Interested in research findings for best practices in literacy instruction? This is one of my new favorite blogs that I highly recommend: What the Research Says. Billing itself as "early literacy research distilled for educators" the site provides succinct summaries of research papers.
I'd love to find similar sites for keeping up with research in other content areas - if you're aware of any, please share in the comments.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Progress Towards National Standards
According to the June 11 edition of Education Week:
One of the original criticisms of NCLB was that it was an unfunded mandate - that states were suddenly all responsible for implementing statewide assessments without funding to support this undertaking. Streamlining this process by creating a national assessment aligned to national standards would lead to significant savings in state education budgets.
National standards would also relieve some of the inefficiencies in creating state and district curriculum. For example, I've learned that here in Ohio district technology standards are based on county standards, which are based on state standards, which are based on ISTE guidelines. Imagine the interminable faculty meetings and piles of paperwork as this process is replicated in districts across the country, and how much time could be focused on improving instructional quality instead of recreating the wheel.
However, if and when we do move towards national standards, we must ensure that the resulting standards are sufficiently challenging, and that the process for revising the standards allows for continuous updates and improvements. National standards should also allow enough flexibility for states to pilot innovations in curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
The National Association of Secondary School Principals calls on Congress to appoint an independent panel... to come up with a set of common guidelines for what students should know and be able to do at each grade level.Maintaining a separate set of standards for each state simply does not make sense, and I do hope that Congress moves toward national education standards whenever NCLB is finally discussed and revised. As this article points out, "we have 50 states, which have 50 different definitions of proficiency, and NCLB never even describes what is meant by proficiency." We already know from national assessments such as NAEP that standards for proficiency vary widely between states. In this age of accountability holding students and their schools to a common standard is just common sense.
One of the original criticisms of NCLB was that it was an unfunded mandate - that states were suddenly all responsible for implementing statewide assessments without funding to support this undertaking. Streamlining this process by creating a national assessment aligned to national standards would lead to significant savings in state education budgets.
National standards would also relieve some of the inefficiencies in creating state and district curriculum. For example, I've learned that here in Ohio district technology standards are based on county standards, which are based on state standards, which are based on ISTE guidelines. Imagine the interminable faculty meetings and piles of paperwork as this process is replicated in districts across the country, and how much time could be focused on improving instructional quality instead of recreating the wheel.
However, if and when we do move towards national standards, we must ensure that the resulting standards are sufficiently challenging, and that the process for revising the standards allows for continuous updates and improvements. National standards should also allow enough flexibility for states to pilot innovations in curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
21st Century Learning
I just posted this here on the Ohio Education Technology Network:
What resources (books, blogs, whatever) do you all recommend that are related to 21st century learning? I mean, what have you been reading that furthers our understanding of what "21st century learning" actually means, and what implications it will have for our schools?
This weekend I've been reading Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century by David Warlick. It's been helping me flesh out my thoughts on how the meaning of literacy has changed.
Lately we've all been hearing about how our traditional definition of literacy doesn't sufficiently encompass the numeric, scientific, technological, informational, and various other "new literacies" that students need today. Instead of splitting our understanding of literacy into separate segments, I think that instead we should take a broader view of how the requirements of literacy have evolved.
The definition of literacy as the ability to read and write was sufficient when those were the essential tools to access information in the world. As more and ever-changing avenues for accessing information have developed, the meaning of literacy is expanding beyond the ability to read and write to include the ability to access and learn new information.
As Warlick puts it in this book: "In the twenty-first century, literacy involves... a wide range of skills associated with acquiring, decoding, evaluating, and organizing information within a global electronic library.... If all our children learn to do is read, they will not be literate." He also describes an interesting idea that the "two-dimensional" way of reading from left to right and from top to bottom has shifted into "three-dimensional" reading has information is digitally hyperlinked and layered.
Some pieces of the book are a little dated (published in 2004), but its ideas are still relevant. I also whole-heartedly recommend checking out the related Landmark Project, and some of Warlick's presentations that are available online, especially this one.
What resources (books, blogs, whatever) do you all recommend that are related to 21st century learning? I mean, what have you been reading that furthers our understanding of what "21st century learning" actually means, and what implications it will have for our schools?
This weekend I've been reading Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century by David Warlick. It's been helping me flesh out my thoughts on how the meaning of literacy has changed.
