1. Project

This week, I'm going to start my Ignite Talk! It seems a litle anxiety inducing because the slides change, but I'm excited to start it. I'm going to go into the history of my family, the history of the recipe, the history of the foods I'm writing about, hopefully all will go well! I also sent out my survey over break and got 9 responses!

2. Project

I've been thinking more about the video pathway a little bit more and do not think an interview is feasible anymore because my nonna splits her time at my house and my aunt's house, where she is this week. So, I think I'm going to make little recipe zines instead. Part of my survey asked if my family would like a book of my nonna's recipes, and 100% said yes. For the video, I will now film myself making the zines :)

3. Reading: When Learning and Assessment Diverge

 - " A student is not just a data point" - so important

- The author categorizes tests: "Many standardized tests are what I will call “target assessments”. Target assessments tell us how many people out of a designated population have hit a certain target, for example how many can compute fractions at a certain level of correctness." Some target assessments just tell us how many people can hit the target and leave it at that. Let’s call these “cognitively superficial target assessments”. Other target assessments tell us how many people not only can hit the target, but understand what the target (e.g., fractions) means and why it works as it does. Let’s call these sorts of assessments “cognitively deep target assessments”.

- "Too often in schools, we take reading as the main form of experience necessary for learning"

- This is so for good Darwinian reasons: we survive by using the past to move to the future, not by lingering in the past. It is time, I think, for assessment and testing to move into the future, as well.

4. Anything Post - Southern Celebrates Student Leaders

  - I was invited to a student leadership appreciation day at Southern! Since I'm the treasurer of Italianissimi, I got to go. There were free t shirts (always a must) and they had donuts and hot chocolate, and a snack bar to show appreciation for the hard work their student leaders like myself do. It was really fun!

1. Project Beginnings

At first I was so clueless about what I wanted my Do Something project to be, until Dr. McVerry suggested recipes. I knew my nonna had a ton of old recipes, but they're quite tattered and completely not in English. I thought it would be a fun challenge to translate these recipes for my project!

2. Developing My Ideas

I thought about the project a little bit more and chose the video option for my pathway. Since Thanksgiving break is coming up, I could interview my nonna when I'm home.

3. Reading - Rhizomatic Education

       - Knowledge as negotiation is not an entirely new concept in educational circles

        - A rhizomatic plant has no center and no defined boundary; rather, it is made up of a number of semi-independent nodes, each of which is capable of growing and spreading on its own, bounded only by the limits of its habitat (Cormier 2008). In the rhizomatic view, knowledge can only be negotiated, and the contextual, collaborative learning experience shared by constructivist and connectivist pedagogies is a social as well as a personal knowledge-creation process with mutable goals and constantly negotiated premises.

      - I interpreted this as learning has no boundaries, we can learn about anything we choose to - perhaps this is the negotiation Dave speaks of

    - New technologies force us to reexamine knowledge and how we learn as a society

  - Information is now more accessbile because of the internet, and there is NO BOUNDARY to what we can learn!

4. Badges?

    -  The focus on badges and alternative credentials is like trying to facilitate global trade by inventing Esperanto 

   - The premise behind all of the badge and alternative credential projects is the same: that if only there were a new, unified way to quantify, describe and give evidence of student learning inside the classroom and out, employers would be able to appropriately value those skills and illuminate a path to job outcomes - the author compares this to a utopia, an "idealized" solution to transform society

 - Compares these online badges to Girl Scout/Boy Scout patches, earning something for something you do that tells the world: "hey! I know a skill!"

- Unlike the author, I actually like the idea of online badges! I have a couple on yelp - he seems to allude this in his article when he mentions certain apps having a badge system.

Translating the recipe was harder than I thougt it would be. Even though I can understand Italian, I had a hard time reading her actual handwriting, especially because the picture was a little grainy. 

Blog 1: I attended my Vietnamese church service this past Sunday. Last week, I was informed that we would be combining our church service with the New York church. However, that plan fell through because not enough members can make the drive up to New York. Therefore, we will just have our annual program back in CT as usual. I am still participating in a skit. However, the interesting part of this skit is that we are playing parts to a song. Each line is a different character who is broken, later “fixed” by Jesus. 

