Education Hot Topics: A Twitter Snapshot

SUMMARY
A snapshot of key education topics is taken from the author's followers and plotted on a mind map. Interesting relationships and trends emerge.


What Are We All Talking About

Do you ever wonder where the music lies in all the noise? I wanted to know which topics educators were currently talking about. So I went to my burgeoning Twitter timeline on a specific, random day and time (Dec 8, 2011 at 4:07 pm). I then listed the ideas being discussed by my 'followed' colleagues which include teachers and teacher-librarians in the field, as well as notables like Joyce Valenza, Doug Johnson, Buffy Hamilton, Daniel Pink, Alfie Kohn, and Stephen Abram.

The conversation illustrated everything Twitter can be: inspiring or silly, banal or  significant, timely or fleeting. But I needed to do more to make sense of the disparate tweets.

A Mind Map of the Conversation

At this year's Ontario Library Association SuperConference in Toronto, my colleague Scott McPhee and I will be presenting Integrating the Learning Commons. So in preparation for our talk, I have used the Mac App Store's application MindNode (Free) to work my Twitter list into a mind map.

The result was illuminating. The key topics (nodes) that emerged were the following in alphabetical order:

• Assessment
• Creativity
• Educational Reform
• Information Trends
• Internet for Learning
• Learning Design
• Literacies
• New Technologies
• Online Education
• Resourceful Schools
• School Libraries
• Social Networking

The Value of Mind Mapping

For me, the best part of mind mapping is forcing yourself to organize random information into useful knowledge. The map is organic, growing the relationships among the ideas. Each branch can be further cultivated by more reflection. Whole branches can also be related to another to see what was included or missing. I highly recommend MindNode (Free) as a simple tool for teaching and learning. MindNode Pro ($19.99 is even more powerful.

Distinguished from brainstorming, mind mapping requires summarizing, analysis, organization and synthesis. It also checks a tendency to over-emphasize one area of practice over another. For instance, the dedicated teacher may focus on her subject and forget the big picture. Likewise, the busy administrator may be reading up on assessment and national school reform, only to miss the global conversation about new educational technologies.

While my snapshot is of a particular moment in time from a limited source, I hope you find my exercise helpful.

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School Improvement? Ask the Kids

Most jurisdictions around the world engage in some form of continuous assessment of schools. OFSTED in the United Kingdom, with its rigorous inspection and target setting, is a government body that is firmly established and has its defenders and detractors. The Fraser Institute in Canada is an example of how a third party can take it upon itself to rate school performance. Using such data as provincial assessments and graduation rates, the Institute tracks improvement and ranks schools within specific geographic areas. Again, some see this as a contribution to encouraging schools towards excellence; others see it as a false measure that only affects real estate prices.

Very few schools systematically ask their clients to assess their performance. Students, you might argue, are too impressionable or immature to engage in high-level evaluation of complex systems such as school organization or curriculum delivery. However suspect you may think the source, data is data. Used judiciously, student surveys can provide valuable feedback to a school staff, particularly if three criterion are followed: first, the students must understand the instrument used for their feedback; secondly, results must be interpreted to yield general trends, thereby minimizing specific contradictions; lastly, results should provide opportunities for further dialogue, clarification, and action.

The school library can be an excellent place to coordinate such data gathering. In a previous school, my library staff took the lead in providing our new and courageous principal the survey data he needed to move other staff in effective directions. I had never seen a enterprise that could affect school culture so quickly.

So, in this spirit, I have created the above secondary school student assessment form, based on the very instrument (the Achievement Chart) used here in Ontario to measure student performance in developing required knowledge and skills. It grids the same four categories (Knowledge and Understanding, Thinking, Communication, and Application) to a four level value scale. 

Perhaps you think this is bogus, believing that assessment of school and student are two different things and the ability to assess by student and teacher quantitatively so. Perhaps you can reshape the statements in each category or even the categories themselves. What would an elementary assessment instrument look like? How could you use technology to develop this process?

Whatever your instrument, the principle is the same: if the purpose of assessment is to improve student learning, then students should be given regular opportunities to comment on how well they are being taught, how deeply they are learning, and how creatively their school could improve.

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Creating: The Fourth Stage of the Inquiry Process

The fourth stage of the inquiry process, as identified by our work with the Ontario School Library Association, is termed creating. 

This stage concentrates activity on the construction and communication of knowledge. Excitement builds, as students who have engaged in the inquiry process deeply and broadly, naturally want to share their results. In academic settings, this is usually done in three ways:

• the student makes and presents the product of their inquiry in the way most appropriate to the assignment, audience, topic, and context. Such ways include a large repertoire of formats and formats (e.g., print pamphlet, media collage, digital website, oral presentation, written essay, artistic representation). 
• the student and teacher finalize the assessment and evaluation of the product and process in ways stated and understood in advance, using clear and fair tools and recording decices (e.g., rubrics, achievement charts, checklists, conferences, test). Such assessment has as its chief purpose the improvement of student learning.
• the student reflects on his/her learning in ways that foster its extension and transfer to other inquiries. Such reflection deepens the inquiry experience and brings new meaning to new contexts, both immediate and lifelong.

