I am thinking about the last awful professional development session I attended, mainly because I am taking a course this winter in staff development and educational technology, and that's what the first assignment asks us to do.
This of course is a difficult assignment because they are all generally bad, although usually not for the same reasons. And mea culpa some of them are ones I have done. To pick one (not mine) at random: the organizer asked everyone to be sure to be at the training by 8:00 a.m. On a Saturday morning, but had failed to tell the trainer to be there then. So the PD started an hour late to a group of grumpy teachers. The first hour (or at least it seemed like an hour) was spent going over a tedious history of the organization behind the topic of the PD. The entire material that we needed to cover could probably have been covered in an hour, but was successfully stretched out to three hours. No follow-up. And it was several months before everything was in place to actually apply what we learned about in the training.
Another session, one that I did facilitate, turned out to be severely overbooked by the training organizers. There was a serious failure to think through ahead of time which sessions training attendees would go to (and for many of them, there were no options). The assigned room for the training did not have enough seats, let alone tables or work surfaces. The session was supposed to provide an overview of features of the MacBook and Mac OS X for teachers new to the Mac. A session like this will have lots of questions and confusions, so the ratio of presenters and helpers to attendees is critical. In this case there were two of us in a crowded room trying to help forty or more people. I'm not sure what anyone got out of the session.
Some takeaways: There is some formula governing the the technical content of the material, the expertise of the learners, and from those two what the ratio of teacher to learner should be. In general, I think, the lower the level of expertise, the lower the ratio of teacher/learner. Adequate facilities are important (room size, seating, line-of-sight, sound, heating/cooling, lighting, table space if relevant, etc.) Starting on time and respecting the time of the learners is just good manners. Follow-up would be nice.
The National Staff Development Council has developed standards for staff development. Most of the problems described above failed on the process standard of design (trainings incorporated inappropriate or weak learning strategies) and weak content (failed to deepen content knowledge given the amount of time).
jd
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
CORE launches a Testing Task Force
I joined some 400 other people on January 9 at the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) Educational Summit. Currents and events at CPS seem to be building to a head. Between the funding crisis, Huberman's performance management mania, hit lists and turnarounds and closings, and, well, the general social crisis that comes through the front door of the school every day, some sort of resistance has to, needs to develop. The Chicago Teachers Union is an obvious organized force to address what's going on, but as far as I can tell, it is a no show. One of CORE's main principles is a member-driven union which I think at this point is sorely needed. (CORE announced a slate for the upcoming CTU elections.)
Since "teacher evaluation" is the big stick to beat teachers with right now, and the big end of that stick is standardized multiple-choice tests, I was especially interested in CORE's new Testing Task Force: "CORE is launching a testing task force to look into how the misuse of standardized tests interferes with making schools that serve the best interests of our students."
The announcement flyer continues: "Our first task will be to encourage teachers that they are not alone in their feeling that tests are terrorizing students, parents, teachers and entire schools. The current testing regime replaces the joy of learning with the bureaucracy of learning."
As I have written in some earlier posts, CPS teachers are working on two testing fronts. ISAT remains the main measure of Adequate Yearly Progress mandated by No Child Left Behind. ISAT is still the main "high stakes" event for the student (it affects their promotion) and for the school (it affects probation, etc.). The second front is the new Scantron Performance Series, which will be administered three times a year, is done online, and provides immediate scores. It is being phased in this year and will replace the Benchmark Assessment in 2010-11. It is a "computer adaptive" test, which means that questions will increase or decrease in complexity until the software determines a score for the student. The test is standards-based, and will provide a number of metrics, including a scaled score, approximate grade-level performance, a normed national percentile ranking and a Lexile score.
I believe the Scantron test will become the main tool for assessing teachers. CPS will expect a student's score to increase throughout the year. And depending on what statistical voodoo the district uses, the amount of expected increase may vary from school to school. A student's score could increase absolutely, but if the increase does not meet CPS expectations, the teacher has not added enough "value" to the student, and so has failed. Since classroom teachers are being targeted as the sole agent responsible for student advance, the scores will be reflected back on the classroom teacher.
Describing the standardized testing regime as a form of terrorism is on the mark I think, given the pressure put on teachers who are presented with the spectre of turnaround, closure and unemployment. Teachers are not being motivated, they are just being demoralized.
