OLDaily

Is Learning "Lost" When Kids Are Out of School?
Alfie Kohn, 2020/10/01

Alfie kohn is pushing back against the notion of 'learning loss' that pundits are arguing is occurring during the pandemic. "The research that fuels dire warnings, which largely extrapolates from claims about summer learning loss (SLL), is much less persuasive than most people realize," he writes. "None of the research on this topic actually shows a diminution in learning — just a drop in standardized test scores (in some subjects, in some situations, for some kids)." Image: Brookings, the COVID-19 cost of school closures.

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Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027)
European Commission, 2020/10/01

The European Commission yesterday announced a new Digital Education Action Plan that sets out their "vision for high quality, inclusive and accessible digital education in Europe." It is based on two priorities: developing a "high-performing digital education ecosystem," and improving "digital skills and digital transformation competences." Aside from promoting improved internet connections in schools, the actions in the plan are limited to making more plans and revising competency definitions. Still, it seems clear something needs to be done; as is the case pretty much everywhere, "many low-income homes have no access to computers, and broadband access varies widely across the EU," and while 60% of survey respondents had no experience with online learning, "95% consider that the COVID-19 crisis marks a point of no return for how technology is used in education and training."

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Exam Design: Promoting Integrity Through Trust and Flexibility
Laura Killam, Insights from Nurse Killam, 2020/10/01

This is a longish post about issues related to progressive test and exam design. Laura Killam writes, "my exams this term are open book with no time limit. They have a due date but are open for a week or more." Why? The traditional method promotes cheating and raises difficult issues around proctoring. This model turns these problems on their head. "They cannot cheat by talking about the exam or using their resources because the exam was designed to make them do both of those things." Integrity is achieved by focusing on things like evaluation and application rather than testing for content knowledge. It also supports flexibility and choice in the responses.

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Revisiting cooperation
Harold Jarche, 2020/10/01

There are some good points here. Harold Jarche writes, "Shifting the emphasis of much of our work from collaboration — which still is required to get tasks done — to cooperation, in order to thrive in a networked enterprise, means reassessing some of our assumptions and work practices." For example, in cooperation we see "the lessening importance of teamwork, versus exploring outside the organization." Also, "detailed roles and job descriptions are inadequate for work at the edge." And "it also requires the casting-off of business metaphors based on military models (target markets, chain of command, strategic plans, line & staff). Cooperation is how we will find a vaccine for Covid-19."

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This is a linguistics controversy. Now there are two of them. There are two ____.
Caitlin Green, Medium, 2020/10/01

This long article chronicles a dispute about the ownership of the 'wug', a cute creature created by Jean Berko Gleason in 1958 to show that children generate their own pluralization rule. It has a little of everything, even an icky contribution from Steven Pinker. For me, the main takeaway comes late in the story as people started creating their alternative 'open' creatures to replace the wug in linguistics experiments. I'm particularly concerned about the the bnick, an anthropomorphic asterisk created by Nathan Sanders. I want to pluralize it as 'bnicki', not 'bnicks'. What would children do? Would they all agree on a plural for the bnick? Is the whole hypothesis allegedly proven by wug studies false?

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High-Agency in the Remote and Hybrid Classroom
Eric Sheninger, A Principal's Reflections, 2020/10/01

Today's educators are looking (desperately!) for strategies that will work online. For people new to online learning the default setting is 'control', but as you become more experienced you find that control is difficult on many levels to achieve, and has the opposite of the desired effect. Hence, say, Eric Sheninger's approach: "There are many strategies that educators were implementing well before the pandemic that hold more value now. Regardless of the terminology used, these represent more personalized pathways that focus on student agency leading to empowerment and more ownership of the learning experience." I use the term 'personal' as an alternative to (control-based) 'personalized' learning, but the intent here I think is the same.

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