Testing, and More Testing....

I don't ordinarily post a full article in the blog, but believe you won't be able to access this Education Week article online without a password. The following is verbatim right from the journal. After you skim the article, post your comments about how you feel about another national test to assess students' literacy skills. Is this a wise idea? Should we have such a test? What might it tell us, and how might we use the information? If you want to see if you can access the article, as well as the posted responses to it, try clicking on this link.

"Draft Unveiled on Technological Literacy for NAEP
Test to Gauge Knowledge of Tools and Their Use and Impact on Society"
By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo

A discussion draft of the framework for the national assessment of technological literacy, the first to gauge students’ understanding of and skill in using a range of tools, has been presented to the board that oversees the testing program.

The computer-based National Assessment of Educational Progress in technological literacy, scheduled to be administered to a representative sample of the nation’s 4th, 8th, and 12th graders for the first time in 2012, will evaluate students’ understanding of technology tools and their design, the ways they can be used to gather information and communicate ideas, and their impact on society.

The goal of the technological-literacy assessment should be to help students “understand all of the implications of living in a highly technological society,” said
Alan Friedman, a physicist who is a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP. Mr. Friedman is the vice chairman of the board’s assessment-development committee.

Those implications, he said, include not only the advances to society that have been created by technology, but also the drawbacks, such as concerns about privacy, as well as the challenges society will face in the future in energy usage and other areas.

When it is made final, the framework will guide the design of the assessment. The draft defines technological literacy as the “general understanding of technology coupled with a capability to use, manage, and assess the technologies that are most relevant in one’s life, such as the information and communication technologies that are particularly salient in the world today.”
The committee embraced a broad definition of technology that ranges from automobiles to computers, including many of the tools that are used in daily life.

Limits to Measurement

Students may be tested on their knowledge of the kinds of tools that are available and how they are used, along with their abilityto apply technological concepts to solve problems. They may be given tasks that demonstrate their ability to use various technology platforms to communicate information or collect and analyze data, evaluate information, and suggest a technology solution to a given problem.

While the assessment is meant to gauge a broad range of skills that are considered essential to technological literacy, the test design may be limited in its ability to measure some areas, the draft states, such as the habits of mind and critical-thinking skills that are considered essential to a deeper understanding and use of technology.

“This is an important development, I can say that without reservations because technological literacy is such a critical element of being a successful 21st - century citizen,” said Valerie Greenhill, the director of strategic initiatives for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a Tucson, Ariz.-based advocacy group. “The progression being made in the technology community away from the notion of just technology competence, such as how to use a computer, to … developing that literacy with the use of technology in daily life and in core academic subjects as well is incredibly important. To the extent that the NAEP is developing a framework that guides the development of these competencies is a welcome move.”

A number of states have implemented tests of technology or information literacy, and most have adopted the national K-12 standards in the field produced by the International Society for Technology in Education.

The NAGB committee that has been devising the framework has reviewed state technology standards, studies on assessing technology skills, and the guidelines and recommendations of ISTE and other organizations.

“We want students to undestand that technology is not just computers,” said Senta Raizen, the director of the National Center for Improving Science Education, who co-chaired the framework committee. The center is based at WestEd, a research organization in San Francisco.
The goal, Ms. Raizen said at a meeting earlier this month where the draft was unveiled, is to understand “the human design world, where do things come from, where does our technology come from.”

She and others involved in the project say the material represented in the framework could becovered in science class, but also in subjects across the curriculum, such as mathematics, history, social studies, and language arts.

“We’ve seen movement for reading across the curriculum, writing across the curriculum,” Mr. Friedman said. “Well, technology across the curriculum makes as much sense as those do.”

Assistant Editor Sean Cavanagh contributed to this story. Vol. 29, Issue 01, Page 9, Education Week

We Are All Geeks

According to a new survey to be released in the Wednesday, September 3, 2009 New York Times, household across the US are pretty well wired, and mobile technologies have taken over, making us geeks wherever we go. Check out the article, The Race to Be an Early Adopter of Technologies Goes Mainstream, a Survey Finds. If homes are wired and we can expect more mobile technologies, what does this movement and change in our culture imply for the educational setting and schools on the K-12 level? Have schools kept current of societal trends? Where does your own household fall in the survey data? Are you yet a frequent user of mobile technologies, wired wherever you go? If so, how has being wired affected your philosophy of teaching? Does all the technology increase or decrease your comfort level as an educator?

image from: http://geeks.pirillo.com

English Only!