From the CORE workshop on January 9, I heard two messages coming from panelists about testing. One message says that high stakes multiple choice tests are okay, but the opacity around them makes them suspect. And so the pushback is to make it possible to see the tests and challenge the kinds of questions on them and the scoring methodology -- i.e., to make "better" tests.
A second message challenges the whole premise of standardized testing -- that they are, in fact, designed to "sort and track," as one panelist put it. They are very limited assessment tools. This is of course a much more radical position.
As teachers we recognize the importance of student assessment. But it needs to be responsible and effective assessment that matches the student. Multiple choice tests can have a useful role, under specific circumstances, but for many reasons, right now the standardized testing regime is an education disaster.
In a major speech to the National Press Club last week, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, outlined her "New Path Forward for Public Education." In the speech, Weingarten opened the door to significant changes in teacher evaluation, including assessing the "student performance" of their charges. The evaluation of teachers is a valid expectation (but keep the term "accountability" out of it! Reject the intrusion of market-speak into the sphere of teaching!). But teaching takes place within a complex matrix of factors. The teacher is not a lone actor. To her credit, Weingarten added that her "new path forward calls on principals, administrators and elected officials to ensure that teachers get the tools, time and trust they need to do their jobs."
BUT BUT BUT. Without a strong, effective organization (read "union"), that second part will not happen. Teachers will be expected to perform miracles because they do not have the "tools, time and trust". "Tools, time and trust" are the preconditions for successful teaching. This second part of her message will be lost, and all the dogs will hear is "the union says it is okay to evaluate teachers on test scores." The particularities of a given school and community will be disappeared. And teachers, especially the experienced ones at the top of the pay grade, will be hung out to dry.
jd
Since "teacher evaluation" is the big stick to beat teachers with right now, and the big end of that stick is standardized multiple-choice tests, I was especially interested in CORE's new Testing Task Force: "CORE is launching a testing task force to look into how the misuse of standardized tests interferes with making schools that serve the best interests of our students."
The announcement flyer continues: "Our first task will be to encourage teachers that they are not alone in their feeling that tests are terrorizing students, parents, teachers and entire schools. The current testing regime replaces the joy of learning with the bureaucracy of learning."
As I have written in some earlier posts, CPS teachers are working on two testing fronts. ISAT remains the main measure of Adequate Yearly Progress mandated by No Child Left Behind. ISAT is still the main "high stakes" event for the student (it affects their promotion) and for the school (it affects probation, etc.). The second front is the new Scantron Performance Series, which will be administered three times a year, is done online, and provides immediate scores. It is being phased in this year and will replace the Benchmark Assessment in 2010-11. It is a "computer adaptive" test, which means that questions will increase or decrease in complexity until the software determines a score for the student. The test is standards-based, and will provide a number of metrics, including a scaled score, approximate grade-level performance, a normed national percentile ranking and a Lexile score.
I believe the Scantron test will become the main tool for assessing teachers. CPS will expect a student's score to increase throughout the year. And depending on what statistical voodoo the district uses, the amount of expected increase may vary from school to school. A student's score could increase absolutely, but if the increase does not meet CPS expectations, the teacher has not added enough "value" to the student, and so has failed. Since classroom teachers are being targeted as the sole agent responsible for student advance, the scores will be reflected back on the classroom teacher.
Describing the standardized testing regime as a form of terrorism is on the mark I think, given the pressure put on teachers who are presented with the spectre of turnaround, closure and unemployment. Teachers are not being motivated, they are just being demoralized.
From the CORE workshop on January 9, I heard two messages coming from panelists about testing. One message says that high stakes multiple choice tests are okay, but the opacity around them makes them suspect. And so the pushback is to make it possible to see the tests and challenge the kinds of questions on them and the scoring methodology -- i.e., to make "better" tests.
A second message challenges the whole premise of standardized testing -- that they are, in fact, designed to "sort and track," as one panelist put it. They are very limited assessment tools. This is of course a much more radical position.
As teachers we recognize the importance of student assessment. But it needs to be responsible and effective assessment that matches the student. Multiple choice tests can have a useful role, under specific circumstances, but for many reasons, right now the standardized testing regime is an education disaster.
