Common Core Assessment

According to a piece by Catherine Gewertz in Education Week (08/14/12), tests for common core skills and knowledge won’t be ready until 2012-2015. Sample test questions have been developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers. The groups are working on a “different approach to test items”, which will require an in-depth understanding of what is being tested. Two problems are bothering educators, so far. One is whether those who create the tests will be able to create questions like the samples. The other is whether students will understand how to answer these types of questions, or in other words, how to prepare them for testing.

It seems that we shouldn’t be so worried about preparing students for testing, but instead we should be making sure that students gain an in-depth knowledge of the content they are studying and how to put their critical and creative thinking skills to work to solve problems related to the content. If so, they should do well on the tests.

The American Dream: Does It Exist?

What happened to the American Dream? Some educators, such as Stanford Professor Sean Reardon, suggest it’s vanishing, especially for children of low-income families. Reardon’s research found that the achievement gap between the poor and the affluent increased 40% since the 1960s.  With numbers of low-income families on the rise, there are fewer families in middle-income ranges. Reardon holds that it’s not the fault of the schools that the children of these families are not holding their own in the academics. The problem occurs before they enter school, because parents struggling to survive don’t have the time or resources to help their children with the cognitive skills they need to be ready for school. This problem, explains Reardon, “is leading to a feedback cycle in which it’s becoming harder and harder to achieve the American dream.” 

How do we get these students back on track so that they can achieve success when they enter school? Some answers that Reardon suggests are: stable jobs for these children’s parents, access to health care, and high-quality child care and preschool programs. Would access to technologies help these students and their parents? How about programs to teach parents and students how to use technologies to help them? Considering the cycle of struggling to survive, where will these parents find the time and resources to help their children?

Schools & the American Dream

Although Stanford research found that schools can’t be blamed for the growing achievement gap among low-income and high-income families, there is still much schools and communities can do to help these children. It’s obvious that intervention should come before students enter school with what Stanford’s Linda Darling-Hammond calls “wrap-around services”.  But how do we achieve this in today’s economic climate? What part should schools and communities play in the goal to help low-income families help their children? If these children come to school without receiving the help they need from their families and communities, how might schools adjust their programs to work with them at their level?

Do Fonts Make a Difference in Essay Grades?

Some of you may remember when students first discovered that they could change fonts, along with their sizes and colors. Essays, papers, and especially reports, resembled colored eye charts or Modern Art as students printed their work in an effort to show teachers that they knew how to use just about every font option available. Rules were soon set, and students realized that teachers preferred black ink and a readable size 12 font. But, does it matter what font? According to research related to a quiz in The New York Times, fonts make a difference in what people believe. They may also make a difference in grades students receive on their essays and papers. The winning font—the most believable font—was a surprise, since Baskerville came out on top. Here is Baskerville. It is not much different from other traditional fonts, but it outscored Georgia, which the Times uses for its online publications. Comic Sans had the lowest believability of the fonts in the study. It looks like part of teaching how to write essays and papers, should include font selection. It may mean the difference between and an A and a B, according to one college student. (Note: Only a few fonts were used in the study; you’ll need to read the article to discover if your favorite font was tested.)

Win Premium Evernote for 250 Students & More

Enter by 08/20/12 at 11:59 PST to win up to 250 Evernote Premium Codes for your students, plus IdeaPaint to complete a high tech learning environment.  With Evernote and IdeaPaint, students write notes on an IdeaPaint surface, take photos of what they write, and zip it into Evernote. In Evernote, they can organize their notes as they need.

All you need for this setup is a smooth surface to cover with IdeaPaint clear, black, or white; and you’ll be able to create your own dry erase board.  The paint is Greenguard Certified so it can be used inside. In these times of budgetary crunching, the Evernote and IdeaPaint duo makes sense.  Complete the form on the IdeaPaint site for a chance to win 250 Evernote Premium Codes for your students, a Webinar with an Evernote Educational Specialist, 300 Sq. Ft. of Clear or White IdeaPaint, 48 IdeaPaint WRITE dry erase markers, 6 IdeaPaint ERASE microfiber cloths, and IdeaPaint CLEANSER and gallon refill.

Apps for Special Needs Students

The TL (Technology & Learning) Advisor Blog has selected Common Core Apps for Special Needs students. Part I of the selections features Apps that meet all of the Grade One standards, and some for other grades as well. They include Explain Everything ($2.99), Popplet ($4.99), Feel Electronic (Free), MeeGenius (Free), Inspiration Lite (Free), Inspiration Maps (Free, Full Version $14.99), 1^st Fiction ($2.99), Wordweb Audio Dictionary ($3.99), Tumblebooks to go—Munsch-6 pack ($5.99), and National Geographic Kids (one free sample, individual magazines $3.99, subscription $19.99). Find out more about each of these Apps that can be put to work for Special Needs children by clicking on the TL Advisory Blog. Also make sure to look for Part II of the recommendations.

Theme for a New School Year

With the new school year about to begin, it’s a good time to think about an overall goal or theme for your students and yourself.  What is the biggest problem you want to work on this year? Maybe, it’s making sure each student feels that he or she can succeed in your classroom? Maybe, it’s letting your students know that you care about each of them, not only as students but also as individuals? Maybe, it’s helping them respect each other and work together as a team? Maybe, it’s using technology as your assistant so that you’ll have the time to help each student to achieve his or her best?

Think about why you became a teacher, and when your students walk into your classroom on that first day, fill them with the spirit to move ahead no matter what obstacles may stand in their way.

Teacher Favorite: Publishing on the Web

Tech 335 Publishing on the Web is a 30-hour PBS TeacherLine course. It targets the way the iGeneration learns. Teachers taking the course find that publishing through Web sites, blogs, learning portals, wikis, and social media is not as difficult as they expected. TeacherLine notes online educational publishing helps “both students and teachers develop a positive online presence . . .” Although the course is professional development for teachers, the content helps teachers lead students to do their best in publishing online as they learn to organize, present, connect, and learn.  See the course syllabus for additional information. This could be useful in using the new iTunes initiative which allows teachers to put their course work online.

Tech in the Classroom Advice

In the July 25^th edition of Edutopia, Monique Flickinger Director of Instructional Technology for the Poudre School District in Fort Collins, Colorado described how she ended up monitoring an “unconference session” about teaching.  She decides to share her top five ideas for teaching teachers about technology. They are:

1. Show, Don’t Tell;
2. Teach with TV (so that what you do can be shared later);
3. Be “liked” (as on a special Facebook page);
4. Chirp about your accomplishments; and
5. Blog about it.

Others in this “unconference” contributed super ideas that Flickinger plans to put to work in her district. They include:

1. Give each grade level at an elementary school a different tech application to earn.
2. Host a teacher tech playground in a fun location.
3. Create tech field trips.
4. Save five minutes at the end of each staff meeting to have a teacher tech smackdown (teachers have 45 seconds to describe something exciting they are doing and others can follow-up on the ideas later.)
5. Create a virtual learning commons area.

Ten Types of Plagiarism

Turnitin surveyed 879 instructors in high schools and colleges to learn what types of plagiarism teachers frequently found in student writing.  The result of the survey was the white paper, Plagiarism Spectrum, which summarizes the types of plagiarism and gives them clever titles. These titles may help your students to be more careful in their writing. You can find out more about this paper at the Turnitin site. In the meantime, see how many of these types of plagiarism that you can figure out: Clone, CTRL-C, Find-Replace, Remix, Recycle, Hybrid, Mash-Up, 404 Error, Aggregator, and Re-Tweet.