Apr 26 2009
Musings over discussions with colleagues
Hello all! Yes – I know – there has been a great deal of nothing happening on this blog as of late 
Hopefully, I will be able to get back into regular updates!
Nelson ICT conference
I thought I would blog this time around about interesting discussions that I had at the Nelson ICT cluster day I attended on Friday. The great thing about these events is that I get to catch up with people from all over the place that get flown in to be part of the programme on the day. I had great chats with Derek Wenmoth (Christchurch), Dorothy Burt (Auckland), Allanah King (Nelson), and Rachel Boyd (Nelson).
Data collection and league tables
One of the biggest topics of conversation was around the National government’s implementation of national standards that they will then be collecting data against and the issue of whether the media will be able to get hold of this to create league tables. I have already expressed my views around league tables in my comment on Artichoke’s blog. Having seen them in action in the UK, I think they can be a very destructive force in education.
What came out of our conversation was that data is not something that schools should be scared of. Dorothy pointed out that she wants to know the outcomes for students in each class within her school and if one teacher is producing better results that another teacher, she wants to analyse the methods that teacher is employing to see what it is that makes them successful. I agree that the teaching profession can react negatively against collecting data; especially when asked to use that data to reflect on their teaching practice. I can see that there is a place for authentic and formative data collection (though there may need to be more time allocated for busy teachers to get these completed – I remember trying to tidy off my running records!)
My concern is the publishing of data to the public when not viewed within the context of that school. Just as I think comparing students against each other can be very counter-productive, I think schools shouldn’t be compared without knowing all the facts. We try to look at the gains a student has made rather than simply ranking them and I think that is how schools should also be judged. A school with low results nationally may have made huge gains but that would not be reflected in a league table.
Other things that Dorothy touched on, both in her keynote address and during our later conversation intrigued me and got me thinking. I’ll just put a summary of some of them here and invite you to comment.
Thoughts about place of e-learning
We are always being asked to show that using e-learning is improving outcomes for students. Why do we always have to show that it is better than the methods we are using now? Surely if we are getting the same levels of attainment while providing students with a 21st century learning environment then the value added has been that students will be equipped to work in a modern world.
Expanding our thinking in relation to cyber safety
Schools feel that they are meeting their requirements in relation to cyber safety if they have internet use agreements and get parent’s permission to put content online. What about what happens to that content when a teacher leaves a school and takes the passwords with them or the site just gets abandoned but left up online? How long should images and work of children remain up? Who is monitoring this? Imagine a scenario where a vindictive secondary student finds work of another student from when they were seven on an old blog or wiki and uses this to humiliate them in a networking site such as Bibo. We tend to focus on paedophile dangers but that is a very minor risk. We need to be thinking to the future about what will happen to all this stuff we are posting. You can see Dorothy’s blog post to explore this further. I think this is an area that should be considered when putting together policies. You only have to see the number of blogs and wikis that have been left up but are no longer active to realise that this is an issue!
To moderate or not to moderate blog comments
Dorothy does not moderate blog comments on any of their school blogs. This goes against the advice that I normally give to people getting started with blogging. I was interested to hear her reasoning. The children comment a lot on each other’s blog posts as well as having community comment. Dorothy believes that it creates a barrier for people to leave a comment if they don’t see the comment appear when they submit it. I have to say that I find it irritating as an adult when I leave a comment somewhere only to see that it will appear after being moderated (particularly on adult teacher blogs!). They have only had three problems with comments. One was because it used text language which the school has decided is not acceptable within school blogs. The other two were negative comments – in one a teacher sucked and in the other someone in one of the photos looked funny. They have been blogging for a long time and consider the risk of problems to be low enough that the need to encourage comments through showing them instantly is more important. That isn’t to say that they don’t have systems in place to make sure that anything negative is picked up very quickly. The teacher has to subscribe to the RSS for the comments and Dorothy is also subscribed. In this way, the comments are closely monitored and are taken down very quickly if necessary. This is a very interesting approach and I can see why they would do it that way. They are lucky to have a supportive community that accepts this. I know that for some schools, explaining that comments will be moderated is the only way to ‘sell’ the use of blogs to the BOT and community. What are your thoughts?
Etoys – free educational download
I also dropped into an Etoys workshop during the day. When I heard the title I thought it sounded familiar and sure enough I had the application installed on my Mac already (free download for all platforms). I must have downloaded it, had a play and then instantly forgotten about it again Etoys allows you to build objects and programme them to behave in certain ways. Along the way you have to learn about maths and other subject areas. This programme reminds me of similar tools such as Alice and Scratch that also involve programming characters. It certainly got my grey matter buzzing trying to work my way through challenges and I think this could be great in the classroom.
