CFF Communities

CFF is requesting assistance with defining and describing various outcome targets that will be used to measure learning and thinking skills.  I was one of the co-investigators with Rick Beach on the evaluation of the one-to-one project in the LGSD.  This request comes as a result of last weeks discussion with Laura and Samantha about learning styles in one-to-one classes.

Please describe each of the following indicators of learning and thinking skills by replying to this post. Please be sure to include clear examples of the target terms, what you look for when identifying the target terms, and what the targets look like in your classroom.

Target Terms

1. Critical-thinking and problem solving skills
2. Communication skills
3. Creativity and innovation skills
4. Collaboration skills
5. Contextual learning skills
6. Information and media literacy skills

 

djohnston:

CFF is requesting assistance with defining and describing various outcome targets that will be used to measure learning and thinking skills.  I was one of the co-investigators with Rick Beach on the evaluation of the one-to-one project in the LGSD.  This request comes as a result of last weeks discussion with Laura and Samantha about learning styles in one-to-one classes.

By way of introduction, Dr. Dennis Johnston has been a collaborator with CFF on various evaluation projects, especially our work to research the impacts of the One-to-One @ Home and School academy at Lemon Grove Middle School.  Some of you may know of Dennis from his former work with Grossmont High School District, or as SDCOE Director of Assessment, or his current work with AVID Center.

Because of the urgent need for work with Lemon Grove and our introduction of the CFF Communities web site, we thought this would be an excellent opportunity to try the on-line way of soliciting your thoughts and insights.  Thanks in advance.

Cheers
Rick 

Defining and describing some outcome targets that can be used is a broad stroke- In considering  a reply, I am ( for the past three weeks) working in my classroom ( Breaking Cycles -Juvenile Court & CommunitySchools) with a 1:1 scenario- We have 9 desktops and recently received 16 laptops - This generally allows me to have each student work on their own- Furthermore, the JCCS has a site license for PLATO and that has been our current focus

That being each student working in either Math or English to  remediate their missing credits- In looking in my room , and considering the topic, having this scenario is an ideal utilization for 1 computer per student. My class currently has 22 members who are 7th thru 10th graders. In  a word, we are differentiating the instruction for each of the 22 through the software ( PLATO) . Now in taking on the "Thinking and learning skills" my intention over the next weeks and months is to allow for some project based learning with 3-4 students per team. We ( 3 of my colleagues from Breaking Cycles and I ) visited Mary Krauss's Emerald  Middle School in El Cajon where we were allowed to see math, history and langauge arts  driving the students into a proactive learning group  that I am sure translates to individual goals. One observation that we all noted was how " on task" the students all were. Obivously, I cannot say what their goals were of Mary's class, but if observation and thirty years in classrooms counts, they were ALL learning and thinking

Kids are, by a large majority, technologically oriented- If a device can be supplied per student, it is a safe assumption to suggest there will be some learning

There must be focus and the teacher must be an active participant/observer. That said, most teachers know their students comfortably enough to suggest that Student A is very organized and capable, so will need a minimum of contact-- while B needs a little extra push and effort to get to the designated space- And it would be naive of me to suggest that either A or B will become more interested in History or Math just because of the technology- However learning styles and their variances can be readily addressed and students can take more control of their own learning opportunities

 

A generic target might be based on a grade level exam that is given pre- computer -Then after an amount of time deemed appropriate, retest to see what if anything is going on with content learning

 

Having visited  Lemon  Grove on a few occassions, I might add here that families have a part in this equation as well-- If "A" comes home and relates her improvement, and the teacher has a web site or email connection with the parents, the goals measuring learning might be facilitated

 

Finally, and this is contigent upon the age of the students, some extra elements of learning can be offered to those "who want to go the extra mile"

Musical composition, grahics, web design, portals--- etc will have the interest of the learners pushed to enhance their thinking skills 

 

This is an article that may appeal to our discussion on 21st century skills

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=science-2-point-0-great-new-tool-or-great-risk

 

 

This is a great article and raises some interesting issues.  Thanks for posting it Bill.  What would "learning pedogogy 2.0" look like in our TIME2INNOVATE program? 

