A few years ago, after facilitating a session on assessment in the 21st-century classroom, I was approached by one of the workshop participants and asked what initially prompted me to start reconfiguring my classroom practice and my approach to classroom assessment. I said: “I asked myself a few basic questions: What do I want my students to be now and when they’re older? What skills do I want them to…
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by: Jason Falls
February 14, 2012The single biggest obstacle educators and administrators need to overcome in order to embrace social media in the classroom is fear. They’re afraid of (often) mistaken information about viruses, predators, and productivity vacuums and just say, “no.” The more patient, curious, and technologically inclined work through the prejudices and realize not only are the negatives perceived less threatening than they thought, but the world of possibilities is vast and uncharted….
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by: Konrad Glogowski
February 1, 2012A few years ago, I ran into an old colleague of mine at an educational conference. He was using the lunch break to catch up on his marking. His backpack, placed on the chair beside him, was full of what looked like 2- or 3-page compositions. “Don’t you need a quiet place to focus to mark these?” I asked. “Nah … I’ve been doing this for years. I…
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by: Konrad GlogowskiJanuary 24, 2012
In my last post, I wrote about the value of Assessment for Learning as an approach to supporting and engaging students. Whenever we talk about Assessment for Learning, we must also address its key element — timely, effective, and meaningful feedback. Let me take you back in time once again to when I was a young English teacher, facing a loaded curriculum and a semester that, in my view…
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by: Konrad GlogowskiJanuary 17, 2012
Whenever I think of assessment in the classroom, I am reminded of a rubric I created a long time ago to go along with a short writing assignment for my grade eight Language Arts class. You can see it below. Many would agree that rubrics are excellent tools — they show the students exactly what the expectations are and the scale we’ll use to assess their work. True. However, as…
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by: John ConnellSeptember 23, 2011The Education Fast Forward Debate–on Relevance in Education–occurs in just three days time, on Monday 26th September, starting at 2 pm UK time (GMT+1). The debate takes place across Cisco’s global Telepresence network, bringing people together from around 14 countries, and will be accessible through a live video stream and a twitter feed (using hashtag #effdebate). The guest presenter on Monday will be Trudi van Wyk, education specialist in e-learning with…
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by: John ConnellSeptember 8, 2011
With two rich and interesting debates under its belt already, Education Fast Forward (EFF) is, as its name would suggest, making great strides – and the third debate is coming up on September 26th, which I will be chairing. The debates, jointly sponsored by Promethean and Cisco, bring people together from many different countries through the power and magic of Telepresence. The first debate in November last year focused on two…
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August 12, 2011Games based learning has many advocates; not least The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who have just invested $20 million into innovative learning technologies, including games-based learning. The technology is not totally new, indeed the gaming ideas were seeping onto computer-based training and e-learning back in the 1990s. So, what has held back widespread adoption? Is it the name itself? Games-based learning conjures up visions of fun and frivolity,…
