NECC - Monday 6/30, part 2

Immersive Collaborative Simulations and Next Generation Assessments
Chris Dede

I like this guy. He was at TIES' December conference last year as a keynote and I missed his presentation. I didn't at the time realize what I had missed. Let me preface with this statement - I HATE EDUCATIONAL THEORY. Now, please let me explain.

I still consider myself a teacher even though I'm teaching adults instead of middle school students. In my seven years in Massiveurban Publicschool System I learned that it takes several years of consistent practice in a school or district to see real change in and the average life of a principal at a site seemed to be about 1-3 years (I was at 2 sites in my last 5 years and had a different admin team EVERY YEAR). Soooooo every principal that wanted to keep their job had a new theory presented every August for how to make the students perform, succeed, accomplish or whatever catch phrase that theory used.
(Breathe)
It was exhausting to try to keep up with every new idea that seemed only to rehash what some other researcher said, just with their own new glossary.

Chris Dede is a middle-aged guy who's thinking like our students. I'm much closer in age to digital natives than him and he's a better picture of their minds than I do. He's applying previous educational theory - Formative/summative assessments, scientific method and applying current technology to improve data gathered.

As I interpret, simulations are great but difficult to assess, if you can't assess, NCLB encourages decision makers to keep it out of the curriculum. Not in writing but by default. Built-in technologies in River City track every access, click , visit that a participant makes. Those activity logs allow teachers to assess what is being done and how. A simple example is seeing the pattern in how boys and girls learn with the game. Boys gathered data more by reading, seeking experts and using tools. Girls gathered more by interacting with characters and other avatars.

I also agree with his statement: If formative assessments are done correctly throughout the learning process (or unit) summative assessments are not necessary. Now, my agreeing with this mantra amounts to as much as can ft into the change pocket of circa 1990 Girbaud jeans, however I want it known that I think he's right despite the summative assessment climate sustained by NCLB.

If you're not using River City, which is probably most of the three of you that are reading, pay attention to what systems you have available. Collaborative tools like GoogleDocs and wikis let you revet to previous versions of a document and also track who has contributed what information. No longer do students have the anti-group argument that "I'll do all the work and they'll get the same grade," because you have a record of activity. Moodle tracks every mouse click. If you talk to your administrator (or get admin level access yourself like some dorks I know) you can see what students have done or not done.

Off to another session...