"I keep it fresh like a homemade pie."
i had the pleasure of being amongst the OMSK community at their Family Math night. Despite some blustery weather blowing in sleet and freezing rain, there was an excellent turnout. Parents, guardians and their children were treated to some very fun (and secretly educational) math activities. |  |  | |
This is a wonderfully informative article by Maris Stansbury, Associate editor for E School New, posted January 18th on the E School News web site. The title pretty much says it all, and there are some great gems of info to be had here about the inner workings of the new digital generation and how to approach gaining a better understanding of them. posted by Ross Crockett | |||
Educators today are constantly bombarded with the phrase “21st-century skills,” and the message that all students need to learn those skills in order to succeed. And while general roadmaps can help educators get started on this path toward 21st-century instruction, FETC keynote speaker Cheryl Lemke provided a more narrow focus on what it takes to be a 21st-century education leader.
“It’s all about the ripple effect,” Lemke, president and CEO of the Metiri Group, said in her Jan. 15 speech. (The Metiri Group is a consulting firm dedicated to advancing effective uses of technology in schools.) “When a creative idea is born, it has so much potential, and that potential can turn into innovation. By innovation, I mean that it begins to change the entire system, and therefore causes ripples in the system.” Lemke went on to explain that today’s students have the ability to start ripples in society, and a good education leader will know how to give students the skills they need to start those ripples.
“One big goal of your classes and your teaching should be to engage student interest as much as possible,” said Lemke.
“The first thing we need to clarify is this definition of a ‘digital native,’” said Lemke. “We’ve all heard that these digital natives are multitaskers, meaning they can focus on multiple things at once. But recent neuroscience research suggests that what these kids are really doing is jumping between different tasks and not giving each task full attention. It’s not focused, it’s distracted, and therefore reduces the overall quality of attention each task needs.”
Lemke reminded attendees that Linda Stone, former vice president of Microsoft, years ago said this behavior is really just “continual partial attention.” “There are times when students shouldn’t be multitasking,” said Lemke. “While technology makes it easier for students to jump around between tasks, they don’t always learn what they could. So it’s our job to keep students interested enough in their tasks.”
To keep students interested, Lemke said educators first must know about students’ lives and their interests outside of school—something she called “adolescent learning 2.0.” Adolescent learning 2.0 makes the adolescent the center of learning, while taking into consideration factors outside of school, such as their peers, communities, home life, and all their available resources (the internet, social networks, and so on). “School is just one part of what constitutes an adolescent’s learning,” explained Lemke. She also noted several key trends that are shaping education today; trends that education leaders should be aware of:
According to Lemke, information is readily available to students from several different sources (both inside and outside of school), and teachers need to recognize their role is evolving—from information provider to more of a mentor. One way to embrace this role of mentor is by teaching what digital resources are available to students and how they can take advantage of those resources.
Lemke noted that many new and freely available resources come out of the Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) conference every year. For example, one presenter at the TED conference, David Bolinsky, former medical illustrator at Yale and cofounder of XVIVO, a scientific animation company, showed attendees a film in progress called the Inner Life of a Cell. Bolinsky worked with Harvard scientists to create simulations of cell functions that educators could use to intrigue students about biology.
The question you should be asking is, ‘When they leave school, are they even more curious than when they began?’”
Lemke also noted sites such as MIT’s Open Courseware and Connexions, a “content commons” of free, open-licensed educational materials in fields such as music, electrical engineering, and psychology.
“One big goal of your classes and your teaching should be to engage student interest as much as possible,” said Lemke. “The question you should be asking is, ‘When they leave school, are they even more curious than when they began?’”
“One of the greatest ways to engage students and teach 21st-century skills is by using the web for collaboration,” said Lemke. She gave attendees a glimpse into how mass web collaboration is transforming society. One example is a resource called Innocentive, which connects small businesses with problem solvers via the web. Whoever solves the problem gets cash for solving that problem.
An example from the web site involved a small oil company in Alaska that had a problem with its oil pipes freezing in cold temperatures. After the company posted its problem online, a construction developer solved the problem in hours because his construction sites had the same problem with freezing concrete pipes. The solution was to vibrate the pipes to keep them from freezing. After drawing a proposal and calculating a few other technicalities, he submitted his answer and received $20,000.
