The Case for Reform

The Case for Reform

By Richard Beatty

In previous posts, I have made the case for adopting a new Vision and Mission.  Now I am going to attempt to create a case for reform to achieve the Vision and Mission.  I have identified the following four components of emerging and widespread educational movements as essential to moving forward toward student success.

• 21st Century Learning
• Formative Assessment
• Digital Badges
• PLCs

21st Century Learning	What the students needs to learn.
Formative Assessment	How the students need to learn.
Digital Badges	How we should recognize student accomplishments.
PLCs	How we make it all work.

21st Century Learning

The first thing that needs to be done is adopt 21st Century Learning as the area of focus.  This incorporates Common Core with modern knowledge and skills students need to succeed.  We start here because this is our ultimate goal.  Equipping our students with 21st Century Skills will enable them to succeed in life, society, college, and career in the modern world, and the world yet to come.

Formative Assessment

Formative Assessment is another word for meta-cognition, or thinking about thinking. In this case, we are thinking about thinking, thinking about learning, and learning about learning.  Formative Assessment done well is used by both teacher and students.  Student formative assessment is affects learning greater than teacher formative assessment.  Though both are more powerful than other types of teaching practices.  Formative assessment is the active process of analyzing what you think you know about the topic or skill you are currently working on.  It is about monitoring and adjusting in real time, where real effects of adjustments can be realized.  It is categorically different than Summative Assessment in that Summative happens at the end of learning and does not influence learning.  Formative happens during learning and has a great impact on learning.  Formative Assessment is the best “teaching technique” that can be implemented to maximize student learning.

Digital Badges

Digital Badges are a way of grading, or certifying learning.  Badges are more informative than traditional grading, and more powerful and motivating for the learner.  Badges provide a greater opportunity for learners to display their accomplishments and for observers to get a truer understanding of what learning has actually occurred.  Badges help make learning visible.  Badge systems are more transparent than grade averages or other forms of certification.  The metadata and links to learning artifacts “show” what learning occurred.  Badges can link to videos showing the student at work, to audio of a student demonstrating capabilities, rubrics from teachers, reflections from students describing what they have learned to earned the badge, evaluations from peers, and on and on.  Badges are modular, meaning they can be rearranged to demonstrate various learning outcomes.  For example, badges earned in Math where students work in groups to solve problems and share their findings with the class can also be used in Language where informative presentations are a requirement.  It is essential that schools develop badge systems that can be used as Summative Assessments that can be easily translated into grades, report cards, and other traditional certifications.

PLCs

Teachers are the essential component in any educational system.  Teachers make or break the learning process and learning outcomes that every educational system exists to accomplish.  There are many ways to ensure quality teachers.  One is through the hiring process, the other is by retaining high quality teachers in the system.  But, this isn’t enough in most systems.  This isn’t enough to guarantee an effective educational system. A quality Professional Learning Community is required.  In a quality Professional Learning Community, teachers are valued for for their expertise.  Teachers are engaged in an environment where “learning” is the prime focus.  And to step it up a notch higher, we need a 21st Century Professional Learning Community where Formative Assessment and Badges are also at play for the teachers.  Teachers need to be engaged in learning that is that same or similar to what they to provide for their students.  Teachers shouldn’t have to translate what they “learned” in the Professional Development to what they are going to “teach” in class.  The transfer should be natural.  The teachers’ Professional Learning Community should be set up as a quality learning community, just as classrooms should be set up as quality learning communities.   A quality learning community is a quality learning community, it should matter if it is happening in the classroom or in Professional Development.

