Edina Digital Age Learning

In the second half of Wormeli's talk, we began looking at a definition of mastery. He argued that mastery requires nuance, and that their are multiple levels (Introductory and Sophisticated) "Anyone can repeat information, it's the masterful student who can break content into it's component pieces, explain it, and alternative perspectives regarding it cogently to others, and use it purposefully in new situations." He suggests that defining mastery would be a very productive team/department meeting. You must be able to define these before developing assessments. Wormeli, who works with college professors on assessment, used examples from " Teaching the Large College Class" , by Heppner to demonstrate "What we are really trying to assess?" At the post secondary level, assessments are being created and graded not by the professors, but of others, to filter out subjectivity. This will be moving to K-12. We then moved into discussion of Differenti...

Edina welcomed Rick Wormeli , author of "Fair Isn't Always Equal: Assessing and Grading in the Differentiated Classroom" to the district to share his thoughts on Formative Assessment and Feedback. I decided to attend to see how these assessment principles can be enhanced by the use of technology integration. But ended up thinking more about how it might apply to my own professional development offerings! He began by talking about the book " Inside the Black Box ", by Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black. They discussed the impact of intense formative assessment professional development as having the greatest improvement on student achievement . Wormeli said he should be able to circle in a teacher's grade book , what is formal and what is informal assessment. Assessment is taking stock to be used for a decision purpose . The root is "to sit beside", which seems to indicate a coaching. Accountability is to enter into a relationship of mutual support. ...

Last January, I had a conversation with John Pederson , at the Educon 2.1 conference in Philadelphia about Powerful Learning Practice , a " a long-term, job-embedded professional development program that immerses them (participants) in 21st century learning environments ", developed by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson . He was trying to put together a cohort of districts in Wisconsin, and had asked Will and Sheryl if he could include districts from Minnesota as well to get the the optimal number of participants. Since I was from Minnesota, he wondered if I would be interested or know of other districts that were interested in participating?After pitching it back in Edina and getting the go ahead to proceed, I presented the opportunity to the TIES Learning and Technology Advisory group, and after a lot of conversations and the inclusion of a great group of educators from New Hampshire, tomorrow we kick off the cohort in Oregon, Wisconsin! Our team consists of our two ...

Recently, Sarah Horrigan, a British educator had an interesting post , brought to my attention by colleague Claude Sigmund . Horrigan was talking about how her colleagues were complaining about the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) their institution was using. It got me to thinking about pushback I've heard in our district regarding our VLE "du jour", Moodle . Staff using it for professional development complain that it's " clunky " or " too hard " or "boring." As Horrigan correctly points out however, I then got them to imagine a really great learning experience that they'd had while they were at school or university and what made it great. I then asked the group 'did anyone's great experience involve a great teacher?' Hands. 'A really great subject area?' A few more. 'A really great activity or experience?'. Lots of hands and nodding. 'Did anyone's great experience involve how brilliant the room...