EdNET Insight - Voice from the Field

Is Required Online Assessment the Y2K of K-12 Education?

Friday, June 14, 2013

The United States is betting the farm that the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) will provide the rigor and accountability needed to re-establish the U.S. as a world leader in education. The two assessment consortia—PARCC and Smarter Balanced—are building next-generation assessments based on the Common Core State Standards, which by 2015 are expected to be delivered online in every school in the country. Whether or not that is feasible depends on the interdependent functioning of a number of components, including:

Bandwidth
Infrastructure
Devices
Wi-Fi Density

Read on to learn more about the current state of readiness for online assessments and what districts need to do now to make online assessment work.

The Fearless Classroom

Friday, April 19, 2013

In the fall of 2011, after 14 years of teaching, I made the bold decision to transform my second-grade classroom into a “fearless classroom.”

To enable a fearless learning environment:

The teacher needs to adopt a more humble role, relinquishing many traditional controls.
When planning lessons, teachers must focus mostly on the outcomes and tools students will use as learning evidence and provide them with reliable resources from which they can glean understanding.
Teachers must learn how to explore their curriculum’s big ideas and concepts.
Failure should always be an option, both for you and your students.
Be a risk-taker.

BYOD – A Cost-Effective Approach to 1:1 Computing

Friday, March 22, 2013

The BLEgroup Thought Leadership Consortium on 1:1 Computing covers the key points of BYOD implementation:

What needs to be in place to successfully implement BYOD?
What are the rationale and conditions for BYOD as an instructional environment, not just as hardware?
What do vendors need to do to make this work?

Redesigning Schools to Meet Student Needs: Essential Elements

Friday, February 22, 2013

In 30 years of working with technology in K-12 education, I’ve observed the same lessons being learned again and again. While we’ve progressed over that time period from Apple II and TRS-80 computers to the powerful, connected, mobile, multimedia technologies that are omnipresent today, we’ve made far less progress in the structures and processes of education. Moore’s law about exponential growth of technological power unfortunately has not applied to our knowledge of how to redesign schooling to best prepare our students for college, careers, and citizenship in the global, digital world in which they will live. Here are some of my key observations.

Educational Technology for the Developing World

Friday, January 25, 2013

I went to Senegal, West Africa, as a tourist in 2007 and was taken to visit a poor rural primary school, École Sinthiou Mbadane1. The school is off the power grid, with holes in its rusted roof, opening to dark, dusty classroom interiors. Whatever is lacking in terms of physical infrastructure is more than made up by the intense dedication of the teachers and the students. Some of the kids walk miles on an empty stomach to have the privilege of attending school. The school won over my heart, and I began to explore ways that my experience in the technology, content, and online learning fields might help improve the school and others like it.

1:1 Computing: More Than Devices

Friday, December 14, 2012

Implementing 1:1 computing is like cooking the perfect meal: For spectacular results, you must conduct the process slowly and patiently, using the right ingredients at the right time…all the while visualizing the outcome. In K-12 schools, 1:1 computing connotes a child having his/her own device. Most school districts believe they are engaging in 1:1 computing when there is a ratio of one computing device, pad, or phone for every child. Often, this concept is considered a silver bullet: “If the computer is present, education will occur.”

Aligning Your Messaging with District Leaders’ Real Needs

Friday, November 09, 2012

A superintendent from a large, southern school district told me this story recently: “A publisher’s sales guy came into my office and handed me a textbook with a sticker on it. He pointed out the sticker: ‘Now Common Core Aligned.’ I said to him, ‘That’s the same [redacted] textbook you sold me two years ago.’” As it turns out, this war story is playing out time and again as companies in the education space struggle to craft effective bring-to-market strategies and messaging that provide compelling explanations of how they support Common Core objectives. More importantly, this anecdote captures in a microcosm how companies consistently fail to deliver an “outside-in” focus on solving the discrete needs of targeted purchasing influencers.

Implementing 1:1 Computing – Getting Close, But Content Still Falls Short

Friday, September 28, 2012

Implementation of digital educational content and 1:1 devices is happening now and is replacing the century-old textbook as the technology of education delivery. Almost every school in the country is experimenting with 1:1 devices; every hardware manufacturer and education publisher is introducing web-based products; and key states are changing their textbook procurement policies to encourage the purchase of electronic materials instead of textbooks.

Trends Come and Go ‒ Why Flipped Learning Has Staying Power

Friday, September 14, 2012

As an educational corporate executive, when do you make a business decision to jump on board with the latest trend, wave it off, or sit tight and let others retool and then decide?

Turning the Student Learning Revolution Into a Professional Development Revolution

Friday, August 10, 2012

Each year, as schools prepare to open across the country, I take some time to review and reflect on what is new in the classroom. As I enter my 20th year as Executive Director and CEO of ASCD, I am in a more retrospective mood, and my mind has turned to thinking about what has changed in education over the course of my tenure—and what still needs to change.