Blog 2: The teenagers and children are still singing “Do You Hear What I Hear?”. We are going with my idea of the kids sing the first stanza, the teens sing the second, and we all sing the third together. We had trouble singing on time and the children kept forgetting which parts they sang on their own and which parts they don’t. 

Blog 3: In my Philosophy class, we’ve been doing panel of discussions and presenting informative slides on different topics. One of my friends presented the “social trends” of 2019. It was very fun and interesting to look back at the year. These trends included the “Number Neighbor” where you text someone with the same number as you except for the last digit, the instagram egg which is the most liked photo on instagram, and the bird box challenge where you blindfold yourself and do daily things. I found the presentation to be very entertaining but also informative. 

When Learning and Assessment Diverge:

• Too often we do not know who we are assessing when we assess students today 
• A student is not just a data point - rather a student is a complex body of experience gain over long periods of time
• We need to see that we should be assessing bodies of experience and judging how students can be used now and in the future for better learning and development in order to render assessments fairly, usefully, and meaningfully
• Target Assessments tell us how many people out of a designated population have a hit a certain target
• Some target assessments just tell us how many people not only can hit the target, but understand what the target means and why it works the way it does 
• People learn well only when they are motivated or care about what they are learning 
• People over time use concrete experience to find patters and sub-patterns 
• Too often, schools take reading texts as the main focus of experience necessary for learning 

(I double dipped by making my last blog about the third reading) 

#Dosomething #Write #Reading #Week2

Blog 1: 

This past Sunday, I was able to attend my Vietnamese church and catch up on what activities they were planning. I found out that this year, we are combining our church with the Vietnamese church in New York - something we haven’t done in a while. I am also now participating in the children/youth Christmas choir and doing a teen skit. We are still in the process of deciding what the skit is and how we can best send the Christmas message to the audience 

Blog 2: 

I had a few ideas for the song we are singing, “Do You Hear What I hear?”. Since the age ranges from 5 to 18, I thought it would be a good idea to emphasize the different aspects our group brings. I suggested that the kids sing the first stanza, the teens sing the second, and we all sing the third together. Everyone agreed because it switches things up and adds texture to the song. 

Dave’s Educational Blog 

• Social constructivist and connectionist pedagogies, etc, are centered on the process of negotiation as a learning process
  • There is an assumption in both theories that the learning process should happen organically 
• In the rhizomatic view, knowledge can only be negotiated
• Horton and Freire (1990) argue, "If the act of knowing has historicity, then today’s knowledge about something is not necessarily the same tomorrow.
• Knowledge is changed to the extent that reality also moves and changes
• Information is the foundation of knowledge
• The rhizomatic viewpoint suggests that a distributed negotiation of knowledge can allow a community of people to legitimize the work they are doing among themselves and for each member of the group
• Knowledge can be judged by the old standards of “I can” and “I recognize” 
• If a bit of info is recognized as useful to the community or proves itself able to do something, it can be counted as knowledge 
  • The community then has the power to create knowledge within a given context and leave the knowledge as a new node connected to the rest of the network 
• Through involvement in multiple communities where new info is being assimilated and tested, educators can begin to apprehend the moving target that knowledge in the modern learning environment 

Unwelcome Innovation: 

• To better communicate the value and variety of people’s skills to employers so that its easier to connect with and improve job outcomes 
• The conception, theory, and adoption of badge-based alternative credentialing initiatives starts back from 2011 
• In 5 years, much has been written and even more time spent developing the theory and practice of alternative credentialing via badges 
• The premise behind all of the badge and alternative credential projects is the same: that if only there were a new, unified way to quantify, describe and give evidence of student learning inside the classroom and out, employers would be able to value those skills and illuminate a path to job outcomes 
• Badge adherents aim to address the “value” and portability of badges by attaching proof of skills to the badges themselves
  • Same idea behind the e-portfolios 
• Connecting students’ skills and ambitions to the pathways to a career is a big deal

(I double dipped by making 2 of my blogs of this week about the readings) 

#Dosomething #Write #Reading #Week1