Transforming Assessment for/and/of Learning

Stop Marking and Start Giving Feedback

Here's a magnificent example of how assessment can be transformed by the effective use of digital technologies.

Replace, Amplify or Transform - RAT

It is so easy for even powerful applications of ICT to be little more than replacement for traditional tools and methods, maybe amplified—by that I mean, maybe there are benefits in terms of amplification, like speed, or efficacy, maybe the activity is more motivating, maybe it uses less paper, but is it really changing learning; or the kinds of teaching you can do?

If not, then it's not transformative, and it's not what I am aiming to see in the classrooms of the teachers I 'coach'.

So, one of our Grade 5 teachers is transforming formative assessment, and he's doing it by cleverly combining two powerful tools, in a synergetic way that amplifies the potential and possibilities of both, here using Google Doc comments and QuickTime screen recording.

Now he's been using screen recording for some time to give feedback to his students, and then he started experimenting with getting his students to use the same method to create a 'learning talk' to explain the rational behind their writing choices for him, great, but the problem with that is you now have 22 x 2-3 minute videos to 'mark' and the problem with video compared to text, is you can really 'skim' it, and annotating it? Not easy, certainly not as easy as paper.

In short video is great for pushing content to kids, but it sucks for pulling content from kids.

Unless… you get the kids to use each other as resources, what I call P2P (peer to peer), what Dylan William calls 'Students as resources for one another'.

So, have a look at this video, by an 'ordinary' student, on an 'ordinary' day in an 'ordinary' classroom at UWCSEA, but one who is transforming learning of her peers.

SAMMS

It's worth pointing out exactly why this is transformative, because it leverages 4 out of the 5 unique affordances of ICTs, that I call 'SAMMS'; this work is:

Situated - This student can start the work at school, continue at home, and seamlessly return to at school no problem, any space, any place, any time, that suits her.

Multimodal - Text and speech = win win.

Mutable - the workload implications of acting on feedback are minimised compared to paper. Feedback annotation on paper would effectively require the student to start again and rewrite the entire thing from scratch - the my ability of the screen mean edits and revisions can be made quickly and simply, and supported by supportive proof-reading tools.

Social - This document has effectively become a micro-community, two students and one teacher, but it's not one way. Following the feedback, any of the 3 parties involved can pitch in with comments to clarify, redirect, reinforce, resolve… Invite others to join in? the possibilities are endless!

So Tech is JUST another tool? Really?

'Tech' is not 'just' another tool. 

Defining digital technology as 'just another tool' is true, but it is also a massive understatement.

It's akin to describing...

Water? 'just' another liquid,
Oxygen? 'just' another gas,
The wheel? 'just' another cylinder,
Electricity? 'just' another type of energy,
The Earth? 'just' another planet,
The Sun? 'just' another star... 

I could go on, but you get the point. 

This word 'just' in this context is demeaning, it is naively dismissive, it is ... diminutive.

To move the comparison to a more familiar context, ie that of tools, tools hewn by humanity from the husk of the earth, it's like describing planes, trains and automobiles as 'just another form of transportation' ... Which of course they are.

But ... isn't that a little disingenuous?

... Just take a little time to think about the impact that even 'just' the aeroplane has had, technology that moves 'just' hundreds of thousands of people every day, at speeds in excess of 500mph all over the planet. Think of the impact of this technology, upon commerce, culture and communication you will realise that it is far more than 'just' a form of transportation, it is an application of technology which has had an absolutely revolutionary impact on life on planet earth in the 20th Century—more than the bicycle? Yes.

19th Century Learning

20th Century Learning

The impact of digital tools or technologies on life and learning in the 21st century is going to be arguably more revolutionary than that of the chalk and the blackboard or the pencil and paper in the 20th century. Why? Because ICTs encompass so much that preceded them, but when the transformational attributes such as situated learning, unprecedented access, mutability, multi-modality and the sheer synergy of social networks (SAMMS) are added? You have a tool with a capacity and a capability beyond all tools, especially when it comes to learning.

