Montgomery School

A few years ago I made the decision to stop grading papers. This might come as a bit of a surprise to my Spanish students, as they still have to do homework and write research papers. What I really did was come to the conclusion that I was done with paper. I was spending way too much time trying to keep track of who had turned in which assignment, when they turned it in, whether or not I had handed it back or recorded the grade… and let’s face it, handwriting skills are not universally emphasized anymore. (Frankly, that goes for me, too – my poor students have had trouble for years deciphering my scrawl). I was done with it all. I went digital.

I became a very heavy user of Oncourse’s Assignments tool, in all of its incarnations. The current version, called Assignments 2, has several features that have made my transition to purely digital assignments much easier.

One of my favorites is the flexibility with due dates and submissions. With Assignments 2, I can set the open date and time; often, I set the open date for right after class ends on a particular day, so my more wired students won’t end up distracted during class. Having both date and time for the due date is helpful if I want students to turn something in before the next class starts. If I want something submitted by the end of the day, I’ve started making the “due time” 11:59pm. Otherwise I always worry that someone will get confused about the time (is 12:00am midnight or noon?) and date (if it says the due date/time is 12:00am on the 24^th, does that mean submissions will be rejected as of 12:01am on the 24^th, or not until 12:01am on the 25^th? Ive never been clear on the answer to that, btw).   

The “Post Open Date to Announcements on Open Date” option is very helpful. I like having notice of a new assignment appear on the first page of my course site, but it used to be that my announcement would show up as soon as I saved a new assignment… even if it wasn’t open yet. So I’d get flooded with email messages from eager students who tried to start working on the assignment right away only to find it wasn’t available yet. Now, the announcement stays hidden until the day and time I set. Bravo!

If I decide students can earn partial credit on a late assignment, I can set a different “Accept Until” date. This can get confusing for students, however, as they see (Late) after the due date and often assume that it’s too late.  However, if you look closely at the example below, you can see that one of these two assignments has “View Details and Submit” versus just “View Details.” So this is one I still get email messages about from students (this time the desperate ones who didn’t submit before the posted “Due Date” and thus feel compelled to attach their homework to an email message and beg for leniency).

Note that the first assignment here is closed to submissions, but the second one will still allow you to submit – it’ll just be marked “Late.” I always insist that students post their work in Assignments, even if they’ve just sent it to me as an attachment via Oncourse email. As I tell them, I need to have everything in the same place, or I lose track of what has been turned in and what hasn’t. I’ll admit it; I’ve had to change course grades in the past upon discovering a missing assignment in my email instead of in the Assignments tool where it belonged!

The other problem that would crop up from time to time was students submitting their work and then needing to make changes for one reason or another. I’d end up with the updated files sent to my email inbox once again, and I don’t always remember to check my inbox while I’m grading assignments because, well, that’s not where theyre supposed to be. So I made the executive decision to change the “Number of Submissions” to Unlimited for pretty much every assignment.

This way, I can redirect students back to Assignments (instead of getting yet more files via email), and I have a history of all submissions in one handy place. I like that when Im ready to grade, the most recent submission is listed first, and then I can dig down to look at older submissions if I want.

Every once in a while I’ll have a few students who genuinely learn better if they write things out by hand. I hate to discourage students who know what learning strategies work for them. Then I realized that many of our Student Technology Centers have scanners! Now I simply request that things like diagrams or other handwritten work be scanned and then attached to the assignment in Oncourse.

The best part of all this is I no longer have piles of papers to carry around, or spill coffee on, or drop in puddles, or misplace entirely. I’m never going back!

A federal appeals court has upheld a Pennsylvania school district’s attendance-zone plan that took neighborhood racial demographics into account but did not assign individual students based on race.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in Philadelphia, unanimously upheld the assignment plan adopted in 2009 by the Lower Merion school district.

The plan for the district’s six elementary schools, two middle schools, and two high schools was related to a capital program to modernize the schools and achieve goals such as equalizing the enrollments of the high schools and keep the use of bus transportation to a minimum.