Well, just to get the ball rolling and push towards the 21st Century...

 

In a quick answer, teachers are going to HAVE to learn to be more collaborative

By allowing editing in this journal ( well respected by the way)  the editors are not in fear ( I assume)of job loss- One of the things that is often hit on by many teachers is that "this " will cause me to lose my job- Not true- Look at WIKIPEDIA- and its impact on teaching and learning- And it is based on contributions

"We are smarter than me" keeps jumping up - it is a business url http://www.wearesmarter.org/default.aspx

but I feel this url and the Scientific American piece are tipping the scales towards increased collaboration- and if we are to believe Friedman in his "WORLD IS FLAT" book than we would be well served, or at least our students would be, to learn what potential true collaboration holds for them 

 

One of my favorite guys in tech , Alan Kay stated: "the best way to predict the future is to create it." This in fact could lead us towards a curriculum that expands beyond our classroom and beyond our imagination. In the article a postdoc researcher by the name of BILL Hooker( is it just me  , or are all the COOL guys named BILL) talks about opening his notebook gives the world a look at what he is doing-- Now excluding the negatives ( litigious and otherwise)  imagine a few researchers in different parts of the globe-- Now they are all close to finding a cure for XYZ disease and thru the collaboration- Voila- Now in a classroom where teachers and students were collaborating on a project about rainforests in Indonesia- And they had some particpants from that part of the world - Think what an impact that would be on Mary's class in Emerald 

 

Personal note here: This month I am teaching an online class- one of my students is married to a fellow who teaches math in San Jose- I am sharing some powerpoints with him to "collaborate" with his students-- I may impose upon him to see what if anything happens in class based on this new info

 

Finally, we keep talking about the 21st century as if R2D2 should be cruising in at some future date- We are in the 21st CENTURY- Let's be proactive here folks-- We have enormous brain power and professionalism in this group-- and WE IS SMART!

 

 

 http://www.time.com/time/teach/class.html

 

Another "look" into the future! 

Of course its

Bruce Braciszewski:

This is a great article and raises some interesting issues.  Thanks for posting it Bill.  What would "learning pedagogy 2.0" look like in our TIME2INNOVATE program? 

Please allow me some latitude, as I cannot recall the place where I read/heard or saw this

I think it may have been Dr Daniel AMEN, recently on PBS and one of his books- "CHANGE YOUR BRAIN, CHANGE YOUR LIFE

I have a collection of 14 powerpoints from Dr Amen should anybody be interested-- Just send 19.95-- NAH -- See what  I mean about latitude

If you want the ppt's let me know! 

 

ANYWAY: In the late part of the 19th century, an  average guy would have the knowledge base  of about 6 weeks( totaled) of the Wall Street Journal

Many folks read that daily- plus blogs, web sites  and on and on. Information is now measured in TERABYTES and that is I THINK about a BILLION pages

 

If you were to count to a BILLION by seconds( 1,2,3,....) it would take about 30 YEARS! and those TERABYTES are doubling ANNUALLY!! There are millions of websites being put up annually-- Some of them good-- some of them Not so good-- One of the things we HAVE to do PEDAGOLOGICALLY (sic) is to show our students how to look (http://clusty.com/--- does a  wonderful alignment)  for things and MAKE SURE THAT THE INFO IS VIABLE

ALAN NOVEMBER spoke to us about EASYWHOIS for verification of urls- Good source 

 

HAVE TO ALSO BE "{MEDIA SAVY} My 9 year old son Liam  and his 7 year old  friend  "AJ" asked to use my video camera the other day and then  go to AJ's to edit it!!! Ok-- and can you show me too please! 

