College Prep Continued

In an interesting article "College Stops Giving Students New Email Accounts: Start of a New Trend?" Boston College will now no longer be issuing new accounts stating, "Students have already created digital identities The officials realized that the students already had established digital identities by the time they entered college, so the new email addresses were just not being utilized. The college will offer forwarding services instead."

This may be a new trend, and I am interested in thinking about how high schools can help prepare students for it. Although we too have a difficulty of students to read their school-issued email, I believe that schools need to help them understand digital identities and look at ways to create a their own online dossier, whether it be Facebook, Google accounts, blogs, Twitter, etc. How can they use the web not only for not only connecting now but to also let it grow and develop with them as they grow older?

By the way, is this true?




Also see earlier post on College Prep.

End in Mind

Earlier I had posted a Three for Thursday on College Prep. Last week, we had our first trimester exams. Since I have been teaching at St. Margaret's, we have given our exams in our gym for one week. This arrangement allows every student to take a core subject exam at the same time. Each day students take an exam (for example, English on Monday) in the morning, then lunch, then a guided study period with teachers for the next day (History on Tuesday), and that structure is for five days (English, History, Math, Language, Science). Electives offer their assessments during a class period.

This structure is very efficient. Faculty are available for questions during the exam. All of the 150 students are taking the exam at the same time; moreover, students can focus on one exam at a time. I just have trouble with this model of an efficient machine. Although it may make sense, is it right? Is it best for our students? Is this a healthy preparation for the future? Ever since I came to the school, I just cringed at putting especially our younger students in the gym in a cold environment under the fluorescent lights, distant from the teacher, given strict rules about seating, movement, noise, etc. I was concerned about our 8th and 9th graders, who may be taking their first cumulative exam in this environment. I asked why we did it this way, and the response was that this is what they do in college--we are preparing them for college. Really? First of all, I never had that experience in college. We actually had a greater freedom. We could take the exam on any particular day at a specific morning or afternoon time we wanted during the exam week. We had an honor system and could take it in any classroom. Now I know that is a lot of freedom for high school students, but we do have an honor system and do not give much trust to the students. I also think there is some merit to having student make that choice of when they want to take the exam.

My primary objection to the system is that it limits the assessment. I can be as creative as I want during the term. I can find ways to give authentic assessments, but when it comes time to give them a grade for a final term assessment, I am limited to a test. I am limited to assessing the thinner parts of Dale's Cone with less of an authentic assessment or demonstration of real understanding. I taught 8th grade English when I first arrived and actually circumvented the system and gave more authentic assessment in my classroom. When I had multiple sections of History, I gave into the system, and my assessments became more conservative and, although throrough, were actually less creative.

My question is: Although this is an efficient system, is this the best system? Personally, I am working for student portfolios and better assessments for understanding during and at the end of the term. I believe this discussion of assessments and keeping the end in mind for our curriculum and individual classes is the direction for dialogue about what is best for our future.

Cart Before the Horse Pt. II

This is a continuation of an earlier post. We now have a group of about 20 faculty working on a list of technology skills divided into fundamental, proficient, and distinguished. We attempted this ten years ago, and have a very outdated document. The purpose of this work is for our curriculum guide which outlines not only content in the scope and sequence of different departments but also the progression of skills across the curriculum. The technology is just one set of skills but not to be isolated from other learning. We just felt that this was worth starting with just to begin the long dialogue of moving into the 21st century.

The difficulty I am having right now is where the appropriate focus should be. Right now I am perusing through my notes from writings addressing 21st century skills (most recently, Stephen Downes and Ian Jukes). I just linked to David Warlick's "Big Ideas 4 Eduction." I have linked faculty to NETS for students, AASL, 21st century skills.org, etc. These are good sources, and we know the pedagogy should guide the use of technology, but still at some point we need to look specifically at what skills students should know and then what should teachers know to be able to guide their students. For example, should students know about page layout properties in an office productivity suite like Word, Open Office, Google docs? This is minor, but at what point to we expect students and teachers to know this information. What about understanding tabbed browsing, bookmarking, etc.? I know this type of dialogue drags us away from the larger goals to tech specific "stuff," but I do think we have sit down and discuss the specifics at some point. I have searched online for guidance but without satisfactory results.

