountains
Sunday, June 24, 2007 at 08:59AM Yesterday's Edublogger conference here at NECC in Atlanta was as exciting as only being in a huge group of like-minded educators can be. Keywords of engagement, authentic learning/assessment, creativity, information fluency, and global citizenry were common as ticks on a coon dog. (Sorry, being in the South has had an effect.)
What I wonder, though, is if education technology change isn't creeping up on many of us in that group from quite a different direction - through the use of technology to assess and use data to determine learning needs of individual students.
Now, by "learning needs" I would suggest that there is a dichotomy of what constitutes "learning needs" in the educational community. Look at the NETS standards, the blogosphere, and the work of Stiggens and Kohn and other progressive educators, engagement, authentic learning/assessment, creativity, information fluency, and global citizenry are the goals - the mountain the group yesterday is trying to climb.
But another real mountain exists in schools and classroom that may be more representative: the goals represented by NCLB, summative assessments, and the focus on basic skill attainment and fact-heavy content standards. To put it bluntly, test scores are of more concern to my teachers and administrators than nearly anything else. Too many of the things we believe in remain "nice extras" or more likely, distractions for the classroom teacher.
Some teachers like Vicki Davis seemed to have naturally bridged the gulf between the mountains - through her personal courage and belief that this way of learning is just plain more important than test scores. But how do will build bridges for the rest of the educational world?
I can think of some important ones:
Make sure assessments are used to differentiate instruction. We need to use the data we get from tests to individualize the educational process. As a teacher, I now empirically KNOW that I have kids with different skill levels in my classes. But I have to now take that knowledge and make sure every child is custom educated - not mass education. This might be the way educational technology (value-added testing) that may have the biggest positive impact on classrooms (and was not really addressed by we edubloggers yesterday to any great extent - at our peril.)
Have 21st skills recognized as being as important as the 3rs. The "refreshed NCLB" requirements must include holding schools and teachers accountable for making sure students master the skills represented by the "refreshed" NETS standards. This will be a tough sell. (Despite the lip service, I am not convinced that business really wants creative thinkers.)
Make the case for engagement = learning. On a gut level, all teachers know that a student that is not engaged at least a certain level is not learning. (Duh.) But is there research saying the the greater the level of engagement, the greater the amount of learning? This is important given technology's power in engaging our Net Generation students. We can't rely on gut feeling to make this case, especially in a high stakes testing environment.
As you go through the vendor area (or look at ed tech publications), make a mental note of which products and services support the constructivist/21 century skill mindset (read Sylvia Martinez's June 23rd Generation Yes blog entry) and how many support the NCLB basic skills emphasis. Folks, the big money is going to the second group.
There is an old maxim about a person who climbs a huge mountain, only to turn around on reaching the summit to see the rest of his party has climbed another mountain. Are you climbing the same mountain as the rest of the educators in your schools? And if not, how do you build bridges between the peaks?
