I just watched and was thinking on Shirky’s video I have embedded below (and in the video section) in which he identifies the new problem isn’t information overload, it is filter failure. 23 minutes long around these basic ideas:

Start – a historical perspective on the beginnings of info overload witht he Gutenberg press and the filter systems that kept it uder conrtol
5:30 – new problems with internet – to much info coming to you – filters are a problem example of spam
8:29 – another problem – information going out example of your personal life in cyberspace
17:00 a real indicator – case of student on academic charges for creating a facebook study group – where is the filter?
20:00 where do we go from here? New issues in addressing filtering. He gave a beautiful Itzhak Rabin quote “If you have a problem for a long time, may it is not a problem, maybe it is a fact.”
His culminating argument – if we can move from thinking of the problem as not being too much information, but needing filter redesign, we might move to a better place.

In Tony Wagner’s book “The Global Achievement Gap” he talks about the problems with standardized tests (SAT, AP, etc) and the fact that they don’t measure the critical skills that colleges and workplace are asking for. He then gives an example of an instrument that has been developed for colleges (initially) and secondary schools to measure critical thinking, problem solving and written communication. The college version is called the CLA (College Learning Assessment) and the secondary version is called the CRWA (College Work Readiness Assessment). They are designed to be given to entering freshman and graduating seniors to identify what progress students have made – it is not for assessing students, but effectiveness of programatic efforts to build better problem solving skills. There is more information on their website: http://www.cae.org

The instrument is a ninety minute open ended problem where students have to understand and attack a problem given multiple resources and possibly divergent outcomes. This was the first I have heard of this and am intrigued by the notion of utilizing this to assess student thinking.

It seems somewhat like the ETS iSkills test http://www.ets.org/iskills we piloted this test on our campus 2 years ago and were impressed by the design and the unique challenges it presented students.
A few issues we saw in the iSkills test and I think would be similar in CWRA are that there is not extrinsic motivation for students to give it their best attempt, as the results are not used for any college or work related goal.
Also, I wonder if this is measuring all we need it – for instance it doesn’t look at all the dimensions folks like Pink and Wagner champion – group work, empathy, symphony, global awareness, etc.

The use of technology here to assess student development in critical thinking is a powerful opportunity for schools to see what is happening in these 21st Century skills.
One provocative idea is to have staff take the instrument as well – as much to consider what a problem solving assessment is like for their own assessment, as well as to understand the test from a student perspective.

Real thinking assessment is rare in education. Still one of the finest curricula and assessments I have ever used in 25 years of teaching was the IPS curriculum http://www.sci-ips.com/. The final assessment at the end of understanding properties of matter a was a ‘sludge test’. Student pairs were given a mixture of solids and liquids and given a week to separate and determine the constituent parts of the mixture. Each mixture was unique, so even if groups talked about strategies, each team’s approach and identification was unique. It was clear to me 20 years ago that this was doing REAL science and made scientists of my students. The students were excited, challenged and REALLY engaged.

This is a post I recently put up on another blog that was about Daniel Pinks Book “Whole New Mind” and whether his assertions are correct:

HI All – my 2 cents on this.

I agree with the sense that most people have that Pink’s assertion that we need to move into the 6 qualities (symphony, empathy, etc) so to create a new sort of economy is questionable, if our motivation is to fill in the gap for outsourced jobs. There are way too many dynamics for this to be a certainty. To me, the real reason to do this is to allow schools to reach the full potential of our students. As a secondary educator for over 25 years, it has always bothered me that our design of schools favors and rewards certain behaviors and tendencies (conformity, left/linear thinking) and thus underutilizes our most precious capital. I have seen far too many bright young minds settle for rote memorization, when depth and rigor could have done, seen students who could have achieved new ways of demonstrating knowledge, but couldn’t figure out how to do it within our current system.

Allow me to give an example – in Ken Robinson’s TED lecture, he talks about Gillian Lynne, the choreographer and how she was failing school until she has the good fortune to be ‘diagnosed’ not with ADHD (what might have happened today) but with a talent for movement.
4 years ago I was covering a summer school class for one week (the equivalent of 5 school weeks – 4 hours per day) in science – most kids were in to advance their course work and were amongst our most motivated and successful students (some would say they were our brightest, but that would dishonor Pink and Gardner’s point of view that they are all bright, just with different capabilities). One student in the class was Bill (name changed) and it was clear there was something different – one on one Bill was engaging, funny, very interpersonal. In a class of 20 he was always in motion, needing interaction, active. I found out he was a very talented ballet dancer at the age of 14. This isn’t a big surprise – we have a school of the arts with certificate programs in Dance, Theatre, etc. It became clear that we needed to adjust class for him, so I allowed him to stand and move around when we were doing more traditional activities like class discussions. I also knew that he learned better when he could interact more, so I allowed him to pair up with a another student who liked to talk on the fly as well. This seemed to help – he wasn’t doing great, but he was happy, productive and getting it. After the first week, I turned over the class to my cohort and found out that at the end of the course he had failed. By the fall his parents had to take him out of the school, because he was not doing well enough. I always saw this as a failure of us (me included) to recognize the diversity of ways kids CAN learn and our need to ADAPT our instructional approach to reach all students.
My school is a relatively wealthy school with lots of resources, smaller class sizes and passionate educators. If we couldn’t make it work for him, how many kids do we have in public education that are just written off and drop out or never see their true talent reached? He was fortunate that his parents had the resources and found a different school that he succeeded at – how many Bill’s are there that never do? Drop out rates in the US are over 30% – over 50% in urban areas. Is this some indication?

So Pink’s thinking for me is more about schools not laying waste to so much human potential. When the US was so dominant in the world economy, we could get away with squandering this resource. If we are to keep our economy relevant and dynamic, we need to fully develop all our students’ potential.

Most of you are probably familiar with the story of George Lucas and his foundation edutopia.org. For those not familiar, in his words:

“Public education is the foundation of our democracy — the stepping-stones for our youth to reach their full potential. My own experience in public school was quite frustrating. I was often bored. Occasionally, I had a teacher who engaged my curiosity and motivated me to learn. Those were the teachers I really loved. I wondered, “Why can’t school be engaging all of the time?” As a father, I’ve felt the imperative to transform schooling even more urgently.”

OK – Way to long a post…for any that survived to the end – thanks for listening! 🙂