Solving the “Big Hairy” Technology Problems in K-12

Friday, July 13, 2012

As a corporate leader, you have probably taken part in some strategic planning process where you have been asked to identify the “big hairy problem” that impedes achieving your goal. What would that mean if we tried to define the big problems around technology in K-12? From my perspective, I believe we need to rethink the “big hairy” problems of technology in K-12 education. I lump the problems into three big hairy buckets: Ubiquity, Access, and Human Capacity.

A Sobering Look at the Economic Recession and Its Impact on Our Nation’s Schools

Friday, June 08, 2012

During my 27-year tenure as a superintendent of schools, I always complained about insufficient funds to provide for the needs of our students, but I never had a year where my school budget was actually less than the previous year. That situation has changed dramatically in the past four years. At a recent meeting with school superintendents from around the country, I asked for a showing of hands for districts operating with budgets below 2008 levels. Half the hands in the room went up.

Common Core Assessment: An Exciting Opportunity—and a Looming Challenge

Friday, May 11, 2012

Race to the Top has funded two consortia—PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) and SBAC (SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium)—to develop “next-generation” K–12 Common Core assessment systems to replace the individual state standards and assessments that currently exist. What do educators think about Common Core assessments and the impact they’ll have on schools and districts? The reactions are mixed and complicated. They are both positive and wary, but they suggest a major upheaval in the near future that too many school systems are unprepared to deal with. First, the good news. Assessment will be narrower but deeper. The emphasis is not on student recall of information; rather students must interpret and apply knowledge and skills to new settings and situations. It’s about transfer, rather than simple acquisition of knowledge and skills.

We Can’t Wait Another Year for a New ESEA

Friday, April 13, 2012

For nearly five years, school leaders around the country have urged Congress to make dramatic changes to the No Child Left Behind law. We’re now reaching a critical point where too many schools are being unfairly penalized, community support is undermined, and we’re forced to sacrifice vital subjects that engage students to focus on state tests.

The Transition to Digital Content and Textbooks

Friday, March 16, 2012

As you no doubt know, we have been working over the past three years to create a space for education technology that is both integrated and expanded. One key to our success is for all of us to share in the articulation of the potential and the challenges of the transition to digital. Embedded in this article are some key messages that we can continue to fine-tune in order to increase understanding and inspire action.

The Gateway to 21st Century Skills

Friday, February 17, 2012

About The Gateway to 21st Century Skills - The JES & Co. team has launched a revamped Gateway to 21st Century Skills (Gateway), one of the oldest digital libraries containing thousands of educational resources ranging from activities to online projects. Improvements to the Gateway include Facebook integration, rating and commenting, and correlation to the Common Core State Standards. The Gateway’s resources have been contributed by 700 quality organizations and serve educators in 178 countries, and its use continues to be free of charge. Originally funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the Gateway is now sponsored by the National Education Association.

Addressing the Digital Divide Within

Friday, January 20, 2012

Recently, our district distributed iPads to our principals to support the new Tennessee teacher evaluation program. The iPads will allow our principals and other administrators who conduct teacher evaluations to input data and remarks and record the lesson with pictures and video clips as they conduct classroom observations. During the process of distributing the iPads to administrators, we were surprised to find that some of our principals and administrators said they do not have personal email accounts and some did not even know how to log in to their work accounts—their administrative assistants manage the task of reviewing and answering daily emails.

What Is the Right Test?
Toward Individualized Instruction: The Evolving Nature of Assessment

Friday, December 09, 2011

More than 50% of students entering high school are two or more years behind in at least one subject on meeting the academic grade-level standards, less than 40% are proficient, and only 5% are advanced. What do we do about the more than 50% of students who are missing the necessary prerequisite skills to master their current standards? Good instructional leaders have a vision of individualizing instruction to meet the needs of individual students. Unfortunately, they lack the assessment and diagnostic tools to make this vision a reality. Assessments are the tools used to address student improvement. They range from “thermometers” that tell us what standards a student has mastered or not mastered to diagnostic tools that identify skill strengths and deficiencies, and they provide materials to teach missing skills so that standards can be mastered.

The Promise of the Common Core…

Friday, November 04, 2011

Common Core State Standards are anything but common. Never in our nation’s history have we had a set of common learning expectations for English Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics—K-12 articulated standards that have now been adopted by 47 states. These standards represent a readiness for college and careers that we must ensure all students graduating from our high schools attain to be successful. This is powerful and has the potential to move public education off the dime and student learning to new heights. The promise of Common Core will be realized only if …

LMS: The Delivery Platform for Digital Education
What Is It and How Many Are There?

Friday, October 07, 2011

LMSs, learning management systems, are the platforms that deliver digital content, which makes them a very critical app in the transformation from print to digital delivery. Still in their early stages, they offer the potential for individualized learning plans and customized instruction for all students based on need, learning style, and ability. The biggest problem with LMS is that the term means different things to different people. As the market matured, LMS technology changed and new functions were added, but the term remained the same. “LMS” is now used to describe a very broad range of functionality.