My own resources
Suzielinks.com gets moved and updated
On a completely different topic, I have been working on changing my suzieslink.com site over to a free hosting provider while maintaining my domain name. I think this is going really well and I am tidying things up and improving as I go. While only half finished so far, you can see my efforts at http://www.suzieslinks.com There are a huge number of useful links and resources for teachers. Check it out and be aware that the parts not yet hyperlinked will be updated in the very near future.
Well that turned into a bit of a long post!! Must be making up for over a month of silence.
Flickr/suzievesper
Facebook/Suzie Vesper
Twitter/suziea
YouTube/suziea
Del.icio.us/vespers1
GMail/Suzie Vesper
Blog/Suzie Vesper
Diigo/suzievesper
Hey Suzie! I agree it was a wonderful opportunituy to attend a very well organised conference AND catch up with mates and have some very robust (heated at times!) discussions. Especially since the things we debated are so difficult to do justice to in 140 character tweets
I am really hoping the May 9th unconference in Auckand will include this level of interaction and not just geek stuff, much as I love that too.
Thank you for the summary of various things I said – you have done such a good job I think I will quote you next time I talk about these issues. I can see the testing stuff having the potential to be quite divisive in NZ Education and will leave it to people like you to advocate about the broader issues. For those of us in Schooling Improvement Schools (mostly Decile1) it has been part of our landscape for almost a decade and we have learned to live with it in it’s current form and use it to our students’ advantage. As you say, potentially it could be quite different on a national scale.
A considerable post and a lot to mull over, but I’ll keep it brief.
School league tables have led to “right flight” the UK, with low performing schools becoming sink holes and higher performing schools picking their students by academic ability. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen here. Don’t most school already collect the data that will be covered by National Standards? I know we do. We use data to inform classroom programmes, report to the BoT and to let parents know their child’s progress and what their expected levels of achievement are. I can’t see that student’s will be sitting any more standardised tests than they already do. The issue is what happens to that information once it is collated and disseminated to the press as it undoubtedly will be.
I saw @dorothyburt’s comment last week on twitter about moderated comments. I know our class blog is fully moderated, by request, without it I doubt if I’d be allowed to continue. My personal blog is moderated, but only for people commenting for the first time. Maybe I could change the class blog to be the same.
Old blogs and wiki. Now that you mention it…. I’ve cleared out last year’s wiki ready for new work this term, but our blog posts go back to 2005! Do you think I should introduce a cut off point, perhaps when the students leave our school?
Starting the new term with afrenzy of online activity. My pln seems in good heart. Have made some ref to assessment in post on my blog. My concern is that at the moment we are somewhat prone to try to increase the length of a piece of string by measuring it. We just need to be sure that the data is somehow helping students and that we are focussing on the learning that will make the most difference for them. I am a scared of teaching to the wrong test as I am of schools seperating themselves of as the achievers and not. We can do better but need the assessment to prove it lol.
You put the whole thing with more intelligence than I cold muster- it seems that I am not to have the last say after all.
I still believe that moderating the comments on student blogs is the way to go. We need to bring the parent community along with us on our journey- the kids will understand that the blogs get moderated and as a lot of my kids comment after school I tend to have my email notification pop up immediately and I moderate smartly- maybe that solution is not for all teachers but it works for me. I can model and lead by example- now my class has got the hang of commenting we will work on modelling constructive feedback in the feedback.
Re National Testing- I can’t see that it can possibly be a good thing. They already publish NZCEA results in our local paper and people do make judgements about the school from them. Some time ago I submitted my whole class to Cambridge testing. We didn’t do as well as a nearby school who only let their top kids sit the test- then they had the paper publish their results. I had let my whole class have a go. People questioned my class results.
A decile 10 school is by its very nature likely to provide higher results than a decile 2 because the children have had access to more out of school opportunities- totally beyond the school’s influence.
It all seems to be a bit of a nightmare.
As an Intermediate teacher I don’t moderate my students blog postings or comments but I do RSS both and usually read any comments left before they do. After 3 years I have had no problems. A couple of times I ahve had students who haven’t followed my instructions about how to set up their blogs and what a hassle it has been to have to deal with the constant moderation emails.
As to the league tables, we are a decile 4 school so we will lose out in any school comparisons! In the end it will end up in ‘teach to the test’ testing; out the door thinking and creativity!
Thanks Suzie, interesting read. thought provoking and very relevant to current conversations and issues.