Lemke also quoted a list from the Johnson & Johnson Co. on what defines good collaboration, which can help educators when asking their students to work online collaboratively:
“We also need to start creating assessments for group work,” said Lemke. “Most of the time when educators grade students in groups, it’s still based on individual [contributions]. The work of the group as a whole needs to be assessed as well.”
Lemke urged educators to read neuroscience research about how the brain processes memory with sights and sounds. “Students can learn better when concepts are presented in many modes,” she explained.
Lemke gave the example of another TED presenter who showed how the world’s countries have shifted in life expectancy rates and birthing rates since the 1950s. Instead of just telling the audience, the TED presenter showed, through moving representative colors on a chart, how countries have changed. “It’s not only students who need to think visually; educators have to as well,” said Lemke.
For more information on Lemke’s keys to being a leader in 21st-century education, visit here.
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This an article written originally by Alfie Kohn. | |||
Today we survey the wreckage. Talented teachers have abandoned the profession after having been turned into glorified test-prep technicians. Low-income teenagers have been forced out of school by do-or-die graduation exams. Countless inventive learning activities have been eliminated in favor of prefabricated lessons pegged to numbingly specific state standards.
Talented teachers have abandoned the profession after having been turned into glorified test-prep technicians. Low-income teenagers have been forced out of school by do-or-die graduation exams.
And now we’re informed that what we really need . . . is to standardize this whole operation from coast to coast.
Have we lost our minds? Because we’re certainly in the process of losing our children’s minds.
To politicians, corporate CEOs, or companies that produce standardized tests, this prescription may seem to make sense. (Notice that this is exactly the cast of characters leading the initiative for national standards.) But if you spend your days with real kids in real classrooms, you’re more likely to find yourself wondering how much longer those kids -- and the institution of public education -- can survive this accountability fad.
Let’s be clear about the latest development. First, what they’re trying to sell us are national standards. It may be politically expedient to insist that the effort isn’t driven by the federal government, but if all, or nearly all, states end up adopting the same mandates, that distinction doesn’t amount to much.
Second, these core standards will inevitably be accompanied by a national standardized test. When asked, during an on-line chat last September, whether that was true, Dane Linn of the National Governors’ Association (a key player in this initiative) didn’t deny it. “Standards alone,” he replied, “will not drive teaching and learning” – meaning, of course, the specific type of teaching and learning that the authorities require. Even if we took the advice of the late Harold Howe II, former U.S. Commissioner of Education, and made the standards “as vague as possible,” a national test creates a de facto national curriculum, particularly if high stakes are attached.
Third, a relatively small group of experts will be designing standards, test questions, and curricula for the rest of us based on their personal assumptions about what it means to be well educated. The official Core Standards website tries to deny this, insisting that the items all teachers are going to have to teach will be “based on evidence” rather than reflecting “individual beliefs about what is important.” It would be charitable to describe this claim as disingenuous. Evidence can tell us whether a certain method is effective for reaching a certain objective – for example, how instruction aligned to this standard will affect a score on that test. But the selection of the goal itself – what our children will be taught and tested on – unavoidably reflects values and beliefs. Should those of a single group of individuals determine what happens in every public school in the country?
Advocates of national standards tell us they want all students (by which they mean only American students) to attain excellence, no matter where (in our country) they happen to live. The problem is that excellence is being confused with entirely different attributes, such as uniformity, rigor, specificity, and victory. Let’s consider each in turn.
Are all kids entitled to a great education? Of course. But that doesn’t mean all kids should get the same education. High standards don’t require common standards. Uniformity is not the same thing as excellence – or equity. (In fact, one-size-fits-all demands may offer the illusion of fairness, setting back the cause of genuine equity.) To acknowledge these simple truths is to watch the rationale for national standards – or uniform state standards -- collapse into a heap of intellectual rubble.
To be sure, excellence and uniformity might turn out to be empirically correlated even if they’re theoretically distinct. But I know of no evidence that students in countries as diverse as ours with national standards or curricula engage in unusually deep thinking or are particularly excited about learning. Even standardized test results, such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), provide no support for the nationalizers. On eighth-grade math and science tests, eight of the 10 top-scoring countries had centralized education systems, but so did nine of the 10 lowest-scoring countries in math and eight of the 10 lowest-scoring countries in science.
If you’re determined to evaluate students or schools in relative terms, it helps if they’re all doing the same thing. But why would we want to turn learning into a competitive sport?
