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  • Spotlight on DML | Appreciating What the World Says Back to Us

    • I have said that in today's schools we have a "fact fetish."
    • There is an interesting thing about action in any domain, whether this domain be biology, gardening, or Yu-Gi-Oh: A question always arises as to how to go on--what to do next--after one has taken an action in a domain. So, say, I have a goal and I do something in any domain. I do it and get a result (I have probed the world and the world has responded). Now what? I have to ask myself a question like "Was the result good/appropriate/adequate for achieving my goal?" This means I have to assess or evaluate or "appreciate" the response from the world, the answer to my probe, in a certain way. If I have no opinion whatsoever, then I have no idea how to go on, what to do next. 
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  • Spotlight on DML | Assessing Development, Not “Static Stuff”

    • Many tests examine what a learner has done through weeks and sometimes years of instruction by a test given on one day and in a format not remotely like the instruction being assessed. The model of learning behind this practice is the idea that instruction has poured static “stuff” into people’s heads and the test can tell us whether it is stored there or not.
    • But learning is a form of development, and in any developmental process we want to know where in a trajectory or course of development a person is. And, of course, to know that, we have to know how different courses of development work in different domains of learning
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  • Spotlight on DML | ‘Rise of Nations’: A Model for Assessment?

    • Such a system is a great “formative” assessment: the best sort of assessment to help and develop the learner. It is also the best “evaluative” assessment one could imagine, the sort of assessment that tells us how good a player is and how he or she compares to others. It is certainly way better than a one-off score or grade (you got a C+ that time—what would I make of that when dozens of different variables were at play across time?).

    • In any real learning:



      • don’t leave the learning space to assess;



      • marry learning and assessment closely;





      • use a trajectory of variables across time in the assessment;



      • allow learners to “theorize” their learning and develop better strategies;



      • use the same assessment for formative and evaluative purposes (evaluations inform stakeholders as well as the learners themselves, and the Rise of Nations approach shows the best developmental information is also the best information for other stakeholders as well);



      • track what learners have done over time and how they have used facts or information as tools;



      • don’t bother assessing people if they haven’t played the game with deep engagement for some time—because you darn well know that people who won’t play Rise of Nations for a sustained time haven’t learned much.

  • The Assessment Gap: 21st Century Writing and Standardized Testing

    • We’re at a complicated point in literacy education right now, as the influence of testing (and the testing industry) is as strong as ever. For the foreseeable future, we’ll measure (“officially,” anyway) our students’ ability as writers with assessments that have no authentic audience and no rhetorical purpose other than to invite efficient evaluation by a nameless, faceless reader.
    • This phenomenon continues even as we see a staggering proliferation of authentic, self-sponsored writing made possible through user-friendly, Web-based publication technologies such as blogs, wikis, and social networking sites. It’s exciting to be part of an era that affords teachers and students the opportunity to write and publish in a medium such a blog to a real audience with relatively little technical know-how or effort. It’s also exciting to think that we’re part of the teaching generation that has the opportunity (and, I think, the responsibility) to figure out how use these new technologies to help students become more effective writers and to write ourselves (and, not insignificantly, to learn more about how and why people write).
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  • Education Sector: Research and Reports: Beyond the Bubble: Technology and the Future of Student Assessment

    A growing number of testing and learning experts argue that technology can dramatically improve assessment—and teaching and learning. Several new research projects are demonstrating how information technology can both deepen and broaden assessment practices in elementary and secondary education, by assessing more comprehensively and by assessing new skills and concepts.

    www.educationsector.org/...research_show.htm - Preview

    assessment report evaluation technology testing on 2009-02-21 and saved by 12 people

    • But there's one day a year when laptops power down and students' mobile computing devices fall silent, a day when most schools across the country revert to an era when whiteboards were blackboards, and iPhones were just a twinkle in some techie's eye—testing day.
    • As a result, at a time when students are tested more than ever—and test results are used to make critical judgments about the performance of schools, teachers, and students—our testing methods don't serve our educational system nearly as well as they should.
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