Does this mean I have nothing but scorn for the rudimentary (battery free) power of the humble pencil and page? Of course not, teachers from have been transforming learning with these kinds of tools (and less) for millennia, but clinging to JUST the tools of yesterday when you have the option of using the tools of today and tomorrow, is like opting to cycle from Singapore to London when you have an airline ticket.

Can you? Yes. But should you?

Digital technology. It's not 'just' another tool, it's THE tool of the 21st Century.

Ownership of Learning - What does that actually look like?

"Students as owners of their own learning"

Leading teachers through the 'key strategies of formative assessment' (Wiliam, 2011) the one I wrestle with the most is the last one:

1. Clarifying learning intentions
2. Eliciting evidence
3. Feedback that moves learning forward
4. Students as learning resources for one another (peer assessment)
5. Students as owners of their own learning (self assessment)

Only because, in a 'traditional' learning environment, such as that I commonly observe in Cambodia, one things that really stands out is the fact that it is commonplace for every single child in the class to work on 

exactly. the. same. thing.

In desperation I searched for a basis to question the validity of this, and the ownership element struck me as an obvious candidate.. except that no matter how much I read I just couldn't find a way to get the literature to say what I wanted it to say, that ownership requires autonomy.

The nearest I could get was that ownership involves, "metacognition, motivation, interest, attribution, self-assessment" (Wiliam & Thompson, 2007)


So ownership is interpreted as meaning self assessment, but what is less clear is the extent to which this is even possible unless the students are able to produce outcomes which are 'unique'.

It is my contention that a situation where every student is engaged in the creation of an outcome which is completely identical to the one next to them, is not one where 'ownership' can really be said to be present. A common practice in Cambodia is to give all students identical tasks to complete, like recreating a document on screen based on an identical hard copy, the goal being for all students to produce something is close to that as possible.

Based on this kind of model, students can self assess, the success criteria are clear, as is the learning intention etc, but my contention is that there can't really be 'ownership' if the outcome is not unique to them in some way.

So does 'ownership' relate to unique outcomes, or not ... in desperation I contacted Mr Wiliam himself, and he kindly responded with,

"... all learning outcomes are personal, since the only way one can learn anything is to make it one's own. 

However, it seems that you are asking something slightly different, which is can the learning of imposed goals ever be truly "owned". And I think the answer to this question is yes. The account of the work of Deci and Ryan in the attached chapter (p. 1081) provides some insight here. As they say, extrinsically motivated learning can still be autonomous..."

So off I went and read the kindly attached article thoroughly, not just the bit he referenced but the whole thing:

Wiliam, D. (2007). Keeping learning on track. Second handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning, 1053-1098.

And what I found was intriguing, you see the very study Dylan cites in defence of the importance of self assessment, actually places as much (if not more) emphasis on autonomy...  Reading further back in the article, to the beginning of section about which this conversation focuses. Reading the study described on p 1078 I can't see how the results could be attributed to self-assessment alone, the clear emphasis on increasing student autonomy has to have been as influential, if not more so. It's strange that the effect is automatically assumed to be solely due to self assessment, without any attempt to differentiate between the influence of those two distinct elements.

"The scores of the students taught by the teachers developing self-assessment improved by 15 points—almost twice as big an improvement." p 1081

Surely they were developing student autonomy to at least as great an extent as their abilities to self assess? In fact it seem to me that the two are synergetic; autonomy facilitates self assessment:

"Finally, in the last 10 weeks, students were allowed to set their own learning objectives, to construct relevant mathematical problems, to select appropriate manipulatives, and to identify suitable self-assessments."

And I'm pleased to report that things are already changing, check out the CHANGE, last week:

So, my respectful apologies Mr Wiliam, but I just can't encourage our teachers to keep managing classes of automatons mindlessly churning out identical outcomes, like a production line.

