MOOCs and assessment

Posted on by
Reply

I just finished

MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education
Authors: Li Yuan (CETIS), Stephen Powell (CETIS)
Date: March 2013

It got me to thinking about assessment in my own MOOC, #OOE13.

We won’t be doing much assessment of course. This is a learning opportunity not a for credit course. On the other hand the the original idea for the course is to find a way to deliver edtech integration content to the teachers in my school.

In that context there is a need for assessment. Not so much that we need to monitor our teachers, but the entire purpose of the professional development is to improve student education. That means improving teacher ability to implement the best tools.

So will we assign work to teachers? Will we collect homework? No, of course not. What we have done is to set up a teacher class in our learning management system. We will have some private discussions on the implications for our school. We also have an entire schedule set up for our teachers to meet as learning groups twice per semester. Finally, we have compensation set aside for teachers who do participate and create work in the OOE class.

What will our assessment be? For those who choose to apply for the compensation we will require something, just to prove that they didn’t log into an online session and then walk away from the computer. In general though the assessment will be the changes in teaching. The in-person discussions with the curriculum director and content teams. The changes noted by the principal during evaluations, (we will soon change the evaluation form to an updated model that reflects current best practices in education)

In general the assessment will not be of individual teachers, but of growth of the school.

 

 

Public Education – Not Really

Posted on by
Reply

Charter schools use your tax dollars to educate children. Essentially, they are public schools, but they operate under a specific charter – hence the name.

In North Carolina they would like to remove oversight of charters from the state board of education and give it to a special charter oversight board. The state board would have a veto (3/4 of the board).

Some charters seem like good ideas, like Namaste in Chicago. A focus on healthy mind and body. Other charters seem more like prisons.

The point is they are public schools. They use public tax money. Why in the heck would anyone want to remove the public oversight?

Why, in this day and age of accountability, would they remove accountability by:

  • Exempts charter schools from any requirement that teachers be certified;
  • Does not explicitly require charter schools to conduct criminal background checks during the hiring process;
  • Local school districts would also still be required to lease available buildings or land to a charter school for $1 a year;
  • Charter schools would not be required to provide transportation or meals to students, unlike their public school counterparts;
  • If a charter school is dissolved, assets would be returned to the state’s General Fund, not to the local school district; and
  • Eliminates the current under-enforced requirement that charter schools “reasonably reflect the racial and ethnic composition” in the area in which the school is located.

It amazes me sometime what Bullpucky some people will hand out just to reach their hand into the public coffers. 

Scratch

Posted on by
Reply

I can’t code and I’ve played around with Scratch a couple of times, but this is the first thing I’ve shared. I didn’t spend too much time. I’m just trying to figure out how to use this in the classroom for something besides learning to code. Do you have any suggestions?

Open Online Experience Registration Begins

Posted on by
Reply

This year has been the year of MOOCs for me, and it seems the rest of the world. I started with DNLE at Stanford, the first MOOC I actually finished. (My first MOOC was edfutures with Dave Cormier in 2010 but I kind of petered out after 6 weeks)

In September I started working with Alec Couros and his many co-conspirator on #etmooc. I learned a lot about designing a connectivist MOOC. I put that learning to work right away in designing the Open Online Experience (#OOE13).

Over the past month or so I and 40 other educators have worked hard to develop OOE13. OOE13 is a 10 month course starting in September 2013 and ending in May 2014. There are two main goals of OOE13. The first is to help educators learn and develop the skills necessary to integrate technology into the classroom. The second is to help educators create and nurture connections that will continue through and beyond the experience.

The experience is specifically designed to parallel the school year. Which at first seems like a very long course, but in reality is a short 9 week course stretched out to allow busy working educators the time necessary to explore each topic without putting undue burden on their lives. We also hope it will become a theme for some groups as they work together during the year. We hope you will join us during the journey.

It isn’t necessary to register for the course, everything should flow through our wiki (http://ooe.wikispaces.com/), but to get the full effect we ask you to register here, or here.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Openspokes How I Learn

Posted on by
Reply

Second week of Openspkes vlog and already I forgot what day I’m supposed to post. Ah well life goes on. I’m posting here on the correct day.

 

This week’s topic was “How do you learn” Surprisingly enough I actually can do quite well in the traditional school system. If you tell me what you want me to know and where to find the information i can do that pretty easily. I never did start learning the skills of self directed learning until my late 30′s or early 40;s. I had a whole lot of stuff to unlearn, I’m still working on it actually. I get a bit better each day.

