Tips, Tools and Technology for Educators

"Give someone a fish and they'll eat that day. Teach someone how to catch a fish and they'll never go hungry."

This week's #edchat, "How to Integrate Critical Thinking and Technology" and "How to Assess Critical Thinking" highlighted the most important 21^st century skill, often overlooked in the quest for technology integration, student empowerment, and authentic assessment -- critical thinking. By critical thinking I mean the thoughtful examination, evaluation and analysis of a topic - everything described in the above video. Often, this can be observed or assessed by the questions students ask rather than the answers given.  

Sorting through the vast array of information online or simply functioning effectively and successfully in the world in which we live requires a great deal of critical thinking skills. My biggest point of agreement and largest takeaway from this week's #edchat was that all students must own their learning. All teaching, especially 21^st century teaching and learning, must take place within a student-centered pedagogy.

Teaching with a focus on critical thinking requires a shift in lesson design. Facilitate learning and allow your students to navigate their own learning process. Stop lecturing, stop spoon-feeding your kids with A - D answers and teach them how to analyze content (on-line and in context). When teaching with problem or project based learning provide your students with a toolkit and then empower them to select their best route.

"Not everything that counts can be counted, not everything that can be counted counts." -Albert Einstein

Standardizing and assessing creativity and critical thinking skills is fairly challenging within the rigid, traditional grading methodologies. Doing so may require teachers to incorporate alternative grading methods. My favorite suggestion was the creation of digital portfolios paired with formal assessments including student self assessments and teacher-made assessments.

For more information on critical thinking, technology, and assessment check out Elizabeth King's blog post, Critical Thinking: What is it Anyway or Cybrary Man's Educational Web Sites for Problem Based Learning and Critical Thinking.

Free Educational Resources | Interactive Whiteboard Lessons by Learning Today    

"We can't ask students to move to personal learning and then have us as their teachers own the assessment." - Dean Shareski

Dean Shareski Digital Learning Consultant and author of the Ideas and Thoughts blog, of Moose Jaw, SK, Canada believes that school and learning must transform. We must put students in charge of their own learning. As he puts it, the real-time, read/write, social web is "making this more of a reality and possibility than ever before". He echoes the sentiments of last week's blogger of the week, Aaron Eyler in his efforts to liberate student evaluation and assessment.

Personalized Learning Environments

In his most recent post, Personalized Assessment Shareski considers what personalized assessment and evaluation might look in personalized learning environments. He outlines two forms of personalized learning environemnts- putting learning in the context of student passions and interests, and giving students "unprojects" as described by middle school math teacher Chris Harbeck. Click the unprojects link to view his video, it's worth it!

These environments require teachers to step back and set students free, allowing them to explore and determine their own level of mastery. As Harbeck describes in the video, "students stop being mirrors and become amplifiers". Instead of reflecting and regurgitating content, students produce, remix, and add value to content. "Content and skills are not end products but raw materials which students learn to work with and share." Isn't that what it's all about?

Personalized Assessment

Once teachers can get over the initial shock of not having complete control, and once students get over the shock of not being told precisely what to do - "all students achieve more than expected".

Shareski understands that certain expectations need to be a part of learning. He suggests that the key to personalized learning is to build in "feedback loops". He states, "Whether it comes from you, their peers or outsiders, the learning needs to be done in such a way that there is lots of opportunity to revise, edit and refine. Putting this work online seems like a no-brainer in facilitating that."

Last, Shareski suggests a unique form of personalized evaluation and assessment - allowing students to determine some of the grade weighting. For example, if students complete 3 unprojects - consider allowing them to "place more emphasis on one assessment that they felt (best) reflected their energy and time." Be sure to check out his post for a more detailed description.

Photo from http://ideasandthoughts.org/about/

 

Free Educational Resources | Interactive Whiteboard Lessons by Learning Today