I knew that the education field was prone to fads, but it seems all this standardized testing malarkey (great word, non?) just makes the situation worse. There's always someone trying to throw their hat in the ring, to establish new standards that are somehow better than those that came before. Then comes the new tests. It's exhausting and I haven't even been in the middle of it yet.
I'm suspicious of the whole Common Core/Smarter Balanced Assessment thingamajig (cool words is the theme of this post, I think). I do appreciate Rory bringing this to our attention - particularly to the SBA - because my initial response when he asked us to jot down what we knew about it was "No idea." And Rory has convinced me that that was a problem - that we definitely should know that this is coming down the turnpike and we should be braced for impact. Perhaps a violent metaphor... but then I think the obsession with standardization is violence being done to our education system.
I might have strong opinions on the matter.
Anyway! I appreciate being forewarned about the disaster so we can at least think ahead and prepare as well as we can. The brainstorming we did in class may turn out to be incredibly valuable in the not so distant future. So I thank Rory and Jeff for making space for that conversation in their classroom.
We also had another, much more splendiferous, conversation about different ways to apply the game that was demonstrated in our different content areas. I love that the notion of games is branching away from pure video games and into thinking about how the thought processes and teamwork involved in game play and puzzle solving can be brought into classrooms in many creative ways. I know I will be alert to such possibilities in the future.
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