So if students don’t benefit from uniformity, who does? Presumably corporations that sell curriculum materials and tests can reduce their costs if one text fits all. And then there are the policy makers who confuse doing well with beating others. If you’re determined to evaluate students or schools in relative terms, it helps if they’re all doing the same thing. But why would we want to turn learning into a competitive sport?
Apart from the fact that they’re unnecessary, a key premise of national standards, as the University of Chicago’s Zalman Usiskin observed, is that “our teachers cannot be trusted to make decisions about which curriculum is best for their schools.” Moreover, uniformity doesn’t just happen – and continue – on its own. To get everyone to apply the same standards, you need top-down control. What happens, then, to educators who disagree with some of the mandates, or with the premise that teaching should be broken into separate disciplines, or with the whole idea of national standards? What are the implications of accepting a system characterized by what Deborah Meier called “centralized power over ideas”?
I’ve written elsewhere about another error: equating harder with better and making a fetish of “rigorous” demands or tests whose primary virtue (if it’s a virtue at all) is that they’re really difficult. Read just about any brief for national standards and you’ll witness this confusion in full bloom. A key selling point is that we’re “raising the bar” – even though, as Voltaire reminded us, “That which is merely difficult gives no pleasure in the end.” Nor does it enhance learning.
Then, too, there is a conflation of quality with specificity. If children – and communities – are different from one another, the only safe way to apply an identical standard to all of them is to operate at a high level of abstraction: “We will help all students to communicate effectively,” for example. (Hence Howe’s enduring wisdom about the need to keep things vague.) The more specific the standard, the more problematic it becomes to impose it on everyone. Pretty soon you’re gratuitously defining some kids as failures, particularly if the new standards are broken down by grade level.
The reasonable-sounding adjectives used to defend an agenda of specificity -- “focused,” “coherent,” “precise,” “clear” – ought to make us nervous. If standards comprise narrowly defined facts and skills, then we have accepted a controversial model of education, one that consists of transmitting vast quantities of material to students, material that even the most successful may not remember, care about, or be able to use.
This is exactly what most state standards have already become and it’s where national standards are heading (even if, in theory, they could be otherwise). Specificity is what business groups and newspaper editorialists want and it’s what very vocal defenders of “core knowledge” equate with good teaching. Specificity is a major criterion by which Education Week and conservative think tanks like the Thomas B. Fordham Institute evaluate standards documents. In any case, Achieve, Inc. and the National Governors Association probably won't need much convincing; they'll give us specific in spades.
Finally, what’s the purpose of demanding that every kid in every school in every state must be able to do the same thing in the same year, with teachers pressured to “align” their instruction to a master curriculum and a standardized test?
I once imagined a drinking game in which a few of those education reform papers from corporate groups and politicians were read aloud: You take a shot every time you hear “rigorous,” “measurable,” “accountable,” “competitive,” “world-class,” “high(er) expectations,” or “raising the bar.” Within a few minutes, everyone would be so inebriated that they’d no longer be able to recall a time when discussions about schooling weren’t studded with these macho managerial buzzwords.
But it took me awhile to figure out that not all jargon is meaningless. Those words actually have very real implications for what classrooms should look like and what education is (and isn’t) all about. The goal clearly isn’t to nourish children’s curiosity, to help them fall in love with reading and thinking, to promote both the ability and the disposition to think critically, or to support a democratic society. Rather, a prescription for uniform, specific, rigorous standards is made to order for those whose chief concern is to pump up the American economy and make sure that we triumph over people who live in other countries.
If you read the FAQ page on the common core standards website, don’t bother looking for words like “exploration,” “intrinsic motivation,” “developmentally appropriate,” or “democracy.” Instead, the very first sentence contains the phrase “success in the global economy,” followed immediately by “America’s competitive edge.”
If these bright new digitally enhanced national standards are more economic than educational in their inspiration, more about winning than learning, devoted more to serving the interests of business than to meeting the needs of kids, then we’ve merely painted a 21st-century façade on a hoary, dreary model of school as employee training. Anyone who recoils from that vision should be doing everything possible to resist a proposal for national standards that embodies it.
Yes, we want excellent teaching and learning for all -- although our emphasis should be less on student achievement (read: test scores) than on students’ achievements. Offered a list of standards, we should scrutinize each one but also ask who came up with them and for what purpose. Is there room for discussion and disagreement -- and not just by experts -- regarding what, and how, we’re teaching and how authentic our criteria are for judging success? Or is this a matter of “obey or else,” with tests to enforce compliance?