In a major speech to the National Press Club last week, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, outlined her "New Path Forward for Public Education." In the speech, Weingarten opened the door to significant changes in teacher evaluation, including assessing the "student performance" of their charges. The evaluation of teachers is a valid expectation (but keep the term "accountability" out of it! Reject the intrusion of market-speak into the sphere of teaching!). But teaching takes place within a complex matrix of factors. The teacher is not a lone actor. To her credit, Weingarten added that her "new path forward calls on principals, administrators and elected officials to ensure that teachers get the tools, time and trust they need to do their jobs."
BUT BUT BUT. Without a strong, effective organization (read "union"), that second part will not happen. Teachers will be expected to perform miracles because they do not have the "tools, time and trust". "Tools, time and trust" are the preconditions for successful teaching. This second part of her message will be lost, and all the dogs will hear is "the union says it is okay to evaluate teachers on test scores." The particularities of a given school and community will be disappeared. And teachers, especially the experienced ones at the top of the pay grade, will be hung out to dry.
jd
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Where the light is
Repeating a joke:
The impulse behind performance management I think generally is okay -- what one does in the world should be based on what one observes and experiences, and not just what one cooks up based on whim. That is the best part of science. Where this falls down is when one starts confusing the observed quantified data for observed reality.
Steve Talbott, whose work I tremendously appreciate, has written quite a bit about the deep hole that a lot of modern scientific practice has fallen into. (A good collection of his writings are available on the From Mechanism to a Science of Qualities page). In "The Vanishing World Machine", Talbott argues that modern science began when people turned away from labyrinthine abstractions along the lines of "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" to observing the world around them. But science, especially of late, has made something of a U-turn.
In modern education, the turning away takes the form of poring over reports of easy-to-process (thanks to computers, etc.) multiple-choice test data. The living child has been replaced with a data shadow. And teachers are pushed into interacting with the shadow, not the child.
Setting aside consideration of the political forces behind the overdrive to privatize education in Chicago, and looking at Huberman's emphasis on performance management from a strictly methodological perspective, I argue that it rests on a broken understanding of science and a disturbed view of the world.
What might be an alternative? I quote from Talbott again, this time from a chapter in his most recent book, Devices of the Soul. Talbott quotes a description of the assessment process at a Camphill community, a network of residential communities for people with special needs.
The keys to making education work aren't under the convenience of multiple choice testing. They are somewhere in the dark alley. Although, when you think about it, it really isn't that dark -- there is no shortage of humane, practical, working strategies to making education work.
jd
Late one night, a cop came upon a drunk, on his hands and knees, under a streetlight.Ron Huberman, the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, has made "performance management" a central tenet of his management strategy. The key metric for measuring performance is standardized test scores. Because that is where the light is.
"Hey buddy," the cop asked. "What're you doing?"
"I'm looking for my keys," the drunk replied.
"Where did you lose them?" the cop asked.
"Over there," the drunk replied, pointing down a dark alley.
"Then why are you looking over here?" the cop asked.
"Because this is where the light is."
The impulse behind performance management I think generally is okay -- what one does in the world should be based on what one observes and experiences, and not just what one cooks up based on whim. That is the best part of science. Where this falls down is when one starts confusing the observed quantified data for observed reality.
Steve Talbott, whose work I tremendously appreciate, has written quite a bit about the deep hole that a lot of modern scientific practice has fallen into. (A good collection of his writings are available on the From Mechanism to a Science of Qualities page). In "The Vanishing World Machine", Talbott argues that modern science began when people turned away from labyrinthine abstractions along the lines of "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" to observing the world around them. But science, especially of late, has made something of a U-turn.
It's true that we no longer ask, 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' but we are certainly entranced with the question, 'How much data can we store on the head of a pin?' And our trance is only deepened when the answer turns out to be: 'a hell of a lot'. What many haven't realized yet is how easily our preoccupation with the invisible constructions on that pinhead blind us to the world we originally set out to perceive and understand in its full material glory.The world ceases to be the world of dandelions and earthworms and snowflakes and becomes instead a mass of numeric data. Talbott asserts that "our preoccupation with workable mechanisms, far from contradicting our preference for abstract cerebration, is itself a primary symptom of our flight into abstraction and our refusal to see the world." Much of modern science has turned away from the dark alley of the world, back to the sterile streetlight of abstraction.
In modern education, the turning away takes the form of poring over reports of easy-to-process (thanks to computers, etc.) multiple-choice test data. The living child has been replaced with a data shadow. And teachers are pushed into interacting with the shadow, not the child.