In the plan eventually adopted by the Lower Merion school board, called Plan 3R, the board took neighborhood racial demographics into account in reassigning some 350 students from Lower Merion High School to Harriton High School.

Nine African-American students affected by the new attendance zones, and their parents, sued the district, arguing that the plan’s consideration of race violated the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause.

They lost in both a federal district court and in the Dec. 14 decision of the 3rd Circuit court panel.

“Plan 3R is facially race neutral, assigning students to schools based only on the geographical areas in which they live,” Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr. wrote for the court in Student Doe 1 v. Lower Merion School District. “The plan, on its face, neither uses racial classification as a factor in student assignment nor distributes any burdens or benefits on the basis of racial classification.”

Two judges on the panel said a plan taking only neighborhood racial characteristics into account did not call for “strict scrutiny”—the most demanding level of judicial scrutiny and that usually applied to race-based government action. Instead, they applied “rational basis” review and found that the district had numerous reasons for its plan that were rationally related to a legitimate state interest.

The third judge said she believed strict scrutiny should be applied to considerations of neighborhood racial demographics in drawing student attendance zones. Still, Judge Jane R. Roth said, she would uphold the Lower Merion plan.

“I am convinced that, although racial diversity was an object of Plan 3R, it was not the racial composition of the neighborhoods that was the primary motive for the new assignment plan,” Judge Roth said in her concurrence.

Interestingly, the court stopped short of accepting Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s concurring opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District as controlling for the high court, as many other legal observers have. Justice Kennedy said a race-conscious assignment plan that did not employ racial classifications of students would likely pass strict scrutiny.

“School boards may pursue the goal of bringing together students of diverse backgrounds and races through other means” than the racial classifications at issue in the Seattle case, Justice Kennedy said, including “drawing attendance zones with general recognition of the demographics of neighborhoods.”

In the main 3rd Circuit opinion this week, Judge Greenaway said, “Because the Supreme Court has not yet given its imprimatur to the propositions in Justice Kennedy’s Seattle concurrence, it is not yet the law of the Supreme Court or binding on this court.”

In her concurrence, Judge Roth said, “The conclusion I draw is that, when dealing with race-neutral compelling interests, the concurrent consideration of racial diversity does not invalidate a plan—but we need further guidance from the Supreme Court on this issue.”

The Obama administration backed the school district’s plan in a friend-of-the-court brief in the 3rd Circuit. Earlier this month, the federal departments of Education and Justice issued guidance emphasizing the ways in which schools and colleges could legally take race into account in student assignments and admissions, which I blogged about here and wrote about at greater length in this Education Week story.

Depending on where you work you might use the title Learning Technologist, Education Technologist, Instructional Designer, or something else, but essentially these roles are the same.

• See the related posts section below for links to the previous 4 posts in this series.

Here are a few excerpts from job descriptions for these roles that I found with a quick Google search, see for yourself:

• Provides pedagogic advice, guidance, encouragement and support on the use of technology to staff involved in teaching. Such processes involves mutual learning, and frequently contrast with the clear division of labour that characterises Instructional Design. Source: JISC Recommendations for an accreditation scheme for learning technologists v. 4.6 (Consultation document 19/03/04)
• Promoting and the appropriate pedagogical use of e-learning through resources, communication and assessment tools. Source: Bournemouth University Job Description & Person Specification (PDF 55.70kb)
• Develop and institute logistical, instructional, and pedagogical policies for the creation and delivery of online courses. Source: UTD Job Description

While reading this post last night - Learning Technology Trends To Watch In 2012 I found the section on Expanded Instructional Designer’s Role quite interesting, not least as the expanded role sounded an awful lot like the work I am already engaged in?

Captured in Clive Shepherd’s book, The New Learning Architect, the idea that an instructional designer has one only one function course creation seems outdated. Although many will continue to develop courses, instructional designers will need to think in broad terms about how to close learning gaps. This means understanding the strategies that underlie diverse possibilities for learning, both formal and informal, traditional and nontraditional, online and print and face-to-face and virtual.

