Edina Digital Age Learning

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to sit in on a Webinar put on by John Pederson , Educational Technology Liaison with WiscNet in Madison, Wisconsin (And Tri-State PLP Community Leader!), featuring Christian Long . Christian shared an activity he has created for his students, " The Alice Project ". As John eloquently stated in describing the seminar: This project turns 16 groups of high school students loose on the book The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition . Teams of students use various “Web 2.0″ technologies to build a public presence for their learning, develop an ongoing (and carefully edited/maintained) digital portfolio of their discoveries, and demonstrate the use of these tools as story-telling/presentation catalysts. Behind the scenes, Christian is consciously shifting his “teaching” efforts to that of co-learner, collaborator, and advisor. He’s connecting his students with the rest of the world using the technology and helping them experience a real world audienc...

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...

For those of you creating Jing movies for students one of the issues you may have had to deal with is managing and posting the movies themselves. (Unless you've purchased the " Pro " Account and are uploading to iTunes !) With Media Roll , Screencast.com has taken the management off your hands! Now, Math teachers can create Jing videos for sections of a chapter, save them in a folder labeled with that chapter and then embedthe Media Roll for that chapter on sites such as Edline and Moodle ! If embedding is not an option, you can copy the RSS feed from each folder, and add that to your Moodle course or Edline Content.

Last night we had Open House at South View Middle School , home of our first year 1:1 Laptop Learning pilot . We had a nice turn out and parents asked lots of good questions. They received the policy guide and forms they will need to bring with them next Saturday, when students will be coming to a final orientation prior to taking them home. Next week, students will be going through training on Acceptable Use, Proper Care, Personal Safety and File Management, then taking a "Driver's License Assessment" to earn the privilege of 24/7 access. Below are the presentations for each of the units. I'd love some feedback! Acceptable Use Proper Care Personal Safety