I think it's a particularly important distinction in the context of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), as in contexts where teaching is dominated by traditional technologies like the photocopier (class worksheets), there is clearly a lack of autonomy (even if there is motivation, for whatever reason) ... Set them free!

Teacher to Teacher [T2T]

T2T is a new and ambitious service initiative I am proud to be able to say that we established this year, supported by the college where we work to create an opportunity for teachers to work with teaching colleagues in Cambodia.

The 'Teacher to Teacher' (T2T) training initiative is currently in its pilot year of what is anticipated as a sustained commitment to provide both curricular and pedagogical support for teaching colleagues in Cambodia.  This project has the specific aim to build capacity in educational practice.

In Cambodia we are working with teachers at Cambodian Children's Fund (CCF), which operates six centres in Phnom Penh.  CCF provides educational support for students from preschool to university.  The CCF kids are vulnerable children, most of whom used to work on the Phnom Penh dump site.

Requests for training in the following areas have been requested by CCF:

• Child centred practice
• Curriculum development, planning, and assessment
• Instructional strategies and classroom management
• English language training
• ICT skills development and integrated practice 

The commitment is considerable but we felt anything less would be prone to the sorts of ineffective support that are so common with these kind of initiatives; the kind of support or 'voluntourism' that is often given by well-meaning but impractical volunteers. We knew that the only way for change to be meaningful and really effective would be for it to be ongoing, so we travel to Cambodia three times a year to provide teacher training during our school holidays in October, Chinese New Year and March.

We work with the team in Cambodia to plan a syllabus that responds to evolving needs of each of three core groups: Early Childhood Education (ECE), English language (EAL), and ICT/ digital literacy development and integration as a discrete focus, and eventually as an integrated element of ECE and EAL.

After each visit, we continue support through regular communication with partner teachers in Cambodia, reflecting on our previous visits and planning and preparing for our future is it in an iterative, collaborative process of improvement.

Continuing Professional Development 

An unexpected, but nevertheless impressive aspect of this initiative has been its impact on my own practice as a teacher.  I have no problem with the idea that we are effectively going to Cambodia because we believe that what we are doing is 'better' than what they are doing... Which sounds arrogant, but if it is not true, then we have no business going at all. And if what we are doing really is better then it should be just as effective (if not more so) in our considerably well resourced environment at home as it is in the comparatively less well resourced environment in Cambodia. What I'm finding is that the better we make their teaching, the better we make our OWN teaching, #WINWIN

What this kind of experience really does is force us to really consider what it is about teaching practice that really is absolutely essential, that makes it 'better'. When working through a translator you really have to strip away anything that could be superfluous and refine everything down to the absolute minimum, something which is a cathartic process in and of itself. The process I intend to document from time to time here on this blog using the label #T2T. 

FOCUS Lessons

Having just returned from a week of teacher training in Phnom Penh, at the most magnificent CCF I have to confess that within 15 mins of my first lesson observation (of a planned 6 lessons in 2 days) I was seriously struggling with the point of it.

Why observe without acting?

Well the truth is I just couldn't just sit there and watch, knowing that this lesson, NOW could be better. If it can then, let's ACT, lets do what we can, while we can, NOW.

And a FOCUS lesson was born—well the acronym emerged during a wonderful massage later on, but the practice was already a fact; only it was a practice that I was struggling to describe to my colleagues, when I confessed I'd abandoned the observations, and lab-sites that they so dutifully (and professionally I might add) pursued.

So, what did I do instead?

Well, I attempted to describe it as an observation, cum intervention/co-teach/sharing/skilling/teaching/reflecting/advising/adjusting lesson.

To which they said something like, "Well you're going to have to come up with a better way of describing it than that."

So I did, and I have. And in case you're wondering, it was a GREAT massage.

