We are getting ready for the annual Wine Country CUE Bocce Bash. We will have a potluck lunch, a geek party, and a bocce tournament. WC CUE will grill some chicken and mushrooms and provide sodas and water. Please bring some food to share. Tell everyone in a comment below what you plan to bring, but please check out what others are bringing so we have a variety. You are also welcome to bring alcoholic beverages to share. Bring family, friends, and colleagues who would like join us. See you there!
Sunday, June 6, 2010 . . .begins at 1pm. (or earlier) to whenever
1320 Whitehall Lane, St. Helena, CA 94574
707.963.4210
The CUE Conference for 2009 featured an amazing keynote this year with Robert Marzano as well as many other previous and new presenters. Here are a few notes I took during the conference.
Debra Pickering
Debra works with Robert Marzano. Her presentation was humorous, pointed, and thoughtful. Key points:
Have the mantra: "What are the learning goals?" Have this in mind when making any educational decisions.
Researched based: There are no silver bullets. Research helps us choose strategies that have a high probability of success. Every proven strategy has some data that indicates it wasn't successful. Nothing works in every situation.
Technology will help us if we examine and re-examine our learning goals and use of technology. Look back at the mantra above.
Feedback is the most powerful strategy. Feedback from the teacher to
student is good, but really powerful when from the students back to the
teacher.
Learner response systems (Eric Mazur) “First interactive teaching has been demonstrated to lead to considerably larger learning gains; Second, after an instructor has been exposed to the feedback this method of teaching affords, it is impossible to go back to the passive lecture format and remain ignorant about what goes on in the minds of students.”
Pickering really appreciates the possibilities of student response systems. In particular, she lauded the ability to group and regroup students.
Robert Marzano
Robert Marzano was brought in by Promethean. However, he has been doing research with their product for the last few years. He focused this presentation on his research of interactive whiteboards and student response systems.
Interactive whiteboard: Corrected effect site .44 = increase of 17 percentile points.
Meta Analysis of 1,100 studies of Comp School Reform: average es= .15 = 6 percentile points. Range: -2.13 to +7.83; 35% of effect sizes were below zero. Compared to Interactive whiteboards (.44 = increase of 17 percentile points).
You can see this is a huge effect size. .44 or 17% points compared with an average of .15 or 6% for other reform strategies.
He then looked the relationship of time to achievement and the relationship of teacher experience with the tool to achievement. He used the intersection of that data to determine the "sweet spot" of educational use of an interactive system.
Sweet Spot:
Experienced teacher
Using the techno log for 2 years
75% of the time use in the class
Someone with the above profile would expect a 30% point gain in average student achievement.
Like Debra Pickering, he pointed out that 23% of the effect sizes were below 0. There are no "silver bullets," but he contends that there are many silver BB's that teachers can use as appropriate to help improve student learning.
Tentative conclusions (he emphasized TENTATIVE)
Weaker teachers require PD in effective teaching and proper use of Interactive Whiteboard technology.
Proper technology includes:
- Keeping clear focus on the content and not the bells and whistles
- Keeping track of which students are “getting it” and which are not (RESPONSE RATES).
From there he focused expressly on the student response systems. He asked us,"How do we increase response rates?" His answer was student response systems, but he gave some data to explain why.
Formative Assessment and Record Keeping
Right/wrong feedback produced a negative gain: -3% gain
Provide correct answers: 8.5 es
Criteria understoon by student vs. not understood: 16% gain
Explain: 20% gain
Student reassessed until correct: 20% gain
Display results graphically: 26% gain
You can see that the feedback that is an interchange between students and teachers is much more effective. His research shows that Student Response Systems are an effective way to achieve this.
He finished with some ideas on assessment.
- Never rely on a single assessment.
- State tests have a high reliability overall (.87 in Midwest). The subtests had a low reliability (.35-.53). Scores are betting looking at a class or even better by school.
- .55 average reliability of teachers designing their own test. Gives a lot of “wobble” need lots of tests to show accurate results.
#2 above made me think about our state tests and what we use them for. Based on this research, I wondered whether state test data would be accurate in making classroom decisions. Certainly not for individuals at the strand level. But I even wonder about at the class level. Compound that by the fact that the test is already 4 months old when we get the results.
Robert Marzano summed up his talk with this conclusion.
"You can’t use the technology without good teaching, analysis, and conversations.”
Peter Reynolds
Peter Reynolds wrapped up the conference with the closing keynote. Before the workshop, attendees participated in Smart Moves Body Puzzles <http://www.fablevision.com/smartmoves/>. It was an interesting sight. Picture 100 adults standing and doing these puzzles as they wait for the presentation to begin.
Peter's main mission is to inspire others to have a mission. His talk relying on his person journey, stories, and his ideas about creativity.
6 tips for creativity and innovation:
- The blank page
- The tablet and pen
- Time and freedom
- Mission (WPSA-World Problem Solvers Agency – People create a video to advertise their mission.)
- Love
- Enlightened leadership
Online Planning Meeting
Take the survey to let us know when you can meet.
