Reflections on ILC Day Two
This day was much more fruitful for my learning. I only attended three sessions, and two of them were really helpful.
First up was Josh Burker’s Scratch Presentation. Scratch had been recommended to me for improving engagement with elementary algebra instruction, so I was looking forward to learning more. I had downloaded and played with it at one point a few years ago. The session went through the basics, which I needed, and gave suggestions on how to structure instruction for different levels. He suggested that for primary students, you can just let them play with gallery activities, while upper grade elementary students can do programming themselves. My favorite activity? He showed a program called “Cow-bell Hero” that has you playing a cow-bell to rock music like Guitar Hero.
Scratch | Home | imagine, program, share
Next was Dr. Arnie Abrams from Southern Oregon University on the wisdom of mobs. Almost all of it was information I already knew, but he had a decent delivery. This was best for those unfamiliar with the topic. I’m thinking less about the wisdom of mobs (which I read in prep for NECC this summer where the author appeared) and more on large system failures (hey, it’s timely). I’ve been hearing a bit about this fellow, and how “assumptions” about a normal distribution can contribute to this. Now I have to figure out if I’m up for reading it. Surowiecki is very readable.
Last, I saw Dr. Christopher Dede, who works in the Harvard School of Education. He discussed assessment, and it was from a pretty high level perspective. He has worked on publications from DoE on this topic, and it was pretty rich stuff. He showed the same clip that annoyed Dan Meyer but with a different take. His point was about the type of datamining that commercial enterprises engage in, and how much more data they have than we do as educators. He discussed his position that if we had more and better quality formative data, we could do away with summative assessment. He first shared his project, http://www.edtags.org to collect bookmarks and tags from education school students, to analyze what they know and are learning. He then went on to look at River City MUVE project, which is an online immerssive environment to teach project based problem solving in groups with K-12 kids. Having world enough and time (hey, this is Harvard) they analyzed the trail students took, their chat records, the questions they asked, what they looked into, and the hypotheses they made. Here was the big take-away for me. By analyzing what they actually do (through logs), they showed that many students showed mastery of some objectives for critical thinking set out in the beginning of the project. Students were also given a culminating task, a letter to the “Mayor of River City” sharing their findings. Of the students who showed mastery based on analysis of the logs, some did not show that same level of mastery on the culminating report, so the formative data was more accurate. My only question would then be about the retention. That is a big issue because students are often being remediated for skills they have already been taught. Interesting stuff.
Here is my live blog post.
Thanks for the props! I am so glad you liked my Scratch presentation. Please let me know when your students start “Scratching” and let me know if you have any questions. Have fun!
No problem Josh, it was a very informative session for me, and a great intro.