Many of the people I converse with on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, at work, at conferences, etc, are also of this opinion: that it is more than just the final result that the LT (Learning Technologist) is interested in, that the LT can be a vital part of the whole process in getting the learning materials researched, set up, assessed, etc. Convincing others of this is not always easy.

For example, instructional designers are managing communities of practice, curating content, facilitating online discussion groups, organizing events and supporting of social media for learning. Instructional designers are often the proponents of innovation and the persuaders who convince upper management that interaction and collaboration will make for a smarter organization. As more instructional designers and educators see themselves as learning architects, the world will become a smarter place.

Wow, this is me, am I now a Learning Architect?

Do you have a view or comment on this, or any other aspect of the role or industry you work in? If so then please leave a comment and open the discussion.

On standardized high school English examinations in New York, students must write what is often called a “critical lens” essay. They are given a quotation (the “lens”) and must interpret it, state whether they agree or disagree with it, and substantiate their position with examples from literary texts of their choice. This task has logical flaws and encourages poor reasoning and writing. The problem is largely due to the lack of a literature curriculum; when there are no common texts, essay questions on state tests become vague and diffuse. The test question needs an overhaul, and New York State needs a literature curriculum with some common texts and ample room for choice.

One flaw of the “critical lens” task is that students must interpret the quotation out of context. Students may or may not have read the source of the quotation; they are allowed to make it mean whatever they want it to mean (within reason). The test-taker must provide a “valid” interpretation of the quote, but without a context, “valid” simply means free of egregious error. When it comes to analysis, this is not good practice; the student latches onto the interpretation that comes to mind instead of searching for the most fitting one.

A sample New York Regents English examination illustrates how this might play out. (I discuss this example in my book, Republic of Noise.)  Here the quotation is from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.” (See p. 21 of the PDF file.) This quotation can mean many things, but it has particular meaning in The Little Prince. It is the fox who speaks these words, after befriending the prince and being tamed by him. They have been meeting, day by day, at the same time and place; the regularity of the ritual allows the fox to prepare his heart for the prince’s arrival. Seeing with the heart in this case has to do with caring for another, spending time with another, honoring rituals together. But students are more likely to take the quotation as a comment on romantic attraction (and some of the sample responses do precisely that). Then they agree or disagree with the quotation on the basis of this incorrect interpretation.

Another flaw in the “critical lens” task is that it hinges on the student’s opinion (about a statement that may apply to a range of situations). The opinion may be hasty or superficial, yet it is unassailable. It would make more sense to ask the student to explain how a particular literary work affirms the quotation in some ways and negates it in others, and to decide whether the affirmation or the negation is ultimately stronger. That would require careful, thoughtful analysis and examination of a work and would leave room for the student’s ideas and judgment. At the very least, the prompt could ask the students to show how a literary work addresses or touches on the idea in the quotation. That runs the risk of reducing literature to ideas and themes, but at least it keeps the focus on the literature.

A third flaw is that students must cite examples from literature in support of their opinion. It is possible to do this, but one must do so cautiously. Literature is not a direct reflection of life; often its messages are oblique and contradictory. So, for instance, if one looks to Romeo and Juliet for examples of people blinded by love (not seeing rightly with the heart), one will find them, but one will also miss the point. In the play, love has both delusion and illumination and is part of a larger scheme. Help and harm intermingle, as Friar Laurence suggests in his monologue:

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities: For nought so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give, Nor aught so good but straind from that fair use Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse: Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; And vice sometimes by action dignified.