../forms/TakeSurvey.asp?PageNumber=1&SurveyID=l3M4735L764KK
ILC AKA: The Innovative Learnng Conference
What
a bash in October in San Jose- hugging old friends and seeing new
faces, listening and learning from presenters from across the country,
and enjoying the northern CUE community for the first time in five
years. Two highlights from my conference:
Cheryl Lemke talked about differentiation and developing authentic learning units. One of her favorite sites is http://wordle.net >>>> load a paragraph and it will present the pargraph graphically, making the most used words larger.
Dr. Chris Dede
talked about the shift in knowledge and skills that society values and
the new division of labor. He asked us, "What skills are not done well
by the computer?" Answer: expert decision making and complex
communication. What does that mean for education? His
challenge: students scoring on the bottom third cry out for and need
more complex curriculum!
Lots more to talk about- I will add more!
You can look at presenter PPTs download their handouts. Go to www.cue.org and click on session handouts that interests you. You can also sign up for provocative podcasts by CUE pundunts.
Ciao, Terry
Strike 1
We tried to meet
for a planning meeting and a user group in the Fall, but we struck out.
So we took a step back to regroup. We will be meeting virtually using
the Elluminate software provided by CUE. We hope all interested members
will be able to join us for this online meeting. If you are interested,
complete the survey to let us know which date and time work best for
you. ../forms/TakeSurvey.asp?PageNumber=1&SurveyID=l3M4735L764KK
Hey everyone,
The year is off and running, and we should be too. We are a little late on our planning this fall, but not too late to miss the date for our opening member meeting. There are two meetings we have coming up that I wanted to let you know about.
Our first MEMBER event: User-Group get-together
When: Saturday, October 4, 2008 from 4pm to 6pm.
Where: Valley of the Moon Winery
 {winery}
We are taking a new direction this year with our local events and are going to try a user-group meeting. This meeting will be a chance to learn, share, network, and enjoy some food and drinks. It will be structured but a bit more informal than previous events we have held. We are meeting in Sonoma to accommodate both Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley members. This should be a great event, so mark your calendars now.
Our planning meeting
When: September 22, 2008 5:30 to 7:00
Where: Mary’s Pizza in Sonoma (Boyes Hot Springs) The Backroom!
This meeting will be a board/member planning meeting. The goal is to plan and work out the details on the October 4 meeting. All members are invited to participate. As a member-run organization, the more people that pitch in, the better we are. Join us on Monday to help make this coming year a success. We will be meeting at Mary’s Pizza in Sonoma (Boyes Hot Springs area). We have reserved their back room. Everyone will be purchasing their own food. If you just want to participate in the meeting but don’t want to eat, that is fine too. Here is a link for directions to this restaurant: http://www.maryspizzashack.com/directions.do?str=18636%20Sonoma%20Highway&ct=Sonoma&st=CA&z=95476-4418&ll=38.30802,-122.478432&zm=15#
If possible, RSVP to Barbara Linch (blinch@nvusd.k12.ca.us) whether you are coming or not. We want to be prepared with materials for anyone who join us. You can also check our website for information and agendas for both meetings as they are posted. The agenda for the October 4 meeting will not be posted until after the September 22 meeting.
We hope to see you next week. Jason
For the past 3 years ago, Wine Country CUE has tried to realize its vision of creating a community of computer using educators in our area. What we found after a lot of trial and error is that it is tough to sustain the effort required to make this community happen. Although we had a number of successful events, we found that these "mini-conferences" took a huge toll on the members trying to make them happen.
The Plan
Albert Einstein defined Insanity as "
doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." With this in mind, we decided to take a new path. We plan to organize user group meetings that will be less formal than a stand and deliver presentation. Here is the proposed anatomy of a meeting:
- Opening business, agenda, additional items (10 min)
- Planned resource/good idea sharing presentation and discussion (15-20 minutes)
- Second resource/good idea sharing presentation and discussion (10-15 minutes)
- Improptu sharing added at the beginning of meeting (10-20 minutes)
- Mingling/networking/ chatting/ snacking (the rest of the time)
The idea would be to schedule one or two people to share something relevant, cool, and/or important. At the beginning of the meeting, we will see if anyone else has something to share that was not scheduled. After one or two of these "on the spot" sharing, we will have a time to just visit with each other.
Because of our geographic area, we would like to hold the first meeting in the town of Sonoma. This seems half way for just about every area we serve. We a trying to work out location with a winery. This even will be scheduled for Saturday, October 4, 2008 at 4:00 pm. We would have 2 other user group meetings throughout the year.
Problems
There are obviously a number of potential problems to work out. In our discussion at the end of year party, Dave Tillay brought up the need for a focus to draw people out. While this is a very logical idea, we will have to balance that with the fact that too much focus will exclude some members from finding the material relevant. We will also need to work out how we will fund these events. Will they be self-sustaining, draw on flagging affiliate funds, or rely on sponsors? Finally, it makes sense to have a theme for each meeting, so we will need to decide on some good topics.
Follow-Up
We will be holding a virtual follow-up meeting to hammer out the details on this meeting sometime in July. We will be using Eluminate to connect with everyone that wants to attend. Eluminate is a company that has partnered with CUE in order to provide virtual meetings to members. Subscribe to this blog in order to get more information on attending our maiden voyage.
