Not 100% applicable to our local situation, but it’s a nice piece of writing.
Archive for March 17th, 2005
My university advisor belongs to a neat think tank. He shared a video of these folks with us at one of my rare face to face meeting last year. He is meeting with them in the next few days. I like this line: “The things I like best about this is the fine people, the informality (there is no agenda), and the intentional avoidance of intended outcomes” This seems odd, no outcomes? How can this possibly be a worthwhile process in our day and age of data driven, testing and accountability? I guess given that they pay their own way means they can do whatever they like but still, he’ll tell you how valuable these sessions are.
I struggle with balancing these two seemingly contrary ideas of accountability and “open-ended inquiry”. I’m sure many can articulate how these two work together. Either I haven’t given it enough thought or I’m just not bright enough to settle the issue.
For now, I’ll keep living and working in cognitive dissonance.
Reading this post from Bud the teacher triggered thoughts of previous discussions I’ve had recently with colleagues regarding the use of technology and student assessment.
Bud’s post deals with the use of a dictionary for an English test, but this can easily be applied to the use of calculators or the internet in a testing environment. If we want to test students on their knowledge and memorization skills, then perhaps prohibiting students from using these tools may be important. But what real world environment would tell people they couldn’t use these everyday tools? Another example of why testing needs serious revamping.
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