So I call them FOCUS lessons, largely inspired by Dylan Wiliam's (2011) 5 key strategies for formative assessment, which I pretty much use for almost everything... Just substituting 'learners' for 'teachers' Yes, I know teachers that are any good have to be learners, but you know what I mean...

1. Clarifying, sharing, and understanding [teaching] intentions and criteria for success
2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, activities, and [teaching] tasks that elicit evidence of [teaching] 
3. Providing feedback that moves [teaching] forward 
4. Activating [teachers] as instructional resources for one another 
5. Activating [teachers] as owners of their own learning

(Adapted from Wiliam (2011). Embedded formative assessment)

And being a huge fan of acronyms I ended up with:

F: Feedback & Feed Forward
O: Observe (Learning not just teaching)
C: Co-teach & Constructively Criticise
U: Upskill & Unlearn
S: Suggest & Share (good practice)

Meta ACRONYMS

Alphabetically Coded Reminder of Names You Misremember
A Contrived Reduction Of Nomenclature Yielding Mnemonics
A Concise Reduction Obliquely Naming Your Meaning
A Clever Re-Organisation to Nudge Your Memory

Time to Teach Your Parents

Who Teaches Parents Tech?

They do, their children do, but now with the help of the guys and gals at Google, Google does too.

For decades society has been dominated by media such as books, comics, cinema, radio, and television — all are technologies, whether or not the users recognise it, all of which now have a digital equivalent, so that even if parents weren’t familiar with the particular content their children engaged with, at least they could access and understand the medium, so that, if they wished to understand what their children were doing or share the activity with them, they could.

However, with the advent of digital media, things have changed. The demands of the computer interface are significant, rendering many parents to believe that they are 'dinosaurs' in an information age inhabited by their children.

Only in rare instances in history have children gained greater expertise than parents in skills highly valued by society. More usually, youthful expertise—in music, games, or imaginative play—is accorded little, serious value by adults, even if it is envied rather nostalgically. Thus, although young people’s newfound online skills are justifiably trumpeted by both generations, this doesn't help their parents much. For everyone of these mouse wielding, track pad savant,  'tech-savvy' students there is quite likely at least two not quite so tech-savvy parents - parents who often find themselves on the less competent end of the conversation - a conversation often sprinkled with a fair amount of eye ball rolling, groaning and huffing and puffing. Thankfully, the people at Google thought there had to be a better way...

The result of their brainstorm is TeachParentsTech.org, a site that allows you to select any number of simple tech support videos to help ameliorate this situation, you might even want to send them to your own mum, dad or uncle Vinnie. The site is not perfect and hardly covers all the tech support questions you may be asked, but hopefully it’s a start. 

Better than a click in the teeth, anyway.

With the considerable influx of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in sch0ools, inevitably parents will find themselves increasingly faced with the challenge of providing adequate access to digital technologies at home, ie, a computer. To complicate matters further some of the resources that our students will be attempting to use can be quite demanding about the extent to which the home Windows PC or Mac is kept in efficient operating condition.

Following these (hopefully) simple pointers will mitigate a great many headaches for parents.

• Keep your computer up to date, the Internet is constantly evolving, and your computer needs to be constantly updated to keep up with it, so if you get a message prompting you to update your computer - do it! This not only keeps your machine working well, it also makes it less vulnerable to malicious attacks. An out of date computer is a computer that is vulnerable to exploitation, and one that will be frustrating to use as it struggles to 'keep up' with the pace of change of the Internet.
• Direct your child to use the Google Chrome browser for their homework, this is the recommended browser at UWCSEA as well. Once your child as signed in and synced' all of the bookmarks, passwords, browsing history will magically follow them home as well as at school. The Chrome browser can be downloaded from here.
• Keep your browser up to date! The above links above include a tutorial on this. This is very important, many of the Web 2.0 technologies your child will be directed to use are very demanding of the latest browser technologies. An out of date browser will struggle to cope with even the most basic tasks. The Google Chrome browser has a useful option of automating these updates, I highly recommend you use it.
• Make sure your Adobe Flash Player is up to date. if in doubt click here to check to see if you have the latest version. This software is essential to run may of the awesome animations that are commonly used in these websites, such as Mathletics et al.

