ELO 

When reading "The Importance of Deep Reading", I was immediately struck by the three lives that Aristotle speaks of.  I absolutely agree that the life of contemplation is what is often lacking in our modern, fast-paced era of massive and unprecedented access to information, travel, and communication.  In many ways our society has continued to grow and has benefited by the increased connectedness, but at what expense?

Young brains are still developing the processes needed for deep thinking such as inferential and deductive reasoning, analytical skills, reflection.  Even us as adult learners are vulnerable to losing hard-learned and earned skills of reasoning and reflection.  In my personal and professional life, I often find myself having to remind myself to slow down.  To give myself time to relax and just take-in what I've just seen, read or heard.  "What we read and how deeply we read shape both the brain and the thinker."  Am I providing my students enough opportunities and time to really become or develop their brains so that they will be deep readers?  To give kids opportunities to question and talk about the information they are seeing or hearing.  It's difficult when life seems to push you to move forward quickly and when pressures seem to increase over time rather than decrease.  We ourselves as teachers are under so much pressure stemming from high expectations placed on us by administration, parents, society and even ourselves to effectively teach all students the content and skills that children are expected to master.   I often fear we are pushing students to meet these benchmarks without stopping to provide enough time for reflection. I worry that in pushing my students so hard day after day, I am missing an opportunity to allow them to really focus on and engage in what they are learning.  They may enjoy success, but are they having fun and identifying themselves as lifelong learners?  

I find it interesting that the ancient Greeks argued against learning to read and write for fear that they would lose the oral tradition and the constant quest for knowledge.  For us as teachers that may imply that we have to systematically and strategically throw wrenches into our students lives.  We are responsible for introducing intentional problems for students to see that knowledge is maliable and often changes.  We have all probably heard that now people know less about more.  I am excited and concerned about the fact that people's brains are being re-wired.  I do think that it will be interesting to see how we can change our brains to be more efficient.  How we can work together as a society to tackle problems on a mass scale?  How can we re-wire our brains to make them even more efficient or phenomenal?  The article mentions that reading is a 'new cognitive function', that the very organization of the human brain enables it to go beyond itself.  I think that we are potentially on the precipice of a time that may be marked by amazing human achievement and cohesion.  Conversely, not knowing the direction that we are heading, brings fear that we could be raising children that are disconnected from one another or that perceive a skewed reality.

Technology can allow information to be easily accessible and readily available,  but this leaves us wondering what that means as far as creating next steps or goals as educators and learners.  Where will we go with this information?  How will we extend our knowledge further?  How can we independently explore these topics?  We need to think of how to teach critical thinking skills, how to encourage a questioning or even a wariness of information garnered through the internet.  Online skills need to be explicitly and carefully taught.  Online exploration and research should be taught within a framework and teachers need training on how to use technologies within their classrooms before jumping in.  My biggest fear is that we are fully embracing technology and programs without first being adequately versed in the dangers of these technologies.  Too often we focus on what the solutions will fix rather than on what the cost of these solutions are.

How do we avoid the costs of pervasive digital environment in the classroom in the presence of adaptive and instructional technology?

The introduction and dominance of technology in our lives has resulted in continuous, but partial thinking.  Technology has made information more readily available and accessible, but this constant input of information can create unforeseen difficulties in processing and in using that information.  Those that use and rely on technology for communication or for information often skim and scam information without actually allowing themselves the chance to fully process or understand the information they are being exposed to.  For us as educators this implies that when using technology, our work and the work we ask of students need to be supplemented with assessments or tasks that require deeper thinking. 

Without continuing to provide opportunities for deep thinking, we run the risk of losing the ability to be fully engaged and focused on one topic or task.  Students need to be asked to build upon prior knowledge using information from multiple sources.  Students should also be provided an opportunity to work together and to discuss the information that they find so that they do not miss out on social connections and can practice the skills of discussion and collaboration.  As Louis CK joked about on Conan O'Brien, people tend to be more concerned with sharing information than in living their lives.  As educators we need to provide opportunities for students enjoy living in the moment of learning.  It is more important than ever to find ways to engage student in topics or information.  Technology can enhance the ways in which we are exposed to information, but cannot replace deep reading, thinking and intense debate and discussion.  We need to give ourselves and our students opportunities to focus on information and topics so that information isn't entering and leaving our stream of consciousness too quickly, as we saw in the Economist video.  

Although technology will help us to find new and interesting ways to provide access to content and allow students to practice and demonstrate their skills, we do need ensure that we are not allowing technology to become overly dominant at the expense of allowing students to really explore and engage in material in depth. We have to remember that technology requires explicit instruction and that student use of technology should be guided and monitored.  We have to make sure that students are not using or seeing technology as a short cut to the end product, but as a way to enhance their knowledge and understanding.

What did you think? What were potential accessibility issues? How would you change it?

