Conversations on Learning

I’ve had some questions around Online Learning and the fit to middle years classes. In Medicine Hat gifted students are identified in grade 7 and are offered the opportunity to take grade 8 and 9 math online in the grade 8 year which allows them to spread out their math in high school. My niece and nephew had the opportunity to take Math 90 online in Saskatoon with the Saskatoon Cyberschool. This was a great opportunity for them, not only to free up time in their high school schedule but to strengthen their independent learning skills. Do you think there is a need in our division for an initiative such as this? How about English 90, Science 90?

I've done a few presentations/workshops on the effective use of PowerPoint. Here's a 20 minute condensed version of the presentation.
[youtube]OC1OixM_118[/youtube]

Kathy Cassidy is on a whirlwind tour. It began with a trip to Saskatoon this fall as the winner of the provincial award for computers in education. Then she was off to Philadelphia as one of 5 teachers honored as a Microsoft Innovative Teacher Award. Next she’s off to Cambodia.

This is a short interview on her trip to Philadelphia. Unfortunately, there is little online information about this program and conference as it relates to Canadians, so thus, no show notes. Have a listen.

Also, if you have 5 seconds. Head over to her class wiki to add your name to list as she tries to get 1000.

Reposted from: Ideas and Thoughts

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?