Prairie South School Division Conversations

For many years, Pro D has been great at raising the awareness of educators. The relevant question now is, can Pro D help educators identify and apply the 'new work of schools'? It is with this in mind that I'm hoping to collect ways that educators are participating in job-embedded Pro D that is genuinely helping students to learn. Here are three examples presently at work in our school division.

The first involves a group of six grade 1 teachers who work with a curriculum consultant and SkLearning expert in English Language Arts. They met one day a month for the past year. They have designed and field-tested a set of rubrics that has direct application to their daily work in assessing students.

The second is a PLC group of Middle Years teachers (grade 6 to 8) who are trying to design learning so that concepts are 'pearled out' throughout the year, instead of taught as discrete units that are learned and left.

The third is a group of grade 9 Math teachers who have developed common pre, during & post assessments for their students. Their belief is that all students should meet learning criteria and be assessed with the same measures. They have also developed a common pacing guide across classes.

Please contribute other examples -- so we learn together and light a fire under job-embedded Pro D.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to attend the National Middle School Association Conference in Nashville. I attended a session on Technology to Improve Learning, a book and session by Michael Muir. While he gave a snapshot of all the ways computers are used in schools (administrative uses, teacher uses, content-area uses), he focused the session on using the computer as a tool for learning.

Muir says there are three types of computer-use in schools. Firstly, we generate computer activities which are connected to the curriculum; secondly, curriculum content is enhanced through teacher use, perhaps with a power point presentation or internet site; finally, the computer can be used to build higher levels of thinking. Clearly, sustaining methods (automated practices which were done manually before computers ever existed), such as drill and practice, online text and teacher presentation, do not justify purchases of technology. If we are truly justified in major technology investment, we must take technological purpose to a new level – a disruptive level, where tasks and higher thinking levels are only possible because of technology. Such disruptive possibilities include digital storytelling, inquiry and information access, web-quests, project-based learning with multimedia, word-processing, blogs, wikipedia, pod/vodcasts and social bookmarking, to name a few. If technology is part of our students’ culture (and it is and will continue to be), then it is inherent upon us, their teachers, to find a way to build it into the curriculum – at all levels.

In other words, school administrators need to expect the use of higher levels computer-use in their schools, and we need to supervise to ensure that it is happening.

If it is, indeed, inherent upon us to do so, to what level do we expect such computer-use? How far do we go? Furthermore, how do school administrators command that teachers equip themselves with the skills to do so?

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/magazine/14publishing.html?ex=1305259200&en=c07443d368771bb8&ei=5090

Kevin Kelley at the New York Times writes about efforts that will hopefully digitize books from 5 major research libraries and make them freely available. He writes:

This is a very big library. But because of digital technology, you'll be able to reach inside it from almost any device that sports a screen. From the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have "published" at least 32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages. All this material is currently contained in all the libraries and archives of the world. When fully digitized, the whole lot could be compressed (at current technological rates) onto 50 petabyte hard disks. Today you need a building about the size of a small-town library to house 50 petabytes. With tomorrow's technology, it will all fit onto your iPod. When that happens, the library of all libraries will ride in your purse or wallet — if it doesn't plug directly into your brain with thin white cords. Some people alive today are surely hoping that they die before such things happen, and others, mostly the young, want to know what's taking so long. (Could we get it up and running by next week? They have a history project due.)

Not sure how I feel about it but it doesn't really matter. It's happening. He goes on to discuss the two biggest inventions in the last 50 years: the link and the tag. Most of us are familiar with links and this is critical as books will be able to connect with other books. Tags, are keywords assigned to things which enable searching, categorizing and greater access.

When books are deeply linked, you'll be able to click on the title in any bibliography or any footnote and find the actual book referred to in the footnote. The books referenced in that book's bibliography will themselves be available, and so you can hop through the library in the same way we hop through Web links, traveling from footnote to footnote to footnote until you reach the bottom of things.

These advances are critical for us to consider when it comes to the education of our students. Having access to entire sum of documented human knowledge is pretty daunting when it comes to coming up with a "game plan" to teach. Have we started working on one? Any librarians have thoughts on this one?

Image Citation:
JayonButton. “und nochmal” JayonButton's Photostream. 7 Oct 2006. 19 Nov 2006

When thinking about report cards and communication with parents, I propose that we ask ourselves the question,"What does a mark tell us?". In other words, if a student receives 76% on their report card for math, what does that grade really tell us about the student's strengths, weaknesses, which outcomes they have been met, and where they are in the continuum of learning.

What can a 75% communicate to parents about the achievement of their child? How descriptive and personal can a number be? Is it not the information about the child's progress that is important to parents?
Peter Elbow says:

"One can tell a little more of the truth. In doing so, it turns out that we can avoid pretending that a student's whole performance or intelligence can be summed up in one number (Davies, 2004, P.56)."

Perhaps we should be considering using letters grades instead of percentages, or grade ranges instead of firm percentages. What is the difference between 75 and 76%? If marks don't provide detailed information about student progress - why are we so attached to them?

In our effort to assist teachers, the Curriculum Consultants are trying to create a support model that really works for teachers. At this moment, we think there are 3 strands to our work:
- Job embedded professional development. This would be determined by teachers and schools who identify their own learning needs and then ask for our support to meet their needs. This might include supporting PLCs, working with small groups of teachers or supporting an initiative that is either school or division based.
-Just in time support such as assisting teachers in class, hosting workshops and learning sessions such as 'coffee & conversation'.
-The third part of our work is to find the research and resources to support teachers. In our conversations with other large school divisions, we have learned that up to 80% of their work is to post learning modules, resources and ideas online so teachers may access support as needed. While this is only one kind of support, we see that it is becoming increasingly popular with other learning organizations.

What do you think? Please let us know.