The standards movement, sad to say, morphed long ago into a push for standardization. The last thing we need is more of the same.
. (2003, Second Edition 2007) argues that good video games are designed to enhance learning through effective learning principles supported by research in the Learning Sciences. Situated Language and Learning
(2004) places video games within an overall theory of learning and literacy and shows how they can help us in thinking about the reform of schools. His most recent book is Good Video Games and Good Learning: Collected Essays
(2007). Professor Gee has published widely in journals in linguistics, psychology, the social sciences, and education.
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TEACHER: Maria, go to the map and find North America
MARIA: Here it is.
TEACHER: Correct. Now class, who discovered America ?
CLASS: Maria.
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TEACHER: John, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor?
JOHN: You told me to do it without using tables.
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TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell 'crocodile?'
GLENN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L'
TEACHER: No, that's wrong
GLENN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.
(I Love this kid)
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TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?
DONALD: H I J K L M N O.
TEACHER: What are you talking about?
DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O.
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TEACHER: Winnie, name one important thing we have today that we didn't have ten years ago.
WINNIE: Me!
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TEACHER: Glen, why do you always get so dirty?
GLEN: Well, I'm a lot closer to the ground than you are..
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TEACHER: Millie, give me a sentence starting with ' I. '
MILLIE: I is..
TEACHER: No, Millie..... Always say, 'I am.'
MILLIE: All right... 'I am the ninth letter of the alphabet.'
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TEACHER: George Washington not only chopped down his father's cherry tree, but also admitted it.
Now, Louie, do you know why his father didn't punish him?
LOUIS: Because George still had the axe in his hand.
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TEACHER: Now, Simon, tell me frankly, do you say prayers before eating?
SIMON: No sir, I don't have to, my Mom is a good cook.
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TEACHER: Clyde , your composition on 'My Dog' is exactly the same as your brother's. Did you copy his?
CLYDE : No, sir. It's the same dog.
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TEACHER: Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking when people are no longer interested?
HAROLD: A teacher
The Canadian Council on Learning weighs in on the debate over video games and learning.Six Nations District Numeracy Committee Meeting Agenda
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
JC Hill (2:30 – 4:00)
| Agenda Items | Present: Carrie Froman, Judy McNaughton, Luanne Martin, Alice Anderson, Joe Restoule General Absent: Sandy Hill, Janis Thomas |
| Review minutes from last meeting | Approved |
| Math Assessment Tools | Numeracy Nets: All schools now have a complete set of every grade available from Pearson (grades 3 to 8). The committee discussed how to roll these out. General consensus was to get them into teacher’s hands ASAP, with follow up PD to ‘officially’ implement them. Joe has already met with ECG and arranged visits with PD planning for Numeracy Nets: Pearson is available to give PD for the Numeracy Committee, who will in turn share that PD with their respective schools. They gave the option of either a Pearson rep to come in person or conduct a webinar. The committee agreed that both options could be used, with preference to having someone come in person. The committee agreed that the sooner the PD can be conducted, the better. ONAP (Ontario Numeracy Assessment Package): All schools now have a complete set of every grade available from Nelson (grades 4 to 8). The committee discussed the overabundance of new resources and how it could become overwhelming for teachers. After much discussion and variance in opinion, it was decided that some teachers may want to look at the ONAP books and use these right away, so we would make them available immediately, with plans to offer PD in term 3, while focusing on the Numeracy Nets in term 2. Joe will deliver these to the schools on December 18th. The Super Source K-8 CD ROMs are on back order and will be delivered once they are back in stock. |
| CAT/Insight Testing | Follow up on participation: There was only one school that seemed to have discussed this with their staff, though some committee members said they may have not attended a staff meeting when it was discussed. Joe had sent an e-mail requesting for participation numbers from each school previously in November and a follow up just prior to the Numeracy Committee meeting. Granted, due to the insanity that ensues before Christmas, it was expected that schools would look at this in the new year. The Numeracy committee unanimously supports this opportunity. The testing would contribute to ALL four focus areas of the District Numeracy Plan, at zero cost to the District. It would result in the gathering of student data that could be used to help plan and develop programs to enhance student success. Furthermore, we would be able to try another form of assessment, which was originally passed over due to exorbitant costs, free of charge. The only possible drawback that the committee could foresee was the feeling of overdoing the testing of our students, and the extra work load that would be put upon the teachers in the short term. |