I have posted several blogs in the past about the English Only legislature. Take a look at this MSNBC video, and let us know what you think about bilingual education and English immersion programs. On another matter, do you think Spanish should be a required subject in schools for all students? What do you think should be done about statistics that suggest that 25% of our students soon will have Spanish as their first language. How should we be teaching these students in our schools? Should both English and Spanish both be used in schools where a high percentage of students speak Spanish as their first language? How does the video help you understand the intricacies of the current legislature regarding English only?

Students Teaching Teachers

In the digital age, it is not unusual for students to be teaching their teachers. Some school systems have a well organized approach to students conducting workshops for teachers. Other schools have a more informal system. In one school system reported in a EdUtopia article, California Kids Use—And Teach—Digital Storytelling, we learn that students are teaching both their teachers and younger students in the school the intricacies of using Photo Story 3 to create digital stories. Read the article, and post your comments. Also, check out Generation Yes, a program promoting students teaching teachers. And if you have not yet downloaded the Microsoft free software program Photo Story 3, you should visit the download page. If you don’t yet know how to use this simple program, take the opportunity to do so, as many young students are already using it to create school projects. What is your response to students teaching teachers? What do you think of digital storytelling?
Image from the California Kids article.

Students Teaching Teachers

In the digital age, it is not unusual for students to be teaching their teachers. Some school systems have a well organized approach to students conducting workshops for teachers. Other schools have a more informal system. In one school system reported in Utopia article, California Kids Use—And Teach—Digital Storytelling, we learn that students are teaching both their teachers and younger students in the school the intricacies of using Photo Story 3 to create digital stories. Read the article, and post your comments. Also, check out Generation Yes, a program promoting students teaching teachers. And if you have not yet downloaded the Microsoft free software program Photo Story 3, you should visit the download page. If you don’t yet know how to use this simple program, take the opportunity to do so, as many young students are already using it to create school projects.

Image from the California Kids article.

Facebook’s Future

Will Facebook continue to be the go-to site for social networking? Will it have another face in the future? According to a recent New York Times article, Facebook Exile, Facebook has reached its peak and is seeing people sign off for a variety of reasons. As of today, September 2, 2009, 85 comments were posted to the article. The topic remains controversial. What role does Facebook play in defining the new sociology of online social networking? Will it see the same kind of decline that sites like MySpace have experienced? Are young people signing on? What about the generation of students in the K-12 population? How does their time on Facebook affect their learning in school? What does their membership on Facebook imply for classroom teachers? Let us know your thoughts, and check out the NYT's article and some of the commented posted about the article. Post any links to other articles you have read about the future of Facebook or its impact on student learning today.
Image from By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN, from the Aug. 29, 2009 NYT article.

Do Cell Phones Fry the Brain?

According to Australian researchers, cell phones make children more impulsive and quicker but not better thinkers. However, use of the phones does not fry the brain. To read more about the study, check out Dennis Baron's blog post on The Web of Language: Cell Phones Make Kids Faster, Not Smarter. Let us know your thoughts after reading the blog post. (image 1: Baron's blog; image 2: Science.hq.nasa.gov)

Students Speak Up

Back in April, I posted a Blog "What Students Want." Now, listen to a video to learn more. In it, students speak out to President Obama, telling him how they believe schools should be reconfigured. Watch the short video, and post your comments.http://www.tomorrow.org/DearMrPresidentVideo.html

Are Computers Killing Literarcy Skills?

A major study out of Stanford University suggests the reverse. In fact, computers are helping to build literarcy skill, especially writing skills. Lunsford traced students' writing skills and habits over time. Read a synopsis of the study in an article from Wired magazine: Clive Thompson's on New Literacy. Also, check out this article that appeared in Intelligent Life: We Are All Writers Now. Post your responses.

American History Websites

If you teach American history topics, check out this page from Education World for Sites to See, and post your responses to what you find online.

Reading for Points

Have you heard of the Accelerated Reader program in which students earn points for books they read? Books like the Harry Potter ones receive more points than many classics. The Potter books receive anywhere from 35 to 40 points while Hamlet earns 10 points and Sense and Sensibility garners 30 points. Accelerated Reader is a computerized management program intended to motivate students to read. Students earn a specific number of points for books read outside of school once they complete an online multiple-choice quiz to test their comprehension.

