No Child Left Behind and Global Competitiveness

No Child Left Behind and Global Competitiveness from New Learning Institute on Vimeo.

21st Century Education

Yesterday’s Steiner-tag cloud post about New York State’s application for RTTT and its implications triggered a few follow up thoughts. What if we could cut out all the competition, racing, and the other NASCAR like qualities and focused on a system that produces 21st century outcomes for today’s students. What would that system look like?

Enter Ken Kay’s Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

“P21 Framework Definitions.” Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Dec. 2009. Web. 17 Aug. 2010. <http://www.p21.org/index.php>.

NYSED Commissioner David Steiner

Here are the first twenty pages of NY State’s Application Phase 2 for RTTT created to resemble our Commissioner’s likeness. FWIW, the Steiner tag-cloud very closely resembles the priorities in the document and where NYS is headed with it’s educational policy. Should this be New York State’s vision for education in the 21st century?

“NYSED::Commissioner of Education.”  . Web. 17 Aug. 2010. <http://usny.nysed.gov/about/commissioner_steiner.html>.

The Data Driven Library Program

A quick post to promote a recently published article written by two of my colleagues, Judi & Mary from OCM BOCES School Library System and me, Justin Ashworth! The vision for the article was crafted by Gail Dickinson editor at Linworth LMC and Judi Dzikowski, the director of School Library System at OCM BOCES. My contribution to the piece was the interpretation of PALS and my reflection on how the program positively impacted my instruction, student learning at my school, and elevated me to a leadership position when working with assessment data in my district.

Jeff Bezos on talents vs. choices

Jeff Bezos’ commencement address at Princeton has been running around in my head…

NY Race To The Top Application- Phase 2

Is anyone else bothered by the absence of  the word *students*  or *21st century skills*  in the assurance areas of RTTT? I see the first ten pages are littered with the words: standards, benchmarks, data, teacher evaluations, principals & low-performing-schools. But, if we’re focusing all of our attention on data systems, rigorous evaluations and “knowing” right and wrong answers at what point does all of this become priority and we lose focus of what truly matters: learning & thinking skills.

NYSED’s Strategy Fail

What can we all do in 2010-11 to help students meet the new Proficiency standards? NYSED has your answers:

My Avatar Editor

A great way for kids to create digital representations of themselves when posting content online. My Avatar Editor is a strategy to start the conversation on ethical computing and internet safety.

Follow me on Twitter

Follow me on Twitter as I microblog all things library and social learning technology for Onondaga-Cortland-Madison BOCES School Library System.

Twitter Handle: OCMBOCESSLS

or just follow the widget off of the mainpage: sls.ocmboces.org

SOPAC2

I’m wondering about the possibility of  social OPAC’s in school libraries. As social networks allow users to customize their space in the cloud, couldn’t school libraries at least provide similar services for students to manage their own personal learning & access to information in their library?

A glance at some of the modules being offered in the 2.1ver. of the SOPAC software leaves me wondering why this can’t be offered/achieved at the school level.

Consider:

My commentary is italicized…
- RSS everything- Would allow students to subscribe to lists of  materials, anything new, etc…

- Wish list- Would allow a streamlined way for students to request new materials for purchase, take more of ownership over the collection.

- Saved searches as a separate module- Great for teaching users to become more masterful searchers, great to track a students “searching progress” at the elementary level.

- Summer Reading module- A place to communicate & differentiate literature lists for multiple grade-level & content areas.

- Checkout History- Would allow students to manage and reflect on their reading history. Would allow librarians and teachers to better track and make recommendations for readers.

- Recommendation engine- Virtual recommendations. Think of something like iTunes Genius playlists but rather than it customizing your music, it would do so for your literature.

- “Recommend to a friend”-  A potential tool to increase student motivation on the peer to peer level.

For a good working model of what the SOPAC software looks like in action, head over to the Darien Public Library.