Etmooc helped a lot. Discovering that I didn’t have to learn everything, but should (heavily emphasis on should) pick a focus and dive deeply into the learning. I’m hoping to share my newfound knowledge with my new project OOE. More on that later. First my video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QOI3dXEVi_8

 

Envisioning Education for the next 5 years

Posted on by
Reply

I am a member of a new vlogging group The Open Spokes. http://openspokes.com

We will tackle a new education question every week. If you would like to add a question or cast a vote please head here. http://vote.openspokes.com

This weeks question was “How do you envision education in 5 years?”

My response is below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRnpkowOGS0

I did like the Wondershare program, but was very unhappy with the watermark. I wasn’t going to use the video at all, but for some reason the original video I made with Windows Movie Maker wouldn’t open the MP4 file I created with it earlier in the day and I was just tired of monkeying around with it.

I suppose I’ll try a different tools next week. After all part of the reason I am doing this is to play around with the different tools.

Khan on the changing role of teachers.

Posted on by
Reply

Watch this video. I hear him saying first off, ‘here, be a facilitator or a coach stop being adversarial.’

When teachers have done this in the past they have had to continually convince parents and administrators that they were actually teaching.

 

What do students want in math class? They want a teacher who will show them how to do the work. If you don’t they complain that you are not teaching. then parents come in and complain. Then admins ask why you aren’t teaching. Finally, one kids fails a test and it is the teachers fault for not teaching.

 

Common core and accountability leads to teachers who teach by showing, not those who facilitate or coach.

 

If you truly want to encourage teachers to facilitate, and I hope you do, then reward teachers who do this. Don’t wait for the end and reward only teachers who have students who score high on a test. Don’t observe teachers and mark them down because students are struggling, (making noise and often moving around and or arguing with each other), a coach doesn’t do work for a player, s/he knows they must be persistent.

 

If teachers are changing from deliverers of content to facilitator of knowledge then allow them to do that. Stop looking at the end product. and start looking at the process.

Teaching Math

Posted on by
1

Most math instructional software that I have seen tends to fall in two categories, either they want you to follow  procedure and check your answers (occasionally checking the steps along the way) or they play some games and try to allow you to discover math concepts along the way.

Mathematics

Mathematics (Photo credit: Daniel Morris)

This coincides with the two dominate teaching philosophies, teacher led examples or some form of constructivist/discovery/inquiry teaching.  (yes I hate lumping them together but they aren’t the subject of the post)

There is a third way that most good teachers have used naturally, but few have considered it a separate teaching method. That is teaching from misconceptions. When your math teacher asked you to show your work, they wanted the opportunity to follow your thinking and then either explain in writing or during a conference the exact part of the problem where you made your mistake. That is, they were looking for your misconception.

It turns out that this is a very powerful method of teaching, or more correctly reteaching a concept. Now to the point of this post. I haven’t seen a math software that teaches this way. I’ve seen a science dissertation on teaching through misconceptions (this explains it quickly), and now I’ve seen an English theory on teaching through misconceptions. When are we going to see a math program that teaches from misconceptions?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Backward Thinking

Posted on by
Reply

Have you seen this Ted Talk yet? Take 18 minutes and watch it, I’ll wait.

 

There’s a lot of talk around the web on this. Basically some people cannot believe that it is acceptable for a person to become rich doing charity work. Frankly, I have some difficulty with it myself sometimes. But then I realize I don’t have a problem with becoming rich, I have a problem with the fact that I assume that most people who become rich are focused on making money to the detriment of many other parts of their life. That someone who goes into charity work to make a million dollars is doing it for the wrong reason. And of course I would be right. Charity work is charity work and should be done with the charity in mind first.

What if Dan here was doing charity work to do charity work first and millionaire second? Would that be acceptable?

What if he was doing it to make money, but in so doing actually raised more money and awareness than someone who was working for the charity first? Would that be acceptable?

Personally, I participated in two of his Heartland Aids Rides from Minneapolis to Chicago. They were some of the best experiences of my life. Yes, there was a lot of grumbling about the fancy buses for the paid staff. Outside of that everything was awesome.

I paid $150 for the right to spend a week doing volunteer work, which I suppose pretty much paid my room and board. My sister paid $1,500 for the right to ride a bike 500 miles. Along the way every need was taken care of, food, shelter, health , and wellness. More than that though there was a great system of building comrodarie and support for each other.

For some people it was about the bike ride, for some it was about pushing your limits, for some it was about service, but for all it was about stopping to help other people, giving support, and basically feeling good.

If that man became rich off of me I consider it money well spent.