Crafting Contemporary Assessments:
Local and Global Engagement, School Partnerships, Service Learning,
and Challenge Quest Based Projects
Date: February 6, 2018- Tuesday
Time: 8:30 AM to 3:00 PM
Essential Question: How do we prepare our learners for the future?
How can we replace dated assessments with contemporary formats?
How do prepare learners for expanding opportunities and engagement with our communities both locally and globally?
How do we design quest and challenge based inquiry to cultivate meaningful personalized learning with our students at all levels of learning?
Who should attend: Teaching teams, individual teachers, principals, administrators, superintendents, personnel who establish partnerships for student internships, counselors
Co-faciliatator: Allison Zmuda, co-author (with Bena Kallick) of Student at the Center, ASCD, 2017. Allison is a nationally recognized leader in personalized learning.
Focus: The critical element of assessing our modern learners will be a focus at this session. We will look at how to replace general mundane forms of reductive testing with more specific and contemporary forms. If we want to prepare our learners for life, careers, and college then we cannot habitually use old forms. What do modern historians, engineers, writers, scientists, artists create? A natural question is to consider how to assess a student’s ability to cultivate his or her personal passion and interest in meaningful inquiry. Personalized learning opportunities through quest and challenge based learning will be a primary feature of the day with the goal of developing templates and approaches at all levels of learning. The opportunities for field research and internships are embedded in these projects and will review examples from across the country and overseas that have proved effective. Some of our specific areas of focus will be:
- Consider the benefits of personalized learning models: internships, service learning, Challenge Based Learning, Captsones
- Share Quest Based Learning Model as a template for shaping Capstone Projects and personalized learning experiences
- Brainstorm, create, and add to our Clearinghouse a range of off campus learning opportunities both in physical settings and virtual settings
- Consider the role of parents, school boards and community members in developing these learning opportunities
- Importance of student self-monitoring via digital portfolios or learning boards for personalized quests and projects
- Mapping out personalized professional development to support innovation
- Activating personnel to work directly with policy makers on supporting responsive innovative decisions versus slippage to antiquated policies
- Creating digital portfolios to self-monitor BOTH ongoing school curriculum and individual personal quests
Deliverables:
Sets of revised and upgraded assessments
Templates for designing capstone/capstone/ quest based personalized inquiry.
Draft set of potential local and global internships and partnerships