Edina Digital Age Learning

Last week, I attended the Solution Tree Standards & Assessment Conference in Phoenix. As I reflect back on the three days of learning, I decided to put together my top 10 take-aways. Here they are: 10. On Retakes-Do you want to be a school that picks the winners, or one that creates the winners? Tim Brown  In her talk, Cassie Erkins echoed the theme stating:   We have a moral obligation to set students up for success! 9. "Grading is not essential to the instructional process. Teachers can teach and students can learn without grades!" - Thomas Guskey Guskey identified three keys to moving toward standards based assessment: Begin with a clear statement of purpose. Provide accurate and meaningful descriptions of student learning. Use grading and reporting to enhance teaching and learning. Get rid of % grading and you get rid of problem w/ 0's!! 8. Phases of Professional Development from Eric Twadell Twadell, the Superintendent at Adlai Stevenso...

This summer, our family had the opportunity to spend time in the Andalusia region of Spain on our vacation. We visited Granada, where we toured the Alhambra as well as the Cathedral of the Incarnation. I was struck by the beauty of both of these architectural marvels as well as the cultural differences in design represented. It also struck me at how many years each took to build, and how even today, the structures are being updated, refurbished and added to. Some of the techniques used to preserve the structures 100 years ago were found to actually cause damage, and were being updated with the latest advances in preservation. Alhambra   Cathedral of the Incarnation These buildings were truly "works of art," and a testament to the people who designed and built them, and to those who continue to maintain them.  On the last day of our trip, we toured the Pablo Picasso Museum in Malaga . In one of the rooms, ...

via NY Post The last couple of days, I've been a little bit down, emotionally. I'm a Packer fan, and an "owner," and I was coming to grips with the fact that the team had thrown away a great chance to advance to the Super Bowl in one of the most epic collapses in NFL history .  As I perused some of the articles written about the game, I was startled to see the statistics from the two quarterbacks in the game, the Packers Aaron Rodgers , and Seattle's Russell Wilson . via ESPN One of the ways that quarterbacks in the NFL are evaluated is by Quarterback Rating. This rating is based on a complicated formula involving Completion Percentage, Yards Per Attempt, Touchdowns and Interceptions. While some believe that the formula is flawed , it has been used for many years to evaluate a quarterback's performance. Based on this generally accepted formula, neither quarterback had a very effective game. In fact, Wilson had a 0 for a rating through most of t...

On September 23, I took a random walk around classrooms in our secondary schools, 4 weeks in to our eLearning2 Digital Age Learning Initiative . Here is what I observed...

This morning on NPR ,former Sports Illustrated collumnist, Frank Deford shared an essay titled, " Looking For Lin In All The Wrong Places ." As I was listening to Deford, the last paragraph struck me: But, in counterpoint, what is so dispiriting is to contemplate not only how many basketball players, but how many other athletes, how many artists and actors and musicians and writers, how many special creative talents never get fulfilled because the so-called experts are always looking in the same places. Jeremy Lin is a success, and hooray for him, but his example tells us that there are, surely, so many more brilliant might-have-beens in our midst who never get a chance. This got me to thinking about our classrooms. How many "Jeremy Lin's" are sitting in our classrooms each day, unable to stand out because we are always looking in the same places when we assess their abilities? Is it because we don't connect with their passions? Is it because our me...

ere This school year, I've had the pleasure of working Molly Schroeder leading a group of 29 staff through a Teaching and Technology Cohort through Hamline University . We are currently studying assessment, and one of the course outcomes is to assess what technology staff would select for their classroom. I posed to them this question: Would a laptop/netbook or ipad be a better tool for student use? I broke the participants up into groups and had them research the topic, giving them suggestions here and here of places that had chosen either option. To evaluate the project, I asked them to use this rubric, developed by Doug Johnson for Large Scale Technology Adoption. They were asked to come to a consensus, and then present their findings. I found it interesting at the time, that some participants followed the rubric religiously, while others seemed to follow their gut feelings! Here was one of the presentations that is representative of the overall impressions: <p...

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. ...