Apparently, the program is used in 75,000 schools nationwide, according to a New York Times article (August 27, 2009). The article notes that program “helps teachers track student reading through computerized comprehension tests and awards students points for books they read based on length and difficulty, as measured by a scientifically researched readability rating.” The site offers 125,000 quizzes on literature.

In your estimation, is a computerized program that assesses students’ reading comprehension and awards points a valuable contribution to education and the promotion of literacy skills?

Access the New York Times article for more information:
Illustration by Ahl & Company

Digital Media Replace Standard Textbooks

Two months ago, on May 30, I posted a blog about California schools going green and phasing out textbooks. Now the trend has gone national, and it is not just a matter of textbooks losing their value, but the technology invigorating the curriculum in ways that textbooks simply cannot. In Vail, Arizona, at the Empire High School, students go online to access lessons, complete homework, and listen to teacher podcasts. In the same district, at Cinega High, students retrieve via the Web English, history, and science lessons.

Check out Beyond Textbooks to learn how teachers share online lessons, post PowerPoints presentations and videos, and share links to Internet resources. With students wired 24/7, the push for online technologies in educational arena is natural. Students are regularly using social networking sites, iPods, blogs, wikis, and a host of other interactive tools. Rather than buck the trend, teachers need to embrace technology's promise. Although not all students have access to smartphones and iPods, grants and government sources will with time put mobile technologies into the hands of those who cannot purchase these soon-to-be basic instructional supplies.

In California, where adoption of a textbook is traditionally statewide affair, Pearson publishers has submitted four options for its flexbooks, online supplements to textbooks. In a August 8, 2009 New York Times article, reporter Tamar Levin wrote educators believe "it will not be long before [textbooks] are replaced by digital versions—or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from a wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos, and projects on the web.”

How soon do you believe textbooks will be antiquated? Are you ready for a shift to digital, interactive learning environments in lieu of flat-page textbooks? What advantages do you envision in interactive technologies supplanting standard textbooks?

Photo credit: Heidi Schumann for The New York Times with caption: "In California, high school interns try out digital "flexbooks" created by the CK-12 Foundation." Information in this post taken from Tamar Levin's article "As Classroom Go Digital, Textbooks May Become History." Second photo from the Beyond Textbooks site.

Just A Click Away: Instant Student Response

Imagine teaching a lesson, asking a question, getting an individual response from all students, and being able to have a record of all those responses! With clickers in the classroom, all students are participants, and engagement in the lesson increases.
Here is an example. A teacher presents a math lesson in her fourth grade class. Her PowerPoint slide poses a question. “What fraction is represented by the shaded part shown on a grid?” With clickers, all students input their answers. The responses are instantly displayed on a color-coded chart the teacher views. The teacher knows immediately if she needs to review a concept and where her students stand on understanding concepts being presented.
As we all know, in the old-fashioned system, only some students were inclined to raise hands to answer a question. Even though a quiz can tell who understands a concept, with clicker input the teacher can carry on the lesson and have responses ready at hand. Clickers also ensure all students are participating and actively engaged.
In an environment in which students are accustomed to mobile technology, use of clickers in the classroom and other mobile technologies is just on the horizon. We can expect to see more use of mobile technologies, including cell phones for texting answers, in the schools, and schools will need to revisit their cell phone banning policies.
For now, clickers work best in situations where multiple choice and similar kinds of responses, such as yes-no-maybe, are required. They won’t necessarily result in lively, in-depth class discussions, but they do enable teachers to gauge how students are doing and help to keep students actively engaged. To date, they have been mostly used in math and science classes, but are finding applicability to social studies and other disciplines. Though initially used in large lecture classrooms in colleges, they are now increasingly finding their way into elementary and secondary classrooms. Time will tell if their use becomes widespread, but so far, they have already been linked to higher test scores. For instance, a Digital Directions’ article reports of one Colorado school system: “After a pilot study of middle school math classes found a test-score bump for students who used clickers in well-planned lessons, the Boulder Valley district bought sets of the devices for all math and science classes in its 12 middle schools and began yearlong training for teachers.”
Information for this post was taken from Digital Dimensions’ article, “Student Response Systems Provide Instant Classroom Feedback” (June 2009), by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo.
To watch a video about how clickers are being used in one class, check out this USA Today video that aired on network news: Classroom Clickers Grab Students' Attention
Post comments, please.