 

My personal bias includes group projects -- I have been a member of the Oracle Education Foundation for the past four years and have seen AMAZING collaborations among children in Australia with children in Holland with children in Ghana with children in Rhode Island- Like that!

 

Maybe we can have Yvonne Andres come to one of our meetings? 

 

Another consideration for curriculum delivery is that it must be accurate- With the plethora of data now out there, it is incumbent  on the teacher to make sure they include Pluto as a planet-- or do they?

We are no longer in the vacuum that once ruled the horizons of schools - "The teacher said...." and that was that - well Many children now have internet access- economic  status not withstanding- They are aware- and also are TECH SAVY so they will cirumnavigate blocking software to get to things that might not be appreciated in class-- SO PERHAPS in our classes we would include NETIQUETTE

 

AND- class will - should- -must not be taught from the book-- Absolutely use the book- BUT as we probably all know and use, MOST educational publishers

include ancillary CD's - web sites  to ENHANCE the book-- WE have  to do that too-  Multiple reliable source materials  to engage  the learners and enhance the curriculum

Perhaps, and this is more middle and high school initially - T o allow for more creative maturity--In other words, similar to taking an online class where the teacher says "BY APRIL 21 have this done" - Now we all know the 1/3 rule--The first third will be done tonight-  2nd will be mid APRIL and the final third will be looking for notes around midnight of the 20th

Rather, to give your kids a chance to exceed the class expectation-- " I want everyone to read this section on socialism" Word process a 1000 word doc as a summary and then create either a video or ppt to express what you have come to understand- NOW - ( SAME APRIL 21ST finish) if you have submitted these things, then CONTACT the following ( CLASS- TEACHER - UNIVERSITY-ORGANZIATION) and compose research on this advanced aspect of a specific arena of socialism or and again this is grade level- CONTACT the follwoing agencies (SOCIAL SERVICE ETC) and dothe following work experience problem-- Now in that example, giving a great deal of collaboration, a Middle or High school student could do some research  that would assist said agency-- TAKE THIS TO SCIENCE- SAME GENERIC IDEA, BUT WHEN THE INITIAL ASSIGNMENT IS DONE GOTO A LAB AND OR HOSPITAL for REAL WORLD issues

 

MORE LATER 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

 

 

Most of you have more than likely seen this before-- but it can be used to tweak our dialog 

Collaboration once again- I picked this url up from a magazine article- Obviously still in beta, this foreshadows the potential for us to search the web together!

 

http://research.microsoft.com/searchtogether/ 

I mentioned in my previous long rant

 

http://www.easywhois.com/

 

Good for determining sources of the url

 

A thought for us-- Develop a webliography herein so we can all add some of our favorite web sites and readily share them

 

Bill 

After asking what "pedagogy 2.0" would look like for TIME2INNOVATE, I came across this article "Bloom's Taxonomy Bloom Digitally" which proposes a taxonomy that could apply to web 2.0 environments. Check out this article and let us know if you think it applies. http://techlearning.com/story/showArticle.php?articleID=196605124

 What a wonderful piece and thanks Bruce- For me, as I reviewed this doc, my initial reaction is to have us all use the language of DIGITAL BLOOM

When we are comfortable  with the vocabulary, the technological pieces make more sense. We have children who are already filming and editing, iPoding(?) and blogging- and while I realize the diagram represents growth, it also might be considered in a lateral way-- sort of a bar graph in terms of representation- Many students are doing many of the HOTS as part of their norm- We cannot be stuck in our textbooks any longer, as students are using WIKIPEDIA for research and that is APPLYING what is available to its penultimate - MY SPACE or FACEBOOK as a social connected piece, also serves as an ANALYSYIS of the current culture- Using pictures and music to personalize their sites- Each visitor will instantly EVALUATE the CREATIONS

It is our job/responsbility to REMEMBER that this and future generations have a inherent connectivity to technology and do not, as a general rule, consider it TECH-- "It just is music dude" said one of my student's to an inquiry about his iPod -To paraphrase " It's just learning -Dude"