It is easy to get the balance between process and product wrong. For me, it is about intention. For instance, there are situations where it is perfectly reasonable to let the fruit of one’s labour speak for itself. The in-competition performance of a cello piece might be the culmination of a process the audience can’t be expected to see as they rise to applaud the performer. In other situations, the nurturing of the fruit is the most important thing. Being able to identify and discuss the strengths and areas for improvement in using historical archives may be, in fact, the heart of the change sought in an individual’s learning.

The creating stage is a time for teachers both to carefully assess student performance and to examine the ways in which they usually assess students. So in the following weeks, I want to discuss assessment strategies, in ways that are compatible with current practice.

Checklist of Teaching/Learning Strategies 

In the meantime, I have posted Page Three Checklist of Teaching/Learning Strategies based on the large glossary I finished last week. I hope this will help teachers organize assessments, share their goals with students and parents, and ultimately record, balance, and increase their repertoire of pedagogies. 

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Curriculum Design: Squaring the Circle

All curriculum planning templates are “constructions” that follow deeply held beliefs about teaching and learning, perhaps even about life itself. 

Diagram 1. illustrates a mainstream paradigm of curriculum design used throughout Canada and the United States. 

It is common to order the above questions in linear ways. The thinking goes that first, one “designs down” from standards and built-in evidence towards instructional methods and necessary resources. Secondly, one then “delivers up” from instruction and resources to meet standards and measure evidence. This particular paradigm is said to be "results-based" and reflects the philosophy of the educational  pragmatist. An idealist might see emphasis on results and measurement getting in the way of the joy of learning, expecting that evidence of student skill and understanding simply follows masterful teaching.  

In workshops, many teachers have asked me about more holistic paradigms. Do not the complementary acts of designing and delivering suggest not a line but a circle, whose parts react to, reverberate with, and are informed by each other? Isn’t the distinction between designing (a complex term) and delivering (a strange one) artificial and more about the business of education than its art?

Establishing a consistent, operational order on paper is central educational practice, but busy teachers are often overwhelmed by the complexity and time involved in planning lessons, units, and courses. Defensively, some reach for the quick, canned lesson (the Web is full of them) rather than plan and implement their own rich and comprehensive work. Worst still, this planning is often done merely to satisfy administrative and policy-driven demands “from above.” Whatever the finished paper trail, exemplary curriculum design always focuses on student learning.

How then can jurisdictions motivate their teachers to be robust curriculum designers? Ten years ago, the Ontario Ministry of Education spent time and money on creating an electronic planning tool called the Ontario Curriculum Unit Planner (OCUP).  Those of us who developed OCUP met with some success in building capacity for good results-based planning, with the CD-ROM’s template, commissioned units, and web-support made available for all Ontario teachers. OCUP’s demise is unfortunate, now that the Web has the potential to develop it with more flexible templates, real-time networking, and dynamic resources.

For 21st century learning, teachers need tools that reflect jurisdictional design principles, while providing flexible templates that meet local needs. We need to better harness social networks that leverage new ideas and quality resources. My favourites are Quebec’s Dotplan and Authentic Education’s Curriculum Framer. If you have your own Web-based favourites, why not share your findings in my comments section? I am currently scanning provinces and states for more models and will report my findings here. 

Designing curriculum is integral to my professionalism. In the end, it motivates me to do my best and celebrate the joy of teaching and learning. Call me both a pragmatist and an idealist!

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New Blog, Old Questions

Technology continues to bring innovation to education but the process of rapid change requires grounded pedagogy to ensure exemplary practice. As I join the blogosphere, questions that have challenged me throughout a 36 year career in education continue. They include:

• how can strong standards-based design improve curriculum delivery 
• how can engaging resources support effective teaching and learning
• why are principled assessment practices vital to school improvement
• how can we put the process of inquiry at the heart of learning
• what role does the school library play in cooperatively planning, delivering, and assessing student learning and achievement
• how can we harness the power of educational technologies wisely
• why will interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning be so important in the future
• what will 21st century teaching and learning look like (how can we know?)

I will enjoy adding regular commentary on these and other current curriculum issues, while sharing resources from previous work or new activities. I am particularly pleased to be working with and inspired by Shore Consulting of Toronto, one of Canada's leaders in curriculum access and resources for teachers.

My posts will begin in earnest in the new year. Cheers. Tim

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