And always remember the '3 Rs' of troubleshooting"

Refresh (the browser)

Retry (Quit the browser and try again, or try a different browser)

Restart (the computer)

That's it. 
Finally... you might want to consider creating a separate user account for your child/children, guidance on how to do this on a Mac can be found here. This in effect feels to your child like that computer is as good as their very own, until you log them out. Activating Fast user switching makes switching between their account and yours a very simple process.

Finally, maybe the best tip of them all?

Size Matters

Size Matters 

Do your students know their bytes and pixels from their mega/kilo/giga/tera bytes? Thanks to an outdated emphasis on traditional units of measurements, this is extremely unlikely.

Unfortunately our antiquated education systems have yet to realise that in the 21st century the units of measure that matter most are not kilograms or kilometres, or cm or even mm—sure they are important, but what measurements do we deal with daily? The measurements of computer memory and particular of pixels. Any yet, ask yourself, how often do we set our students situations in mathematics that requires them to learn or use these units of measurements—NEVER—why? The sad truth is that most educators know as little about these units of measurement than most of their students. That, is a travesty.

So, here's the skinny:

The smallest unit of memory is a bit, then a byte, and they go up in thousands from there, so a thousand bytes in a kilobyte, a thousand kilobytes in a megabytes... and so on.

Here's a simpler way to imagine it...

1 bit (short for binary digit) = teeny tiny, the smallest size you can get, and yes, useless to almost everyone.

1 byte (b) = 1 character in the alphabet, eg the letter 'a'. = still useless

1 kilobyte (Kb) = 1000 bytes = 1000 characters, eg, a page of text = now we're getting somewhere...

1 megabyte (Mb) = 1000 Kilobytes = 1000 pages of text = 1 large digital image = 1 minute of music (mp3)


5 megabytes = 5,000 kilobytes = 5,000 pages of text = 1 very large digital image = a 5 minute song (mp3) This is pretty much the upper limit for email attachments.

10 Megabytes = 10,000 KB = 10 large photos = 10 minutes of music = 1 minute of video.



1 gigabyte (Gb) = 1000 megabytes (MBs) = an entire film/movie

1 terabyte (Tb) = 1000 GBs = MASSIVE = Pretty much only relevant for storage, external hard-drives etc.

Yes there are more...
...

In a nutshell

bytes - pretty much useless, like a grain of rice, or an ant.

kilobytes (KB) like pages of text (text emails and small images would be measured in kilobytes) the most useful size online, not too small not too big. a bowl of rice, or a cat.

megabytes, now we're getting 'heavy' - large photos, music, 10 MBs or more for video. A 1 Kilo bag of rice, a large dog.

gigabytes, woah, that's big - high definition full length films, 1000s of high resolution images. A sack of rice, a small horse!

terabytes, OK, now we're talking massive - entire collections of films. A van loaded with sacks of rice, a large elephant!

Particulars about pixels

To confuse things, images use more memory than text, and are measured in pixels, which do relate to size, but are not the same thing. A laptop Pro screen is at least 1400 pixels wide, so that gives you an idea...

As a rough guide:

10 pixels square =  the size of one lower case letter = 1kb
100 pixels square = size of 4 desktop icons = 10kb
1000 pixels square = small/standard monitor (screen) size = 1 Mb
10,000 pixels square = large/high definition (size of a door), high resolution image/poster = 10 Mb


So when Googling images, a pixel size of about 500px is ideal, 50px is too small (blurry) and images in the 1000s are probably too big (takes ages to load, and display).

So, what is the next step? Take some time to plan some problems solving scenarios in a Maths lesson that use some 21st century units for a change.