Setting aside consideration of the political forces behind the overdrive to privatize education in Chicago, and looking at Huberman's emphasis on performance management from a strictly methodological perspective, I argue that it rests on a broken understanding of science and a disturbed view of the world.
What might be an alternative? I quote from Talbott again, this time from a chapter in his most recent book, Devices of the Soul. Talbott quotes a description of the assessment process at a Camphill community, a network of residential communities for people with special needs.
Every week the staff of a house or entire facility come together to discuss a particular child:Talbott then comments:
The child's case history is read, and then the teachers, helpers and nurses give their reports and impressions of the child in question. Many symptoms, signs and features are collected until -- usually under the guidance of one of the doctors -- the image of the child arises. His habits, achievements, faults and failures are laid out in such a way that gradually a complete picture of his individuality appears.
In this picture the staff find guidance that enables them to clear a path for the child's continued growth.
The contrast with the mentality behind standardized testing could hardly be greater. Certainly teachers must assess student performance -- and in the most profound and intimate way possible. The problem with standardized testing is that it avoids any such rigorous assessment. It is a hopelessly crude tool, a means of studied ignorance rather than deep understanding. And, as a side effect, it removes all flexibility, the living qualities, from classroom engagement. When you know in advance exactly what knowledge the student-container is supposed to hold, there's not much incentive to attend to the particular gifts and developmental needs, or the consuming interests, of the individual learner. Standardized testing is not student assessment; it is the refusal to assess.Let me repeat that last sentence: "Standardized testing is not student assessment; it is the refusal to assess."
The keys to making education work aren't under the convenience of multiple choice testing. They are somewhere in the dark alley. Although, when you think about it, it really isn't that dark -- there is no shortage of humane, practical, working strategies to making education work.
jd
Saturday, November 28, 2009
I attempt to develop something with Etoys
I just finished a project for a class in multimedia applications. I used Etoys, the Squeak Smalltalk environment, for the development platform. Here is some reflection of my experience...
Etoys works best, like most things, when it is used for what it was designed for. Etoys is something of a desktop lab for exploring concepts -- check out what's on the shelf, see what happens when you mix things, hope not to blow anything up. The underlying pedagogical theme is Seymour Papert's constructionism (a play on, and an extension of, constructivism). Kids can learn by building things and trying them out and figuring out how to make them better.
So I can see using Etoys in scenarios where students are assigned a task, like "create a virtual aquarium containing virtual fish that swim around", "make a car that moves around a track" or even "display the measure of the angles in a triangle using the tools available in Etoys." In the course of constructing the goal, or exploring a concept, all sorts of learning areas are hit, including problem solving, logic, computer science, math, modeling and design.
These are not strictly multimedia applications though, at least as I understand it. To me, an application is a closed experience. The designer has specific learning goals in mind, and creates a series of paths for the user to follow, with different experiences along the way, using multiple media, that will help the user achieve the learning goals. So multimedia applications are limited by the imagination of the designer and the abilities of the software tools in creating the experiences the learner can have via the application. This is like the difference between a webquest and true open-ended inquiry. How heavily programmed is the user experience?
Trying to create a multimedia application using Etoys was ummm a challenge. I wanted to create an environment for the user that anticipated errors and provided enough feedback (which seems like 80% or more of application development). I wanted to guide the user through stages of the activity. I wanted to program the experience. And for this, I found Etoys to be a clumsy environment, dragging tiles around and opening and closing property views and right-clicking to see halos and such.
My experience was challenged by the absence, as far as I can tell, of complete documentation on the different objects available in the Etoys catalog. (I don't know how much time I spent trying to figure out how to calculate the measure of an angle!) There are various help balloons, quick start guides, and there is free documentation on the underlying Squeak Smalltalk environment and language. But the in-between documentation of various properties and what they mean and how to use them is missing (again, as far as I can tell). There is a fairly active user community, spread across forums, IRC and a mailing list. I had trouble joining the forum, the first place I usually go to find out things. I only figured out I could use IRC late in the process, and hadn't really thought of the mailing list as an option, but that might have worked as well. So support is definitely out there, but better documentation would have served me better. I could perhaps have delved deeper into the mysteries of Squeak Smalltalk to really get under the hood, but quickly getting up to speed with a new language, with the peculiarities of new syntax and operators and precedence and all of that was beyond the investment I wanted to make. There was no Goldilocks solution for me.
