ASCD 2014 WRAP-UP

This year’s ASCD conference was a warm respite from cold weather and daily routines. The conference brought together over 10,000 educators from around the world. The conversations and presentations focused on current issues, common understandings, and shared concerns about the future of schools. Here are some of the take-aways I found most meaningful.

SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST……but he was so good, it’s going first

●Tony Wagner talked about the ideas in his book Creating Innovators where he explains that the real real Global Achievement Gap is the result of not teaching and testing the skills students really need. In his talk he identified 7 survival skills: 1-critical thinking/problem solving; 2-collaboration across time and place; 3-adaptabiity; 4- initiative; 5- complex thinking that leads to complex communication; 6- skills to evaluate the profusion of information; 7-curiosity and imagination.

Upshot: We need to prioritize the changes we make: Schools that start 10 innovations never finish any.  www.tonywagner.com       @tonywagner       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3f7dP_l9xY

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Projects Can Support the Common Core

As educators continue to search for the next best thing in education, trends continue to flare and flicker. Trending today means teachers are preparing students for the next round of standardized tests. They are drilling into the standards as they strive to ensure that every child is prepared for a variety of selected choice and short answer test questions.

These tests are being called performance-based in that they present students with real world problems. In one example, students are asked to rank-order the seating capacity of baseball stadiums and multiply that by the ticket cost to determine which stadium takes in the most ticket money. They are not performance-based in that students don’t identify the problem, develop a plan to solve it, show their analysis, evaluate their process, or present what they have learned.

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