OPLS blog

It’s being discussed again. What’s the equivalent of a 1500-word essay, given the possibilities of new digital literacies?

Quoting from Heppell, Ewan McIntosh has revived the discussion here, in relation to measuring creativity. Please add your views.

If we go back to first principles, then command terms reflecting Bloom’s classic taxonomy (at least those relating to the cognitive domain) such as analyse, explain, synthesise, etc can all be carried out quite successfully using a blog, for example. They make great tools for peer- and self-evaluation in these areas too.

Furthermore, are there many better tools to aid constructivist learning, and to demonstrate evidence of it, than a wiki? With the ability to discuss the knowledge you’re creating in a collaborative context, to link to, and pull in, complementing material, and to construct knowledge over time, I posit not. Please feel free to disagree though…

In essence, then, those of us involved in curriculum and assessment design are being challenged to come up with new models that are both relevant and meaningful to students in the 21st century. And I know from discussions with colleagues here in IB Cardiff, that this is just as exigent for us as it is for leadership and teachers in our schools.

We are all being given a tremendous opportunity.  Let’s hope we don’t blow it.

I often turn to Stephen Heppell when considering next steps and looking for help in making sense of this new world we’re living in. Recently I came across this. I shan’t try and paraphrase this time, but let his own words speak to you.

“Computers are everyday tools for us all, seen or unseen, but their value in learning is as tools for creativity and learning rather than as machines to “deliver” the curriculum. These tools, in our children’s hands, are forever pushing the envelope of expertise that previous technologies excluded them from: they compose, quantise and perform music before acquiring any ability to play an instrument, they shoot, edit and stream digital video before any support from media courses, they produce architectural fly-throughs of incredible buildings without any drafting or 2D skills, they make stop frame animations with their plasticine models, they edit and finesse their poetry, they explore surfaces on their visual calculators, swap ideas with scientists on-line about volcanic activity, follow webcam images of Ospreys hatching, track weather by live satellite images, control the robots they have built and generally push rapidly at the boundaries of what might be possible, indeed what was formerly possible, at any age.

Little of this was easily achieved in the school classroom ten years ago although the many projects emanating from Ultralab over that decade offered clear enough indicators of what might be possible. The challenge here is to criterion referencing. So often the cry of the teacher “that work is better than my degree exhibition piece!” reflects a substantial step change in both the age at which a creative act can be enjoyed and the quality of the tools supporting that creativity.”

So, if you want some guidance on what we might do as educators to evaluate some of this, have a look at what he has to say here.