But again, I was trying to do something with Etoys (create a multimedia application) that I don't think it was designed for (namely, being a desktop lab for constructionist experiences). I was able to accomplish something, but my product really isn't in the spirit of constructionist learning. My foray has some opportunities for student discovery, but not a whole lot.
But... I could not have figured out the proper niche of Etoys in the classroom except by taking the tortuous route through application development using Etoys. Creating my application (zipped, with a video used in the project) turned out to be my own constructionist learning experience. Now I have an idea of where I might want to use Etoys in the classroom. And while I knew that, as far as computer learning goes, I learn best by having a practical problem that drives me to learn the tools at hand, now I have a name for that learning model: constructionism.
jd
Note: Etoys is free and available for download from the Etoys download page. You can find my project in the Etoys Showcase at this url. I think you need to have Etoys installed on your machine to actually view the project though.
Etoys works best, like most things, when it is used for what it was designed for. Etoys is something of a desktop lab for exploring concepts -- check out what's on the shelf, see what happens when you mix things, hope not to blow anything up. The underlying pedagogical theme is Seymour Papert's constructionism (a play on, and an extension of, constructivism). Kids can learn by building things and trying them out and figuring out how to make them better.
So I can see using Etoys in scenarios where students are assigned a task, like "create a virtual aquarium containing virtual fish that swim around", "make a car that moves around a track" or even "display the measure of the angles in a triangle using the tools available in Etoys." In the course of constructing the goal, or exploring a concept, all sorts of learning areas are hit, including problem solving, logic, computer science, math, modeling and design.
These are not strictly multimedia applications though, at least as I understand it. To me, an application is a closed experience. The designer has specific learning goals in mind, and creates a series of paths for the user to follow, with different experiences along the way, using multiple media, that will help the user achieve the learning goals. So multimedia applications are limited by the imagination of the designer and the abilities of the software tools in creating the experiences the learner can have via the application. This is like the difference between a webquest and true open-ended inquiry. How heavily programmed is the user experience?
Trying to create a multimedia application using Etoys was ummm a challenge. I wanted to create an environment for the user that anticipated errors and provided enough feedback (which seems like 80% or more of application development). I wanted to guide the user through stages of the activity. I wanted to program the experience. And for this, I found Etoys to be a clumsy environment, dragging tiles around and opening and closing property views and right-clicking to see halos and such.
My experience was challenged by the absence, as far as I can tell, of complete documentation on the different objects available in the Etoys catalog. (I don't know how much time I spent trying to figure out how to calculate the measure of an angle!) There are various help balloons, quick start guides, and there is free documentation on the underlying Squeak Smalltalk environment and language. But the in-between documentation of various properties and what they mean and how to use them is missing (again, as far as I can tell). There is a fairly active user community, spread across forums, IRC and a mailing list. I had trouble joining the forum, the first place I usually go to find out things. I only figured out I could use IRC late in the process, and hadn't really thought of the mailing list as an option, but that might have worked as well. So support is definitely out there, but better documentation would have served me better. I could perhaps have delved deeper into the mysteries of Squeak Smalltalk to really get under the hood, but quickly getting up to speed with a new language, with the peculiarities of new syntax and operators and precedence and all of that was beyond the investment I wanted to make. There was no Goldilocks solution for me.
But again, I was trying to do something with Etoys (create a multimedia application) that I don't think it was designed for (namely, being a desktop lab for constructionist experiences). I was able to accomplish something, but my product really isn't in the spirit of constructionist learning. My foray has some opportunities for student discovery, but not a whole lot.
But... I could not have figured out the proper niche of Etoys in the classroom except by taking the tortuous route through application development using Etoys. Creating my application (zipped, with a video used in the project) turned out to be my own constructionist learning experience. Now I have an idea of where I might want to use Etoys in the classroom. And while I knew that, as far as computer learning goes, I learn best by having a practical problem that drives me to learn the tools at hand, now I have a name for that learning model: constructionism.
jd
Note: Etoys is free and available for download from the Etoys download page. You can find my project in the Etoys Showcase at this url. I think you need to have Etoys installed on your machine to actually view the project though.