| Math contest (Caribou) | Upcoming dates/Classes involved: The Brock University Caribou Math Contest continues in 2010. See dates at www.brocku.ca/caribou. It was reported that one of the grade 3 students in our district participated in the grade 3/4 test and performed quite well. The positive and enthusiastic reaction from the students involved has been a great sign and nice progress towards an item from Focus Area 4 in the District Numeracy plan regarding celebrating student success in Numeracy. More participation in future tests is encouraged. Judy McNaughton’s class has already registered for the January test. She hopes that a computer lab is in place at Individual teachers need to register in advance and have their passwords ready for the day of the test. Registration is available at the address above. |
| Math Survey on Curriculum Reform/Review | Please encourage others on staff to complete the survey. It takes about 2 minutes (one open ended question). Some teachers at |
| ILT Literacy/Math Night on November 26th | Report on how it went: No Numeracy Committee rep from ILT was present to report. Joe was at the event and said it was fun and a good time for teachers, parents and students. He said that Kathy Hill seemed quite happy with the turnout. |
| ECG Math Night | No news to share on this upcoming event. |
| Explore Learning Teacher Passwords | All grade 7 and 8 teachers have accounts and passwords set up with the Explore Learning website. The committee viewed some of the website’s resources. Teachers are able to use this license until August 2010, as part of our agreement with OSAPAC. There are plenty of amazing resources and visual demonstrations and interactive components to enhance student learning and understanding. Joe to follow up with the Explore Learning people (Stephen Lippa) to get some PD for teachers on how to best utilize this resource. |
| Mathville 1 Teacher and Student Login and Access | The district also has a license to use the Mathville website resource. This is best suited for primary classrooms. The username and password was shared with Numeracy reps to share with their school staff. |
| Report Card Inserts | The Numeracy committee shared some parent comments regarding the report card inserts that were sent home on December 4th. Some parents from Jamieson school expressed interest in a math night based on the pamphlets that they were given. |
| Review 3 Year Plan in Final Draft Form | The committee was asked for any comments from their respective staff concerning the Final Draft of the Three Year Numeracy Plan. Principals were given copies at the November PAC meeting to share with their staff for input. Some schools had yet to see the latest draft. Joe sent out electronic copies to all Numeracy committee members, though the appendix still needs to be formatted electronically. We still welcome staff input but will operate as though the draft is indeed final and being put into action. We are pleased with how initiatives in the schools are progressing towards achieving the focus areas of the plan. |
| Numeracy Committee Goals for 2009-2010 | The committee laid out some goals and ideas in addition/conjunction to implementation of the District Numeracy plan. One goal is to survey Six Nations staff for their Numeracy needs, as well as skills they can offer to share with others. This is already being talked about through the PD committee. Another idea is to ask staff to compile a “wish list” of items in advance of a possible year end budget call for purchasing. Thirdly, the committee recognizes a need for PD and development for Six Nations staff on Rich Tasks/Problem Solving as well as Math lesson planning (long term/short term). We talked about how although Math Makes Sense is somewhat close to the ideal of providing some lessons with rich tasks and problem solving opportunities, the text does tend to invert the process of learning, teaching explicit skills in advance of an eventual culminating rich task. Students would benefit from developing those skills in problem solving situations from the start of a unit. The committee then discussed how best to provide this PD. Some suggestions were the current avenues already in place; through PD Days, divisional meetings, and similar activities. The effectiveness and appropriateness of after school PD sessions were questioned. We spoke about how the ideal PD would occur in PLC sessions during the aforementioned times, as that environment provides for deeper learning through a teacher guided/focused approach. |
| Concerns about meeting times and scheduling | There is an ongoing concern about attendance and teacher coverage for Numeracy Committee meetings. The committee requested that Joe ask to put this on the PAC meeting agenda. |
| Future Meetings with Guest presenters and PD possibilities | The next meeting will take place in Ms. Though the meeting starts at 2:30, teachers interested in seeing Rudy Neufeld’s presentation are invited to attend. An invitation and info notice will be sent out in the new year. Pearson PD will occur at the February 25th meeting. Joe is to finalize and confirm this. |
Mr. Hickey and i are around today assisting schools with their Caribou Math contest for grades 5 and 6. Let's hope we beat our previous results for those that competed in the Fall. For all the new contestants, it's awesome that you are competing and representing Six Nations schools!