Lately we've all been hearing about how our traditional definition of literacy doesn't sufficiently encompass the numeric, scientific, technological, informational, and various other "new literacies" that students need today. Instead of splitting our understanding of literacy into separate segments, I think that instead we should take a broader view of how the requirements of literacy have evolved.
The definition of literacy as the ability to read and write was sufficient when those were the essential tools to access information in the world. As more and ever-changing avenues for accessing information have developed, the meaning of literacy is expanding beyond the ability to read and write to include the ability to access and learn new information.
As Warlick puts it in this book: "In the twenty-first century, literacy involves... a wide range of skills associated with acquiring, decoding, evaluating, and organizing information within a global electronic library.... If all our children learn to do is read, they will not be literate." He also describes an interesting idea that the "two-dimensional" way of reading from left to right and from top to bottom has shifted into "three-dimensional" reading has information is digitally hyperlinked and layered.
Some pieces of the book are a little dated (published in 2004), but its ideas are still relevant. I also whole-heartedly recommend checking out the related Landmark Project, and some of Warlick's presentations that are available online, especially this one.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
PD Guides for Teacher Book Clubs
Stenhouse Publishers has created free discussion guides to accompany many of their titles. The guides can be used to support group discussions for teacher book clubs, or can be used to develop workshops and activities for professional development sessions based on their books. One of my all time favorite books on teaching reading is included: Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
25 Tools: A Free Toolset for Learning
This selection of 25 Tools from the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies provides a step-by-step introduction to their contributors' favorite free resources for online learning.
Behind each of the tools lies an Activity that comprises a number of short tasks to help you find out more about the technology behind each tool, the tool itself and why it is so popular, how to use the tool and reflect on its application for teaching, learning and for productivity and performance support.
Some of my favorite new finds from this site include: Voicethread (collaborative presentation tool), and Jing (screencasting tool - free alternative to Camtasia).
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Blogging in Math
During the Web 2.0 session I presented this weekend, while the humanities teachers could see how blogging could fit into their instruction, the math teachers didn't see as great a benefit. This morning someone sent me this terrific example of blogging being used in high school math that I will definitely share next time: Honors Algebra II. For each class a different student is assigned to be "scribe" and explain - both in writing and images - how to solve a challenge problem. The same teacher also has his own blog about his teaching: Mr. Higgins' Blog. I love the YouTube video here of e + pi on a date.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Self-Scaling Web 2.0 Professional Development
I've been thinking lately about the "scalability" of professional development strategies. I think this is becoming increasingly important; while the stakes to improve student achievement grow ever higher, the expectations of preparing students for 21st century skills are changing as well. So, we need to develop ways to help reach as many teachers as possible with our professional development in these new tools. As Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach wrote last month, we need to plan for scale as we develop professional development plans in our districts.
One of the advantages of web 2.0 tools is that their scalability is not driven by the trainer or the professional development coordinator, it's that the scalability is driven by the teachers themselves. Teachers can create their own personal learning networks, unrestricted by geography or their district. We can learn from professional development initiatives in Qatar, student work from Bangkok, and online learning tools from the UK. Of course, we can also collaborate with our colleagues down the hall like always, with new tools to facilitate our collaboration.
But, how we get over the initial hurdle to introduce these tools? I'm convinced that the most effective form of professional development is job-embedded, and provides opportunities for ongoing support and collaboration. This way, teachers who are ready to delve into the web 2.0 world and use tools like wikis and social networking to accelerate their knowledge of 21st century literacy tools can do so, and those who are not ready yet can learn from their peers who are already piloting new strategies at their school.
One of the advantages of web 2.0 tools is that their scalability is not driven by the trainer or the professional development coordinator, it's that the scalability is driven by the teachers themselves. Teachers can create their own personal learning networks, unrestricted by geography or their district. We can learn from professional development initiatives in Qatar, student work from Bangkok, and online learning tools from the UK. Of course, we can also collaborate with our colleagues down the hall like always, with new tools to facilitate our collaboration.
But, how we get over the initial hurdle to introduce these tools? I'm convinced that the most effective form of professional development is job-embedded, and provides opportunities for ongoing support and collaboration. This way, teachers who are ready to delve into the web 2.0 world and use tools like wikis and social networking to accelerate their knowledge of 21st century literacy tools can do so, and those who are not ready yet can learn from their peers who are already piloting new strategies at their school.
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