Assessment

There are so many nuances to education that sometimes I go for weeks without hearing some particular argument. That was the case with the validity of assessments, until last Tuesday.

Guy: "It seems that the only thing taking a test proves is that the student knows how to take the test."

There's something to that perspective. In many ways, I agree with it, certainly when we're talking about standardized tests, or summative assessments - tests where the point is to prove what you know to someone else.  But what about formative assessments, where the point is to prove what you know to yourself? When part of a particular lesson hinges on knowing things that have a correct answer, the student should know and care if they know the answer or not.

Us old folks think of tests as big, stressful, infrequent roadblocks that other people will use to judge us. And to be fair, when I was in school, that's exactly what most tests were. But when I play a video game, a card game, or even watch the clock as I swim laps - I'm testing myself all the time. I love it. It lets me know how I'm doing, whether I'm improving. It gives me goals to set for myself, teaches me to be accountable for my actions. None of these things require anything more than the means to test and the voices in my own head.

When we built assessments into Thumbprint, that was the core user story. Sure, we can funnel this data up to parents, teachers, principals. Sure, you can do old-fashioned testing with them, if and when that's necessary.  But the core experience, the indispensable experience, is the one the student has every time they click on an answer - immediate feedback, the chance to gauge themselves, to improve, to try again.  Instant, constant, informative, personal feedback. When you can fail without the stigma of a bad report card or being called out by your peers, failure becomes an opportunity to learn. An opportunity to push yourself, to set your own goals, to improve, not because you're being forced to, but because you want yourself to be better. Maybe it's me, but those are properties that every successful adult I've ever met possess.

So, yeah, let's do assessments, but let's do them right.

Goals!

After several weeks of wrangling and a couple of weeks of solid work, we're wrapping up our first round of lessons built from existing teacher content this week. It's been an interesting process, taking materials that are usually delivered on paper and converting them into an interactive tablet experience. The transcription part is easy - even typing materials out by hand doesn't take very long, and copy/paste takes even less time. The interesting part is coming to terms with the ways in which the technology makes you think about the content differently. A couple of examples:

1. If students can move at their own pace, and storage is free, you quickly realize that you want MORE - more videos, more references, more quizzes. Different students will be reached by different presentation styles, and if they don't have to wait for the class to catch up, you want them to keep going. We spent a lot of time adding, fleshing out, and finding several different ways to communicate the same idea.

2. Being able to see a lesson as a playlist and flip through it makes you think hard about when to switch learning styles. The flow of a lesson becomes an interesting challenge, bouncing between Watch, Read, and Do in order to engage different parts of the brain and combat fatigue. Everyone, adults included, needs some variety in their activities in order to stay focused, and Thumbprint's lesson layout turns out to be a very effective way of highlighting areas where one form of engagement is being leaned on too heavily.

I'm very proud of the team's work on these lessons, and I look forward to a lively discussion with the teachers about how the materials can be further improved.

Goal Review!

This week we filmed a spot for local news, talked with four new schools and met with a community group.  All positive, all moving forward.  Still not giving names, but there's interest and good feedback with almost everyone we talk to.  So we'll keep talking to more people.

On the content front, we're expecting the first draft of course materials for four of our classroom pilots, as well as our monstrous Grade Six Math program by the end of the week.  I am told that we are on track for this, and with our new office setup I'm excited to be able to throw stuff up on the big screen and review the material in one big group tomorrow.

Big screen, you say?  More on that tomorrow.