Friday, November 27, 2009
The 2009 Bracey Report
I saw a reference to this in an ISTE Special Interest Group on Digital Equity mailing:
The just-published The Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education, 2009, by Gerald Bracey, looks at what the author considers to be "three of the most important assumptions about how to reform public education", namely:
Exactly! Today these three points are usually passed on as if they are facts. Self-evident truths. Obvious. Of course. They are the bedrock of education policy in Chicago Public Schools.
And of course they aren't "facts", they aren't self-evident; and they aren't obvious. As assumptions, they are fundamentally ideological positions and essentially political.
Some points from the report that I would like to highlight:
The Bracey Report comes from the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado and the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State. Gerald Bracey is also the author of Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality. Bracey passed away on October 20, 2009.
jd
The just-published The Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education, 2009, by Gerald Bracey, looks at what the author considers to be "three of the most important assumptions about how to reform public education", namely:
- High-quality schools can eliminate the achievement gap between whites and minorities.
- Mayoral control of public schools is an improvement over the more common elected board governance systems.
- Higher standards will improve the performance of public schools.
Exactly! Today these three points are usually passed on as if they are facts. Self-evident truths. Obvious. Of course. They are the bedrock of education policy in Chicago Public Schools.
And of course they aren't "facts", they aren't self-evident; and they aren't obvious. As assumptions, they are fundamentally ideological positions and essentially political.
Some points from the report that I would like to highlight:
- Poverty is an objective factor in educational performance. Poverty has biological, social and psychological consequences that negatively affect educational performance. (The report details many different aspects of this.) Schools (and certainly not teachers) alone cannot resolve this problem.
- The idea that mayoral control of education helps education is strictly a political assertion, and is not backed up by a serious review of its results in Chicago and New York (the most visible instances of mayoral control).
- Organizing education around standardized, multiple choice tests and viewing education through the narrow slit of test data is antithetical both to educating human beings, and if you need a market rationale, to developing workers for the workplace of today and tomorrow.
The Bracey Report comes from the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado and the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State. Gerald Bracey is also the author of Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality. Bracey passed away on October 20, 2009.
jd
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Gradebook rant #1 and #2
#1 - The first quarter ("cycle") in CPS closed last night (Friday, 11/6) at midnight. But then CPS goes and locks the online software teachers need to use, so no more first quarter grades can be entered now.
I don't get this. If the quarter ends on Nov. 6 (Friday), the next one can't start until Nov. 9 (Monday). And report card pickup this year isn't until 11/18 or 19 depending (due I think to the late school year start because of the late Labor Day this year, and Nov. 11 Veteran's Day getting in the way). So why lock Gradebook at the cycle end and prevent teachers getting last minute grades in? Not that I want to spend the weekend getting final quarter grades in, but I'd rather do it clear-headed on a Saturday than late Friday night. Why not lock it Sunday midnight?
There is an implicit understanding that teachers cannot complete their work within the standard 6.25 hour CPS workday (hence closing Gradebook at midnight and not the end of the workday). The Professional Development Day (yesterday, Nov. 6) as a day to get grades in is a joke, because it gets loaded up with, well, PD. So what is CPS thinking? Most of the teachers at my school were assuming they had some time to get the quarter grades in, and only heard Friday (yesterday) morning that the deadline was midnight last night. I'm guessing more than 3/4 of teachers will need to have their Gradebooks unlocked by the school's Gradebook administrator or heaven forbid, someone in the technology support area.
It is another example of trying to force (what looks to me to be) silly and not-thought out dictates and demands on the troops-in-the-trenches (and believe me, it is WWI out here), which ends up making more work for everybody all the way round.
I guess the good news is that the time I was going to spend today fixing up the grades is freed up now.
#2 - I attended the CPS Information Technology Services (ITS) "TechTalk 2009" event last Tuesday at the UIC Forum. TechTalk is an opportunity for the technology apparatus at CPS to talk to the "techcos" (a conflation of "technology coordinator") from the 600 CPS public schools. [Aside -- the techco position is a role, not a position. Typically a teacher or some other staff member is assigned the role of "techco", not hired as such. Techcos form a critical rubber-hits-the-road role in the chain of CPS technology service delivery, but they are stretched between multiple responsibilities. I tire myself thinking about this.] Anyway, at TechTalk 2009, attendees were treated to a talk about Gradebook, which is CPS's branding of a commercial third-party product called Gradespeed.
