Assessment or Engagement? To tech. or not to Tech? and Other Pedagogical Questions.

While on twitter the other day, an increasingly rare occurence, I came across this post from a fellow educator in B.C. @NeilStephenson:

great deal of good could be done by shifting our attention from measuring achievement to stimulating engagement"http://bit.ly/yfG5bP #sd37

I followed up and read the link that Neil had posted. It offered some remarkably challenging ideas that can be encapsulated in this one sentence, "it is achieving engagement that should be our primary concern when thinking about everything from a lesson plan to the structure of a school system." This idea runs counter to many of the practices within my school, and I believe, my school system. The idea makes a great deal of sense, but I have recently been so focused on assessment and evaluation of results that I have not been as focused on engagement as I should have been.


At the same time as this challenging idea is blossoming in my mind I come across a post from an ed. tech. guru named Michael Wesch. If you have not yet heard of Michael Wesch you are a little bit out of the loop in the ed. tech world, so let me catch you up. Michael Wesch was catapulted into pedagogical consciousness with the creation of his video with students called Web 2.0 the Machine is Us/ng us, embedded below:





This short video is certainly worth watching and discussing, but when one digs further into Wesch's work it is easy to identify and experience the fundamental shift that the information revolution is causing in how we understand the world and how we learn about anything.

The video below contains a fantastic one hour explanation of Michael Wesch's ideas and the how and why it is impacting pedagogy. Seriously, take an hour and watch the video below,


What is relevant to this blog post now is that Michael Wesch is questioning some of his core ideas about teaching. On February 12th he published a blog post titled A Tech-Happy Professor Reboots written by Jeffrey Young where he questions the fundamentals of his teaching and experience. It is also worth reading and considering.

The common thread throughout both of these questions is that nothing is, nor should it be, closed to discussion. The learning occurs, the professional development occurs, when the ideas collide and try to understand each other. I think this might have something to do with a thesis, antithesis and sythesis, but I never understood actual philosophy so whatever.

What I understand goes like this:

1. Admin and ed. culture in Alberta tells me that effective assessment is critical to learning. I consume and internalize this idea. My practice develops around the process of creating meaningful assessment in my teaching team.
2. I read a new idea on twitter that challenges my thinking about this issue. I start to question if my approach is backwards. Should I be worried about engagement first and assessment last. I experience a feeling of conflict about the importance of assessment.
3. I discuss this idea with a colleague in my team meeting and we collectively decide that engagement is the most important aspect of learning, but that we can have a more organized, focused and reproduce-able approach to engagement if we have solid agreed upon assessments already in place. 
4. My understanding of engagement and assessment is re-defined, and I am now a better and more informed teacher.

Whatever this means it is essential in professional development.

The main idea is that every educator should periodically question their assumptions and even the foundation of their pedagogical beliefs. Michael Wesch is questioning his use of technology in the classroom, and we should question the forces that drive our own individual practice. For our efforts we will become better teachers.