Archive for July, 2010
My Friday’s Quotes
Today I thought, rather then share a quote, that I would share with you an educational site. Teachers will probably know this as a very valuable resource. However, for parents who home school or are just interested in what is going on in education, this is a great place to bookmark and visit regularly.
Edutopia, “K-12 Education & Learning Innovations with Proven Strategies that Work”. I strongly suggest you browse this site and then sign-up for their weekly newsletter. For me to list all it’s benefits would be a waste of my time for they become quickly apparent when you enter the site. It is broken down into five major sections: Core Concepts, Community, Sections,(where you will find blogs, videos, webinars and more), Stay Connected, and The Foundation, referring to the George Lucas Educational Foundation.
“An in-depth and interactive resource, Edutopia.org offers practical, hands-on advice, real-world examples, lively contributions from practitioners, and invaluable tips and tools.”
“Through an extensive offering of documentaries, Edutopia video is a catalyst for innovation by helping educators and parents, as well as business and community leaders, see and understand pioneering best practices.”
But don’t take our word for it – go find out for yourself. You will find a wealth of information and support.
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Yesterday we briefly looked at the first 4 steps when doing a Project Based Learning assignment. It should be easy to see how nicely this allows for individualization and homeschooling curriculum. Now let’s look at the last 5 steps.
5.Make a list of what needs to be completed with a timeline: What information is needed to solve the problem? How are the possibilities ranked? How are they relate to the list of solutions?
6.List “What do we need to know? You will have already started this list in step 2 but as you have looked more closely at your question, there may be additions to the list. Start the research. Parents can help find possible resources, â¨experts, books, web sites, etc.
Make up a timeline listing the tasks/question being researched. This will help to stay focused and organized. *If your research supports your solution, go to (7). If not, go to (4)
7.Write up your solution with its supporting documentation â¨Findings and/or recommendations should include the problem statement, questions, data gathered, analysis of data, and recommendations based on the data analysis: in short, the process and outcome.
8.Review your performanceâ¨: â¨Take pride in what was done well well and learn from what could have been done better. Thomas Edison felt unsuccessful experiments were part of his journey to successful outcomes!
9.Celebrate the work! Find a way the project can be shared with others. It could be anything from addressing the town council to putting up a video on U-tube.
PBL is a perfect match for a virtual school. It is an effective way to integrate technology used by the school into the curriculum. Like a virtual school, its potential is a limitless.
Project Base Learning is a wonderful tool to use with home-schooled children. It enables them to learn standard base skills across the curriculum through real-life projects.
There are nine basic steps when completing a Project Base Learning assignment. That being said, they may repeat steps two through five as they gather new information and redefine the problem.
1.Explore an Issue: Brainstorm with your child issues or problems in your community, state or country. They don’t have to know much about the issues because they’ll gather informatin, learn new concepts, principles, or skills as they become involved in the problem-solving process.
2.What do you Know? Have your child select one issue to be their Project and develop a chart showing what they know on one side and questions that need to be answered on the other.
3.Develop and write a problem statement: This statement should address what they know and what you need to know to solve their problem. This statement may be rewritten many times during the problem solving process as new information is obtained or old information tossed.
4.Brainstorm possible solutions: Have your child list all different ways the problem might be solved. Have them list each idea on a note card. Then have them review the ideas and organized them from the strongest, most likely to succeed, to the weakest. From that they can make a selection on which idea to research.
Tomorrow’s blog will look at the remaining 5 steps for a Project Based Learning assignment.
We recently got involved in a workshop to learn about PBL or Project Base Learning. Would it fit into a homeschooling program? Could it be used successfully in a virtual learning environment? Did it allow for the necessary individualization which is so important to Mistacres School?
PBL is an approach to teaching across the curriculum by allowing students to explore real-world problems. These projects can last a few days or can go on for a semester. They allow the students, either individually or collectively, to develop a deeper knowledge of the subjects they are studying through direct involvement. It is a way to provide active and engaged learning.
It is obvious students are more likely to remember things they learn through an active, hands-on approach then the more traditional textbook-centered learning. But as important is the confidence and self-direction students gain as they move through their project. As students work through their projects they strengthen their organizational and research skills, develop strong communication skills with peers and adults, and will often have opportunities to work within their community and see first hand effects of their work.
Assessment also becomes reality-based, not on some arbitrary fill-in-the-blank test that asks them to regurgitate what a teacher has said. Students are evaluated on the basis of their projects which has more meaning to them and is more in line with how were are assessed as adults in the real world. How often as I teacher did I hear, “Why do we need to learn this? I’ll never use it!” PBL allows students to see how academic work connects to real-life issues.
The next post we will look begin to look at the steps involved in Project Based Learning.
