It will come as no surprise to any of you that in a day and age when we are given so many possible opportunities for information -- much of it sensationalized to attract our eyeballs -- that when friends and peers asked me the subject of my dissertation and I responded "independent school accreditation," the vast majority of folks typically stood stupefied. There is really no way to politely walk away from the follow-up question either; even for the best among us it takes a delicate touch to feign enthusiasm for the subject while desperately trying to move to a more gratifying subject. Believe me, I understand. Having written that, there was a lot holding my interest in the subject. 

>>Read more HERE

The best teachers work very hard to appear as unnecessary as possible. Dropping humbly into the background, they want students to shine and to care so deeply about their own learning and engage with their own work at such a level that the teacher becomes a facilitator guiding students to their next discovery. The motivation for students becomes intrinsic, not extrinsic. Here is a scenario: a teacher puts a student's grade on a writing assignment at the top of the first page and provides meticulous comments on sentence structure, word choice, grammar and punctuation, and overall flow. The only thing the student looks at is the grade - they have been assessed and the task is complete for them. The focus in this example is on the assessment (what the teacher needs) and not on the process (what the student needs). But what happens when the growth-minded teacher puts only the comments and removes the anxiety of the final grade from the picture? Does it compel the student to engage their own writing, to care about their craft, and to internalize their own drive for success? This is the difference between a formative assessment and a summative assessment and is at the heart of the accreditation model of SAIS.  

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Education Transformation, by Ron Packard, the founder and former CEO of K12, explores the future of schooling and its intersection with online learning, an important topic for independent school leaders. The basic argument goes something like this: when discussing technology, experts stress that is only a tool. Increasingly that tool could also be called a bridge or key. Technology opens doors that were previously closed, democratizes information, and makes the impossible ... possible. MOOCs (massive open online courses), online degrees, digital libraries, wireless campuses, widespread, inexpensive devices, online communities, adaptive assessments are just a sample of innovations tech has facilitated in education. According to IBM's "5 in 5" for 2013, by 2018, technologies in the classroom will assess students' skills and learning styles, and adapt progressively to meet their needs - the height of individualized learning. Is that big brother "HAL" frightening, or is it remarkably exciting?  

>>Read more HERE

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