I will publish a wiki soon so that our group can collaborate. Here is an older wiki on looking at basic skills for our faculty. I am interested in any feedback or guidance to see if this is a wrong path to take as we think about the future of our students and our institution.

Three for Thursday: College Prep?

One aspect of our mission is that we are a college preparatory school. But what does that mean? I realize that we want our students to be successful at the next level, but at times I feel that holds us back. Are we trying to have our students please college professors who are more backwards or behind the times than we are? As Sir Kenneth Robinson asked why do we hold our college professors in such high esteem as the end in mind? They are such an odd lot. Moreoever, it is difficult when we as teachers use our own college experiences of the past and hold them as a model for the future. I am glad to see that colleges are changing too. Here are some links to see what colleges are doing to prepare their students for the future. Perhaps we can keep this in mind to prepare our students for future colleges.

The Future of Higher Education from The Economist.
Significant challenges loom [for colleges]. For all of its benefits, technology remains a disruptive innovation—and an expensive one. Faculty members used to teaching in one way may be loath to invest the time to learn new methods, and may lack the budget for needed support. This paper examines the role of technology in shaping the future of higher education.


The Tower and the Cloud
The emergence of the networked information economy is unleashing two powerful forces. On one hand, easy access to high-speed networks is empowering individuals. People can now discover and consume information resources and services globally from their homes. Further, new social computing approaches are inviting people to share in the creation and edification of information on the Internet. Empowerment of the individual—or consumerization—is reducing the individual's reliance on traditional brick-and-mortar institutions in favor of new and emerging virtual ones. Second, ubiquitous access to high-speed networks along with network standards, open standards and content, and techniques for virtualizing hardware, software, and services is making it possible to leverage scale economies in unprecedented ways. What appears to be emerging is industrial-scale computing—a standardized infrastructure for delivering computing power, network bandwidth, data storage and protection, and services. Consumerization and industrialization beg the question "Is this the end of the middle?"; that is, what will be the role of "enterprise" IT in the future? Indeed, the bigger question is what will become of all of our intermediating institutions? This volume examines the impact of IT on higher education and on the IT organization in higher education.

In digital era, blue books still causing white knuckles Will the ever go away?

More visualization!

I just had to share this after previous posts on news visualization. The New York Tims just released The Visualization Lab.

Today, we’re taking the next step in reader involvement with the launch of The New York Times Visualization Lab, which allows readers to create compelling interactive charts, graphs, maps and other types of graphical presentations from data made available by Times editors. NYTimes.com readers can comment on the visualizations, share them with others in the form of widgets and images, and create topic hubs where people can collect visualizations and discuss specific subjects.

-source

I think that it is important to teach students to understand visual information from others but also be able to visualize(?) their own data at times. This is not a new literacy but an ever important one. It reminds me of the work of Edward Tufte and his writings and talks on the graphic press. Now in web 2.0 fashion the consumer can be the producer of information.

Print to Web

I was reading a couple of days ago the New York Times article about the end to the daily printing of Christian Science Monitor. This is the first paper to end circulation, but I have seen other signs of things to come. I usually have my students in my World History class subscribe to a major news magazine such as Time or Newsweek. This year, we could not get a student subscription to either and now they are reading Upfront published by the New York Times. I actually like it better, but why the difficulty in giving subscriptions to our students? I have, however, moved to teaching my students to use RSS feeds and social bookmarks, which actually seems to be easier.

The change in CSM may not actually affect my students. I have liked the accessibility of the paper because of the size and length of the articles. CSM is already one of our news feeds. I have used CSM since high school, especially liking the coverage of world events.

"The Monitor is an anomaly in journalism, a nonprofit financed by a church and delivered through the mail. But with seven Pulitzer Prizes and a reputation for thoughtful writing and strong international coverage, it long maintained an outsize influence in the publishing world, which declined as its circulation has slipped to 52,000, from a high of more than 220,000 in 1970.The Monitor is an anomaly in journalism, a nonprofit financed by a church and delivered through the mail. But with seven Pulitzer Prizes and a reputation for thoughtful writing and strong international coverage, it long maintained an outsize influence in the publishing world, which declined as its circulation has slipped to 52,000, from a high of more than 220,000 in 1970."

Good luck, CSM. I look forward to continued use in a new format.