Urban Planet Thoughts

This week our Media Specialist sent out a request for dates that would be best for an Urban Planet training at our school, to help teachers set up useful web sites. I think I have had 3 days of this training in various ways through staff development days, and although I do have a website (it is a requirement of our all teachers at Como), it is not one that I refer the kids to on a regular basis. I have my syllabus posted, along with a couple other random things, but in order to motivate myself to put serious time into the website I first need to visualize its usefullness at completion. What the trainings have taught me about setting up my web site... to do a useful job at it lots of time and thinking are necessary. So this week I will try to find some time to update my website with some extra credit links, good websites, and searching tools for the research that we are going to start. Hopefully next time we meet as a group we will get beyond the step of just pointing out that data bases exist, and actually get to look at one and interact with it - modeling I think would be a great way to show me this. Or, maybe an assignment to bring in a topic that we wanted to find ROR for, then get time during the meeting to look up good data bases for use in our classes. Heck, maybe even a presentation of a lesson that someone has developed for use with a data base. When in a meeting I do best when I am asked to think and process the information that is being presented, not just take in information that I could read and learn on my own.

Very Nice Email answering my questions about 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