The play does not pass judgment on the lovers’ passion; rather, it shows the playing out of passions, feuds, and good intentions, where no one grasps the full situation until the end. But students who ignore this can get a high score on the essay. One can even ignore key details of plot and get a high score. A sample student response with the highest score (on p. 58) states that “if Romeo had not used his heart, he would have seen rightly. He could have stayed with Rosaline, and saved both the Montagues and Capulets from enduring his reckless, love-inspired antics.” The student neglects the fact that Rosaline has sworn herself to chastity, that the Montagues and Capulets have antics of their own (the play begins with a fight that escalates), and that it is the lovers’ deaths that brings an end, finally, to the warring of the two families. This is at least partly the fault of the essay question; by requiring students to cite literary examples to support their opinion, it encourages (or at least does not penalize) shallow interpretations of these examples.

In short, the “critical lens” task rewards poor writing and thinking, precisely because it can rely on no common knowledge. There is no check on the student’s opinion; nothing  challenges the student to examine the quotation or the works closely. The student who follows the directions does well. He may provide a flawed interpretation of the literary examples and quotation, yet receive a top score. He may even get basic plot details wrong without losing any points. It would not be surprising if some students made up the details and still passed. To fight this absurdity, we should have a few texts—just a few—that everybody reads, including those scoring the tests. The essay question could then pertain to the works themselves. This would allow for coherent, probing essays and would take students out of opinion’s muddier puddles.

Attentive parents absorb information as Collier Schools Superintendent Dr. Kamela Patton speaks on Monday at Tommie Barfield Elementary. Cheryl Ferrara/Eagle Correspondent

— A little holiday cheer and a lot of educational hope framed Dr. Kamela Patton’s first Town Hall meeting on Marco Island.

Patton has six months under her belt as Collier Schools Superintendent. On Monday, she stepped forward to involve the Marco Island community in improving schools and raising student achievement.

During a 45-minute presentation at Tommie Barfield Elementary, Patton outlined best practices for fast tracking students toward a successful future. Prior to the start of the Town Hall, Tommie Barfield Elementary Morning Singers performed a series of holiday songs. After her presentation, Patton answered questions.

“The number one thing parents can do today is read to their children, read with their children, have their children read to them; and most importantly, let their children see them reading,” Patton said.

She explained that schools in Collier Country face a huge “diversity divide” in pre-kindergarten classrooms. Regardless of whether children read or are read to in English, Spanish or Creole, the act of reading ultimately will improve proficiency, she said.

That could close the gap on first and second grade assessment tests. Currently, 70 percent of Collier County students reach acceptable levels while 30 percent of students fall below performance requirements.

Additionally, Patton plans to initiate standards-based progress reports for pre-kindergarten through second grade giving parents an exact description of performance deficiencies.

New this year for students in grades six and 10 will be computer-based testing. Digital testing gives teachers and administrators quicker results, Patton said. New technologies also will allow for additional end-of-course assessments for graduating seniors.

In 2012 and 2013 testing will remain the same. By 2014, students will need to show proficiency after completing algebra. By 2015, students taking algebra, geometry, biology and honor courses in those fields will be required to pass proficiency exams.

All testing was designed to move students from the schoolroom to the workplace, Patton said.

“Graduation is the best day in the whole year,” she explained, “but it’s also the worst day when youngsters cross that stage and have no idea what they’re going to do the next day.”

Collier County’s school system should be graduating students with 21st Century skills, Patton said. Her goal of introducing the STEM program – an acronym for science, technology, engineering and math – could make that possible. But as competition for college admissions grows, soft skills such as communicating, working in teams and project leadership need to be developed and showcased.

To do so, Patton instituted electronic portfolios to display student projects for college admissions or potential employment. Patton encouraged student participation in internships and mentoring to test whether a student’s career choice was a good fit.

Patton explained that Collier County is the only district in the state to purchase digital versions of textbooks that can be updated as events occur.

“It would take six years for something like Japan’s tsunami to hit textbooks,” Patton said. With the county system, information would be available within a few weeks for students to study.

Patton was asked for her view on school uniforms. She explained that dress codes were left to individual schools. On holding a daytime Town Hall, Patton said definitely for next year.

Hoping to fund more teachers and textbooks, Patton urged parents to vote in favor of 2012’s referendum to move $14 million from capital bricks and mortar projects to operations.