You've covered a good deal of ground in your post, so I hope others will we=
igh in. The more responses we receive, the more valuable the "organizationa=
l capital" of ISED. I know you are not suggesting we blow up education and =
start over again. I was responding to Tom Flanagan's message about the disc=
onnect between many societal institutions and education. Ironic, given that=
schools were initially conceived to instill the values of the culture.
Your question to me is really the key question to those of us invested in t=
he integration of technology in our schools. I'm afraid I don't have a grea=
t answer. If I did, I would be ready to reform education. Without well defi=
ned measures of improvement in teaching and learning, I think we, as educat=
ors, can still assess whether teaching and learning is improving. When you =
work with kids, you see the facial expressions and body English that result=
from more synapses firing in the brain. Of course, I can't be sure that el=
evated brain activity resulting from a lesson strengthened by an appropriat=
e technology tool will result in a better outcome, but suspect that the rig=
ht mix of lessons and strategies bolstered by the right technology tools wi=
ll yield better qualitative results. Qualitative means that by observation,=
I believe a child is learning better than he or she did before. Call it te=
acher's intuition. Quantitative results depend on rethinking assessment, so=
mething I have tried to get my arms around without great success. I'd love =
to hear from others on the subject of innovative assessment.
Fred, thanks for keeping us all inspired and thinking about the possibiliti=
es.
Joel
On 12/15/09 7:31 PM, "Fred Bartels" <fredbartels@gmail.com> wrote:
Joel,
Thanks so much for bringing these two threads together. I have a question
for you that goes back to your first post in this thread. You finished that
post with this great sentence.
I could certainly infer that these projects have improved teaching and
> learning or they would not be mentioned, but it would be fascinating to h=
ear
> how that improvement has occurred.
>
This begs the question of how do you define improvement? What are the
measures?
By the way, I'm not so much calling for an effort to rebuild schools from
scratch but rather to rethink the existing designs. When Charles Eliot
redesigned Harvard to create the modern university he built on what was
already there.
This 2004 article in the Times referenced below continues to have a lot of
relevance to this discussion.
I'm interested in working with others to reimagine the 'organizational
capital' of schools.
Fred
--
Joel Backon
Director of Academic Technology / History
Choate Rosemary Hall
333 Christian St.
Wallingford, CT 06492
203-697-2514
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