For those of you who visit Mistacres School on Facebook or at the home site, you know that we graduated our first student at the end of June. Following is a letter that we received from the mother of our graduate. I share it with you because I believe she spoke to many of the reasons why Mistacres was formed.
“I want to thank you for a wonderful first year of virtual learning. I was very concerned it would be more difficult than it was. The programs you used were very user friendly which made learning for Kyrsha much more enjoyable.
There is nothing like working from home,; no lost days of education due to snow days, no distractions from other students. Virtual learning let my daughter move at her own pace, although you pushed her when she needed pushing. I was also very pleased with the fact that if she needed you for support your were readily available or it wasn’t long before you were. I can only hope next years experience …is as simple. We are looking forward to your continued support through these last 4 years of schooling.
I was also very pleased with the amount of growth Kyrsha was able to make. Again, this is another advantage to virtual learning. There is no box limiting my child, … no one moving on with out my child having mastered concepts.
I am so glad we made this move to virtual learning. It has been one of the best decisions I could have made for my child’s educational needs. We owe you many thanks and we are proud to be one of your first graduates.
Thank you again for everything Sherra Carr”
I want to share with you some quotes from inspired people in history and literature. These quotes have made me happy and given me something to think about. They have led me to decide to provide online education to children. I hope you will enjoy them as well.
“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” ⨖ Jim Rohn
“Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don’t know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.” ⨖ Sir William Haley
” Instruction ends in the school-room, but education ends only with life.⨠Frederick W. Robertson
How would Mr. Farley deal with this conundrum. He would have fewer number of scorers assessing a smaller number of students. He would place the assessment of the standardized tests back in the hands of the teacher who has the knowledge and ability to make decisions regarding responses of students that he or she already knows.
Washington recently put forth a comprehensive classroom- based assessment program (CBA) for social studies, health, and the arts. These exams were written and administered on the state level but the student results were assessed by classroom teachers. The CBA’s are based on student performance and/or portfolios that are produced over the year. Now, a student isn’t assessed on what they do in one stress-related day of testing but on the knowledge that they have accumulated over a period of time.
Race to the Top is based on national assessment criteria. This is set to become the method for federal education funding. If these assessments are not reformed, then we place the future of the student in the hands of hired temps who get only a fleeting glance at the students’ work.
How would that work for you? Could you pass based on a short one-day glimpse of your work? Would your really want your competency graded that way? I can only hope that you never have a bad day!
Todd Farley, author of Making the Grades: My Misadventures to the Standardized Testing Industry points out his major complaint with large -scaled assessments. It isn’t the multiple choice questions of standardized testing he finds issue with. They are scored electronically. The answer is clearly right or wrong. However, the open-ended test questions are much different. Those are scored by temporarily hired employees who have only a short training session to learn the industries scoring rules. After sitting through said training session, his stated opinion was that is was ” a theater of the absurd.”
A rubric or written guideline is developed for the scores to follow. However, if you were to scored a question and read that full; credit should be given to an answer that showed “complete understanding” would you know what that meant. It is no longer being scored objectively but subjectively according to the particular scorer. He talks of a wonderful example when potential answers were being evaluated and the group spent much time trying to determine if “bubbled” meant the same thing as “sizzled” or “fizzled”.
Are you a good test-taker? If you knew that performing well on one test each year determined if you would keep your job, how well do you think you would do? It wouldn’t matter how well you did your job on a day to day basis or even those great reports that your boss wrote on your evaluations. It all comes down to one test, written by a company who may or may not have any direct experience with the current workings of your job or even your organization. How do you think you would do? I, for one, am not a good test taker!
The educational system, however, is fast approaching the point where students will not be promoted based on their daily classroom work or the reports written by those educators who spend each day with them. They will be promoted based on their performance on a standardized test given on a yearly basis. In fact, federal funds for education are being linked to regional standardized test scores (No Child Left Behind). As an unintended result of Obama’s Race to the Top, teacher pay could be tied into student test results.
How often is it that children seem to know more about computers than their parents If you’re like me, it’s all the time. Computer literacy no longer begins in high school; it begins in pre-school. Computers have become a central part of modern society, and it’s important to introduce children to computers at a young age. More and more you will find educational software as one of the primary tools for teaching children, with virtual learning environments now being incorporated in the classroom. By learning through software, children not only learn how the computer works, but the subjects that the software is used to teach.
You’ll often find adults that have no idea when to double click, when to single click, how to minimize windows, use tabs, and search for files, while a teenager could do this in their sleep. This is not because teenagers are more intelligent at figuring out how to use the computer, but rather because the entire interface of computer usage is embedded into their brains. It’s important that children too understand this basic computer interface when they’re younger. In the long run, children who are familiar with computers become more successful adults