Blogging NECC has caught on. I see that an organized group of contributors is creating NECC blogs so a link from here is warranted.
I have noticed there is not a lot of support here for “No Child Left Behind.” Perhaps this is a function of the sessions I select. I listed to Ferdi Serim this morning. He and a colleague talked about the difference between growth (NWEA) and performance orientations to evaluation. The idea is that a hurdle system (performance) does a poor job of informing teachers how to work with individual students and is insensitive to entering differences in capabilities/background.
I attended a David Thornburg presentation to end the day. Again, a big picture person with challenging ideas. The theme of the presentation was helping students navigate from data to understanding. Thornburg offered some interesting data on data – just how much of it we experience. He also recommended tools for working with data – how to locate meaningful data (Grokker), how to organize (Inspiration) and how to personalize and add context (eZedia). I assume other tools could be substituted. Grokker was new to me. This application is a different type of search engine/organization tool and it is certainly worth a look.
