January is a reflective month for me. I usually ignore the "resolutions" phase that everyone ultimately fails on, but as it is the month where I turn 1 year older, I do tend to look back at the last year to help me look ahead to the one in front of me.
So, for my blog, I started with some of my blog data from 2012:
What does this all mean? I am still trying to figure out how--and why--people come to find ePrincipal, and--of course--what meaning that they find when they get there. I can tell you that writing this blog is something very healthy for me, and if there is someone out there that can also find some meaning in parts of it, well, that's great too.
When I look at the data on what keywords people use to find this site and which posts get the most hits, I definitely see people looking for something. Is it the catchy titles, that would make even J Jonah Jameson Jr. proud? Regardless, it seems that the hits are increasing so, in the eternal words of Lilith Stern, N.D., Ph.D., Ed.D., A.P.A. (formerly Crane), "Always leave them coming back for more."
Another great Ted video, this time by Seth Godin. Here are some of my nuggets from the video and with a few of my thoughts snuck in.
Seth's big question is what is school for, and to answer that he first asks what school used to be good for. He talks to us about the Industrial Age and the factory system, and their need for obedience, for compliance, for fitting in and the necessity for interchangeable parts (and workers).
Seth offers 10 insights to bring edcuation out of the Industrial Age:
Have lectures at night (using technology), and then do the homework in the day (with a person).
Open book, open notes all of the time; anything worth memorizing is worth looking up. I call this the "no surprises" approach to assessment. In my own practice, I moved away from rote data recall to large, more comprehensive, open-ended assessments. A common one for me was to pick on 4-5 themes from a unit, design a written-response question for each, give the students the list of questions for study, and then randomly ask 3 of those questions to the class. The students were clear about what was important, and those that didn't had the time to get things straightened out with me. Their answers were well-researched, and they understood what they were writing about. To me, it was a win-win situation. I would let them use 1 piece of paper as an idea sheet, and allow them to bring that into the test. For any nay-sayers out there, not only where the answers more robust, but I was able to use a higher standard when marking. there was no question that the quality of work produced by the students was done to a much higher standard once I began to adopt and use this approach.
Access to any course, anywhere in the world, anytime you want it. He is bang on here!
Precise, focused education. When working with young teachers, the question that they have the most difficult time answering is when I ask "what is it, exactly that you want your students to learn?" Not what learning outcome they are covering, not what unit or what question from the textbook, but what exactly is it that the students need to learn. For example, if your class is studying gears it won't matter what they can regurgitate about types and uses of gears if they cannot tell you, precisely, that the whole point about using gears is to make work easier. In my experience, this part of instruction is too easily missed--lost--by young teachers who are overly worried about the accountability to cover the Ministry's Intended Learning Outcomes. Those outcomes definitely drive the unit planning, however, it is the teacher's role to interpret them at the level of their students to provide purpose to the time that they are giving us each day!
No more multiple choice exams. I understand what he is saying, and agree with his intent. This is, however, easier said than done. Multiple choice, as an examination technique still has a place in the classroom, just a much smaller one than is typically used. A good multiple choice test is very hard to build and takes a lot of time to do correct. Not to put in that effort and time analyzing distrators, who in the class they distract away from the correct answer, etc, leaves the motive for using this testing technique as one of teacher convenience (they are quick and easy to mark). I used them in my classroom, but usually only for short quizzes that I used for quick "how are we doing" gauges--mid-lesson questions type stuff--to make sure everyone was on the same page. They weren't used exclusively, rather, as a complimentary technique to vary the approach. In any case, they were a small part of my assessment practice.
Measuring experience instead of test scores. This is the idea that will make educator most uncomfortable, not because of the philosophy behind it, but because of the awkwardness in measurement. We do not have a standard for grade 5 math experience, yet.
Cooperation instead of isolation. This is the easiest one for us to do with our students and the hardest one for us to do amongst ourselves. Teachers put so much of themselves into their classrooms and practice that it is a very exposing--but healthy--thing to open yourself up to someone else's critique. This is the one idea that needs the most planning, mentoring and support.
Teacher's role transforms into coach. As a sports guy, this one has always made sense to me.
Lifelong learning, with work happening earlier in life. This will be the hardest idea for the general public to accept. While I that think many people will agree with the intention of the statement, we are deeply steeped in the factory model of education. Changing school is trying to turn course with a very large ship. Changing the system will be tough and S-L-O-W as all of the decision makers, policy makers, business people and homemakers are disciples of that old, factory system.
Death of the famous college. Is it more important to have a study pair of shoes or a limited edition designer name brand? While I agree with you whole heatedly Seth, I think that, unfortunately, the choice here will ultimately rest with the consumer. And, didn't you say that the system was designed to produce consumers in the first place?
Seth also provides two myths that need debunking:
Great performance in school leads to happiness and success. This one will come up in a later post, once I finish reading a book on happiness and success.
Great parents have kids who produce great performance in school. Too many parents use the model for measuring success as the one that worked for them. That is what makes it so easy to criticize education: everyone critiquing has spent 13+ years in that system, thus everyone offering critique feels that they are doing so from a position of expertise.
His last point, and my favourite nugget:
Are we asking kids to collect the dots or to connect the dots?
Have a view of Seth's video and let me know what you think.