Image one from: http://www.unf.edu/; image two from:news.cnet.com; image three from:www.ucs.ed.ac.uk

Blogging Connects Hometown Soldier with Hometown Middle Schoolers

Blogging connects an American soldier in Afghanistan with middle school children from his hometown in Ballard County, Kentucky. A seventh grader at the Ballard County Middle School helped to design the blog in December 2008 including a picture of an ice storm in January. Since, pictures of the middle school have been posted to the blog, and the National Guard Aaron Connor has been writing posts about life in Ghazni City, Afghanistan where he is stationed.
According the Ballard County School District website, “A blog has been set up where students can ask Connor, 26, questions and the soldier can respond. The public can visit at http://aaronafghanistan.blogspot.com. Many questions have been added to the blog, as well as photographs of sixth-grade activities. Connor, a gunner on a transport vehicle, has been asked about anything from his dogs, to the weather, to what he does for fun. He already has responded to many of the posts, and is in the process of answering the questions in three parts: his daily life; Afghanistan; and the dogs. On the blog, students can also comment on things that are happening in their daily lives, as well.” You can read more about Connor’s blogging, emailing, and phone calls with the students by scrolling down on the district website at: http://www.ballard.k12.ky.us/New/After reading about the blog at the district site and skimming the blog, comment on ideas that you have for using blogging to forge international connections. (Image from Aaron's blog shows sixth graders at the Ballard Middle School.)

No More Paper Textbooks

Free digital textbooks hit California Schools. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced plans for digital math and science for the 2009-2010 school year. Faced with budget woes, it is not surprising that the Gov. opted for the change. Schwarzenegger sees the plan as way to encourage collaboration among school districts. Plans call for compiling a list of digital textbooks aligned to state standards. A few questions come to mind: Will digital textbooks improve student learning? Are teachers ready for the change? Will digital textbooks be more up-to-date than regular ones? How soon can we expect most textbooks to be digitalized? To find out more about digital textbooks, read this article in Curriculum Matters, California Going Digital with Math, Science Textbooks. What do you see as the pros and cons of textbook moving to the digital format?

E-Portfolios: E What and E Why?

An interest in e-portfolios has filtered into the K-12 setting. Keep up with the trend. Access this article from Education World and use some of links in the article to find out more. http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech/tech111.shtml Teachers on the K-12 need to understand this phenomenon that is sure to impact their teaching in the future. Here is a link to also learn more about how e-ports are being used in Minnesota not just for all residents but also all students K-12: http://www.efoliominnesota.com/ To see samples of college students' eports try this link.

Post your comments. What do you see as the value of e-portfolios? To what extent do you think they will catch on in the K-12 environment?

Speak Up

Last week, I posted a Blog about What Students Want. This week, listen to this video to learn more. In it, students speak out to President Obama, telling him how they believe schools should be reconfigured. Watch the short video, and post your comments.
http://www.tomorrow.org/DearMrPresidentVideo.html

Image from Speak Up at http://www.tomorrow.org/Speakup/

What Do Students Want?

By now you know about all the money that the Obama administration has earmarked for public schools. A survey completed by students indicate what they want in their schools is more mobile technology. Take a look at this story which reports on the results of the student survey, and weigh in on what we as educators are learning from our students. Do you really think teachers are on the same page as their students? Are we missing the boat? How do you think the money from the Obama stimulus package should be spent.

Photo from the story page found in eSchool New, Wed, Mar 25, 2009 .

This additional story from District Administration, April 2009 will tell you about how funding can be used to enhance teacher professional development activities focused on classroom technology integration. Basically, the author claims, "learning is not just technology -- it's the teacher know-how to integrate technology and 21st century skills into students' learning. Take a peek, and feel free to comment on this article, as well.

Sites for Teachers

Check out this website to find a host of sites that are useful to teachers. Let us know in particular what sites you found that you would consult in the future and why. http://sitesforteachers.com/

Free Rice

If you have not used the Free Rice site lately, or never checked it, now is the time. Free Rice, which started as a vocabulary site, now offers math, foreign language, geography, and other subject areas. It is an easy site to use, one students will enjoy using in their free time. Best of all, for every correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated through a United Nations relief agency in an effort to end world hunger. Spend less than 5 minutes checking the site and trying the questions. Although the questions follow a simple multiple-choice format, the intention is to attract users, and with that goal in mind, the format works fine. After all, the more questions answered correctly, the more rice, donated. This site is both educational and philanthropic. Over 62 billion grains have been donated to date. Spread the word, and please comment. Here is a direct link to the page that lists the subject areas.

http://www.freerice.com/subjects.php?t=448289129472

Image is the Free Rice logo, taken directly from the website www.freerice.com