The presenter gave one of those classic tech talks where the end users were morons who did not read instructions. In fact users are generally smart people confronted with a confusing interface that could easily be fixed up. It is a poor technologist who blames the user for design shortcomings. Case in point: teachers can enter a numeric code to represent comments like "Is too easily distracted" (but only one for elementary schools we learned, even though there are five boxes!) . If the code is "028", you need to enter the leading zero. Why? Lazy programming. The person I was sitting next to and I agreed that this could be fixed in a couple of lines of code and eliminate untold headaches on the part of teachers who enter "28" instead of "028". Thinking about it, it isn't a couple lines of code -- it is less, just a matter of wrapping the user input in a couple of functions that check the input and clean it up for the user -- maybe 20 extra characters of code.
Example #2: The user has a row of links at the top of the screen to control options:
This is an online application, so you might think that you can click on the image, that it is a button? Nope. Only the text is a link. I have worked with computers for over 25 years and this one tripped me up. One gets in the habit of thinking how things should work, primarily a habit of life experience. Software designers design an experience, and the best ones anticipate user expectations. The user should be at the center of the design, not the designer. That's what "participatory design" and incorporating real live users in the design process is all about. Put them in a room and see what they try to do before releasing the product.
Another example is that when entering assignments, you must click an "Add" button to add a new assignment. However, after clicking "Add", you see a blank form again. No program feedback is provided to indicate that the assignment was saved. Was it saved? How would you know? Only by exiting the "Add" function by clicking "Finish" (what are you finishing?), and seeing if it now appears in the assignment list. Again, some simple code to acknowledge that the "Add" operation was successful would be a trivial enhancement.
The computer experience is often akin to stumbling around with a bucket on your head -- you have precious little feedback on where you have been or where you are or what lies ahead. The best software designers provide lots of feedback: cookie trails with trackback links, alerts, the use of color in logical places, and so on. Not so with Gradespeed / Gradebook. Instead the poor user who only wants to accomplish a task and not "work a computer" is blamed for not understanding the software.
Too much ranting? It's a beautiful day today. And now no grades to enter. Yay I think.
jd
I don't get this. If the quarter ends on Nov. 6 (Friday), the next one can't start until Nov. 9 (Monday). And report card pickup this year isn't until 11/18 or 19 depending (due I think to the late school year start because of the late Labor Day this year, and Nov. 11 Veteran's Day getting in the way). So why lock Gradebook at the cycle end and prevent teachers getting last minute grades in? Not that I want to spend the weekend getting final quarter grades in, but I'd rather do it clear-headed on a Saturday than late Friday night. Why not lock it Sunday midnight?
There is an implicit understanding that teachers cannot complete their work within the standard 6.25 hour CPS workday (hence closing Gradebook at midnight and not the end of the workday). The Professional Development Day (yesterday, Nov. 6) as a day to get grades in is a joke, because it gets loaded up with, well, PD. So what is CPS thinking? Most of the teachers at my school were assuming they had some time to get the quarter grades in, and only heard Friday (yesterday) morning that the deadline was midnight last night. I'm guessing more than 3/4 of teachers will need to have their Gradebooks unlocked by the school's Gradebook administrator or heaven forbid, someone in the technology support area.
It is another example of trying to force (what looks to me to be) silly and not-thought out dictates and demands on the troops-in-the-trenches (and believe me, it is WWI out here), which ends up making more work for everybody all the way round.
I guess the good news is that the time I was going to spend today fixing up the grades is freed up now.
#2 - I attended the CPS Information Technology Services (ITS) "TechTalk 2009" event last Tuesday at the UIC Forum. TechTalk is an opportunity for the technology apparatus at CPS to talk to the "techcos" (a conflation of "technology coordinator") from the 600 CPS public schools. [Aside -- the techco position is a role, not a position. Typically a teacher or some other staff member is assigned the role of "techco", not hired as such. Techcos form a critical rubber-hits-the-road role in the chain of CPS technology service delivery, but they are stretched between multiple responsibilities. I tire myself thinking about this.] Anyway, at TechTalk 2009, attendees were treated to a talk about Gradebook, which is CPS's branding of a commercial third-party product called Gradespeed.
