How I feel about blogging right now.

It has been two weeks since our last meeting. I am attempting tonight to familiarize myself with the blogging process so I stop being angry at having to do it. Here is the blog prompt I found...

• What is your experience with blogs? Do you read them regularly?
• How did it go setting up this blog?

I have never read a blog before this assignment. I think that they are somewhat like listserves, but much more random. I am skeptical how I will like reading them (actually, I'm not sure the assignment is to read them at all), because I do not know the people very well, and because we are fulfilling the requirements just by posting, not by being graded A/F, but Pass/Fail, I don't think people will spend much time writing them.

Of course I could be wrong. Maybe by reading the blogs I will learn how to teach my students how to use the internet to become informationally literate. That is why I will try and do my best to make my own blogs interesting, not a waste of time to read, and fairly short. Wouldn't it be great if everyone did the same?

If you read to the end of this thank you, and if you didn't, I understand ;). Robyn Asher

Nice email about the use of the pre-post test data.

Robyn,

Leslie forwarded me your email expressing your concerns and questions about
MILP.  I am an independent consultant and I work with all the data for this
project.  Let me see if I can respond to your questions (although this is a
pretty long email!).  If not, please feel free to email me back and we can
continue the conversation.

You asked about how the student scores are used--Here is how we used the
student scores on the pretest and posttest last year (I imagine it will be
much the same for this year):

1) We used the student scores on the pretest last year to help us begin to
understand what high schoolers know about the MILP concepts and terminology.
We weren't sure what information they have picked up as young people growing
up with greater access to technology and were unsure about what they have
learned in school.
2) When we had both the student pretest/posttest scores, we looked to see
whether students increased their knowledge overall (across all items) and I
looked more closely at individual items to see whether they increased their
knowledge of what they knew about specific concepts or terms.
3) We also asked all the participating classroom teachers and Media
Specialists to speak to their experiences with MILP at the end of the year.
In particular, I was interested in looking at what terms and concepts
teachers and Media Specialists said they taught about last year.  We also
asked them to tell us how challenging the terms and concepts were for their
students.  In cases where a teacher said he/she spent a lot of time teaching
the material, I looked to see if that showed up in the students' scores.  In
a couple of cases it did and we went back this summer to follow up with a
few of the teachers to get a more in-depth understanding about their
teaching and how it might inform this year's project.

You also asked about why individual schools and teachers are identified:

1) We thought that individual teachers might want access to their
pretest/posttest scores (privately) and that this would be nice to offer
because you're giving a lot of your time and effort to MILP.
2) Schools are identified because we've compiled all the student scores
(pretest and posttest) and shared this with the staff and faculty in the
past (without any particular classroom being identified).  Again, this is
partly a courtesy but we know that people are interested in understanding
what's being learned by students in their school.
3) Related to these issues you should know that as an evaluation consultant,
I abide by the Minnesota Data Privacy Act and because I am the only one why
has access to this data, I do not share any particular teachers' data with
anyone but that teacher.

Finally, you expressed a concern about ELL and LD students not being
accommodated/identified when completing the tests:

1) Yes, this is a legitimate concern and one we're wrestling with right now.
While the pretest/posttest items are written at a 5.6 reading grade level, I
know that it's still a long and technical test for students who are learning
English or who may have challenges with learning.

I appreciate you taking the time to follow-up with these issues.  Let me
know if I can answer any more questions.
****************************
Christa Treichel
Cooperative Ventures
1277 Dayton Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55104
651-642-9067 (ph)
651-645-6767 (fax)
treic004@umn.edu

Thing 1

My blog about information literacy is up and running. My blog will talk about things that I learn about information literacy from the Metronet project.

Thing 1

Information Literacy is awesome. I think that everyone should have the equipment to find the information that will help them find reliable on line resourses and responsible use.