Conclusion

The process of changing a school system is hard work.  The are many moving parts to consider.  The proposals I have identified here is not intended to be a mandate.  They are recommendations based on what I have learned so far in my research.  To actually make these or other changes successful, a collaborative approach needs to be taken.  I wrote this out as my proposal.  Counter proposals, criticisms, or refinements are not only welcomed, but encouraged.  This is what 21st Century Learning is.  It is utilizing the best resources to make the best decisions possible to maximize the learning process in an effort to affect learner outcomes.  I look forward to your feedback.   

v. 2016-04-30 Sources

• 21st Century Learning
• Formative Assessment
• Digital Badge Systems: The Promise and Potential
• PLCs-Solution Tree

Images

• "Where am I going?"
• "Earn your Genre Reading Badge"

21st Century Learning Communities

21st Century Learning Communities

By Richard Beatty

(a Reflection)

image: The Networked Teacher

Introduction

In the 21st Century, the concept of the “Learning Community” has expanded.  It has changed in fact.  In systems terminology, it has become a “complex system”, systems working in parallel feedback functions.  No longer are we limited by our physical surroundings.  The internet provides us with opportunities to connect with people in other schools, other districts, and people and groups from all over the world.  Each connection a system, working together centered around the individual who is participating in various communities, creating a complex system that might be called a 21st Century Learning Community.  

Classroom

image: Learning Together

As I am applying my 21st Century learning skills, my first thought is my classroom.  I need to develop an effective learning community within my own classroom.  How I go about doing this will affect the quality of the community I create.  My initial reaction is to build my background knowledge by reading books and online resources to build and sustain classroom learning communities.  A concurrent step would be to engage in learning communities myself, outside of my classroom as I will describe below.  At the same time, I will be building my classroom community and creating a learning environment for my students that mimic the professional learning community I am building for myself.

School

The most obvious step would be to join any learning community in my school, and if none exists, create some.  Engaging in PLC’s, book clubs, site council, PTA, etc.  Currently, at my site, we do grade level collaborations.  We are starting PLC’s.  A group of teachers went to a training.  We had one meeting officially labeled a “PLC”.  More teachers will get some training in the coming months. It seems the goal of the District is to get everyone some training and to get the PLC process started.  

District

The challenge of a local learning community is how to create a district wide learning community.  At my district, we do district wide grade level collaborations at times, but we do not have anything that might resemble a district wide learning community.  Teachers, district wide, have not yet come to rely on one another for student learning outcomes.  The current scheduling and meeting objectives are top down decisions, and there has been little to no interactions outside of the district scheduled meetings.  My district needs to empower teachers to create a district wide learning community.  We need structures in place that encourage teachers to become innovators and to share and communicate their ideas to other teachers.  I understand the district’s fear that we need district norms and procedures, and here is where we need to rethink what those norms and procedures are.  Adopting 21st Century skills as a part of the District’s Visions and Mission would be a start.  Then, establishing an environment where these skills can flourish would be essential.  The District would need to make it a part of policy to initiate, support, and sustain these efforts.

Online

The power of the internet is to connect people from all over the world.  The internet becomes the portal that connects all the various systems together.  Students in my classroom can connect with each other, with other student in the school and with students anywhere in the world.  Teachers can connect with one another at the site level, the district level, and at the county level.  One of my goals is to connect with other teachers from other nearby districts online.  I want to start with districts in my county.  I know a number of teachers from other districts that I can contact with and get started.  Beyond that, there is a world of other communities to join.  I have already started joining learning communities that are only available to me online.  Here are a few.

• National Writing Project
• Partnership for 21st Century Learning
• Mozilla Open Badges
• LinkedIn
• Blogger
• Twitter

By signing up with the online communities and engaging in them, educators can hone their own learning and develop skills that they would not be able to get solely in their immediate surroundings.

Conclusion

The internet, just by existing, solves many problems inherent in participating in learning communities.  The biggest problem is how to be in more than one place at a time.  By creating an online presence, an educator is virtually everywhere they create a digital footprint 24 hours a day.  Whether it’s creating a website for students, joining an online community, or joining a local community online, educators can contribute to various types of communities.  The 21st Century Learning Community is a Buckyball.  It expands and contracts by will of the individual member.  The concept of the learning community becomes fluid.  It become personalized to meet the needs of the individual learner.  Engaging in these various communities contributes to our achieving one of our majors goals of becoming life long learners.

Sources

• image: The Networked Teacher   
• image: Learning Together 

v2016-04-24