The presenter gave one of those classic tech talks where the end users were morons who did not read instructions. In fact users are generally smart people confronted with a confusing interface that could easily be fixed up. It is a poor technologist who blames the user for design shortcomings. Case in point: teachers can enter a numeric code to represent comments like "Is too easily distracted" (but only one for elementary schools we learned, even though there are five boxes!) . If the code is "028", you need to enter the leading zero. Why? Lazy programming. The person I was sitting next to and I agreed that this could be fixed in a couple of lines of code and eliminate untold headaches on the part of teachers who enter "28" instead of "028". Thinking about it, it isn't a couple lines of code -- it is less, just a matter of wrapping the user input in a couple of functions that check the input and clean it up for the user -- maybe 20 extra characters of code.
Example #2: The user has a row of links at the top of the screen to control options:
This is an online application, so you might think that you can click on the image, that it is a button? Nope. Only the text is a link. I have worked with computers for over 25 years and this one tripped me up. One gets in the habit of thinking how things should work, primarily a habit of life experience. Software designers design an experience, and the best ones anticipate user expectations. The user should be at the center of the design, not the designer. That's what "participatory design" and incorporating real live users in the design process is all about. Put them in a room and see what they try to do before releasing the product.
Another example is that when entering assignments, you must click an "Add" button to add a new assignment. However, after clicking "Add", you see a blank form again. No program feedback is provided to indicate that the assignment was saved. Was it saved? How would you know? Only by exiting the "Add" function by clicking "Finish" (what are you finishing?), and seeing if it now appears in the assignment list. Again, some simple code to acknowledge that the "Add" operation was successful would be a trivial enhancement.
The computer experience is often akin to stumbling around with a bucket on your head -- you have precious little feedback on where you have been or where you are or what lies ahead. The best software designers provide lots of feedback: cookie trails with trackback links, alerts, the use of color in logical places, and so on. Not so with Gradespeed / Gradebook. Instead the poor user who only wants to accomplish a task and not "work a computer" is blamed for not understanding the software.
Too much ranting? It's a beautiful day today. And now no grades to enter. Yay I think.
jd
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Charter school limit raised
I was reading through the Chicago Teachers Union newspaper (why do they print a four-color paper on clay-coated stock, especially given the financial problems the union is having?), and saw an article on Illinois Senate Bill 612, which was signed into law last July. Some highlights of the bill according to the article ("Charter school law includes wins and losses", p. 6):
In other CTU news, Jay Rehak and Lois Ashford won trustee seats on the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund in Friday's (10/30) election, defeating the incumbents supported by the CTU Executive Board. Rehak and Ashford are members of the Caucus of Rank and Educators (CORE). Per their web site, "We hope to democratize the Chicago Teacher’s Union and turn it into an organization that fights on behalf of its members and the students we teach."
This sounds like a rebuke of the current union leadership. What is the CTU doing anyway? And why does the CTU president draw two six-figure salaries? How can she do both jobs effectively? Which means she is doing neither one effectively. The new charter school bill, the school closings, Huberman's rampage, etc. etc. as cases in point...
jd
- Doubles the cap on charter schools in the Chicago area from 30 to 60 single-campus schools, plus an allowance for up to five multi-campus charters targeting drop-outs.
- 75% of charter school teachers across the state will need to be certified, up from 50% in Chicago before.
- Charters need to disaggregate multi-campus data (single charters running multiple campuses was
- There can be 30 contract schools (bound by the Illinois School Code, but the CPS Board contracts out management of a school -- click here for more on the types of schools under Renaissance 2010), plus five additional contract "turnaround schools"; but the contracts go through a new authorization process.
- A parallel bill (SB 1984) says that charters fall under the Illinois Education Labor Relations Act, clarifying that teachers can organize at charters and contract schools.
In other CTU news, Jay Rehak and Lois Ashford won trustee seats on the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund in Friday's (10/30) election, defeating the incumbents supported by the CTU Executive Board. Rehak and Ashford are members of the Caucus of Rank and Educators (CORE). Per their web site, "We hope to democratize the Chicago Teacher’s Union and turn it into an organization that fights on behalf of its members and the students we teach."
This sounds like a rebuke of the current union leadership. What is the CTU doing anyway? And why does the CTU president draw two six-figure salaries? How can she do both jobs effectively? Which means she is doing neither one effectively. The new charter school bill, the school closings, Huberman's rampage, etc. etc. as cases in point...
jd
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