I think that the OXO angled measuring cup was a really great example of people working to help others solve problems.  The fact that this was created because of the desire to help a wife who had difficulty holding things due to arthritis.  It's something that I had not known, but I think it goes to show you how creative thinking and ingenuity are what drives real and powerful change.  As educators this change will only occur if we continue to identify student needs and work to design curriculum, materials and assessments that can help to meet these needs.  The pressure that teachers face is immense, and can sometimes feel overwhelming, but instead of feeling like we are never able to do enough, we have to remind ourselves that we are doing what we can and will continue to work towards figuring out how to reach all students.  

As a teacher I sometimes find myself feeling frustrated when I make a change or introduce a new support that works because I tend to wish I had known or thought to use it much earlier.  How do we as teachers continue to push ourselves to developing supports using UDL principles, without becoming too focused on the problems that we are trying to solve?  How are teachers sharing the solutions that they have found to be successful?  How do we limit the time spent 'experimenting' while finding solutions or limit the number of errors we make before finding success?  

I can't imagine anyone not supporting Universal Design principles, but I still question my own personal success in using these principles in developing my classroom lessons and materials.  I do believe that these principles can guide effective, good teaching, and will continue to strive to make the content and assessments in my classroom accessible to all students.  I do think that this is going to be a goal that I am striving towards for the rest of my career and I am trying to balance the urgency of needing to meet the needs of all of my students and the reality that I will still be working towards this indefinitely.  

What did you think? What were potential accessibility issues? How would you change it?

          As a special education teacher, I value the belief that students learn and express themselves differently.  I constantly amazed by the current expectations in education that we as teachers are responsible for differentiating instruction on a daily basis, yet the standardized test itself is not differentiated.  “Pursuant to Section 504, the aids, benefits and services must afford individuals with disabilities an equal opportunity to obtain the same result, to gain the same benefit, or to reach the same level of achievement.” (Pg. 2)  How do we measure achievement?  I have yet to see a test that truly measures a student’s yearly growth, rather I’ve seen tests that tests a students test-taking skills.  The context is often completely irrelevant to our students lives and texts on the ELA exams are often uninteresting and engaging.  My students enjoy reading, but I see a clear slump in engagement in the four weeks leading up to the exams when we have ‘test prep’.  

          “Testing accommodations provide an opportunity for students with disabilities to demonstrate mastery of skills and attainment of knowledge without being limited or unfairly restricted due to the effects of a disability.” (Pg. 3)  Expecting all students to jump through the same hoop is absurd, especially considering accommodations often fall short of bridging the gap for our students with disabilities or newer English Language Learners.  Although test access and accommodations attempts to meet the needs of students, I find that it often falls short as ideal implementation is often nearly impossible.  At the school that I teach at we have over 400 students in testing grades.  Our school is at capacity, and many of our classes are close to state and city limits.  We have large English Language Learner and special education populations at our school.  I would love to give students the opportunity to take the exam over a longer period of time in terms of giving them a week, rather than extended time within the typical three day testing period.  Unfortunately, due to limited staff, space and the large demand of special settings or accommodations, this is not currently an option utilized at my school.  

          I completely support the push to raise expectations and to work to ensure that all students are given equal opportunities to succeed.  I fail to see how these exams truly work to inform our instruction.  We lose so much instructional time in preparation and in the grading of these exams, it seems like a percentage or point system is not a fair trade-off.  Perhaps if the tests were objective and valid enough to be given back to schools, then we would be able to use student work and responses to inform our instructions.  Sadly this isn’t the case.  “The Grades 3 through 8 tests in ELA and Mathematics will help schools to identify students for whom they need to provide additional academic assistance in these subject areas.” (Page 5).  I am still not quite sure how a score 1-4 helps to know what skills students are lacking.  The ELA exam does kindly break down literal versus inferential percentages and points, but in my experience literal understanding is almost always needed before students excel in inferential understanding.  Thanks for giving us the point breakdown to solidify that conjecture?  I spent three days last year grading the ELA exams.  Luckily our school splits the grading and divides it among two teachers for each slot, otherwise I would have missed over a week with my students.  It is shocking how subjective the grading process is.  After having witnessed and experienced grading the state exams, I am appalled at the resources spent and wasted on these exams.  Wouldn’t portfolios and looking at student work over the course of the year be much more beneficial?  

          Our students are at a disadvantage when it comes to the state exams.  The idea that “the conditions of the test allows students with poor reading skills to show their skills and knowledge on tests measuring content areas such as social studies and science and allows students whose disability affects their ability to calculate to show his/her ability in problem solving and math reasoning without being hindered by their inability to calculate” (Page 4), doesn’t even make sense.  Content knowledge is often gained through reading and literacy activities at any grade level.  Difficulties reading isn’t alleviated through testing content knowledge.  Perhaps students may receive partial credit for their problem solving strategies and reasoning, but inaccurate computation drastically decreases their scores.  At the end of the day, whether an assessment that is being used across an entire grade, school, district or state, that allow little room for creativity, individuality or differentiation, in my opinion remains flawed regardless of accommodations.  Are these exams worth the time, money and effort to create, administer and score?  Are the results and information gathered from the exams worth the overall expenditure in both fiscal and personnel resources?