Talk to Us or Follow Us – And Win an Amazon.com Gift Card!
Maybe it’s seeing all the holiday decorations cropping up in stores across the country, but something has got the Riverside Publishing Product Innovation Team in an especially generous mood these days. We’ve decided to launch our very first contest on our good ‘ole blog. We’re posting this quick before the “powers that be” change their minds. : )
The contest is fai
rly simple… and we’ll be giving away two prizes. There are two ways to win:
1) Between now and Friday, Dec. 11, 2009, simply post a comment to one of our existing blog entries and you are entered for a chance to win a $100 Amazon.com gift card. Riverside’s Product Innovation Team will select the winner based on the comment we feel is the most creative, thought-provoking or informative. Your post doesn’t have to be long – just the type of thing to spark some good online discussion.
or
2) Between now and Friday, Dec. 11, 2009, sign up on Twitter to follow our tweets and you are automatically entered to win a $100 Amazon.com gift card. We will randomly select one person who signs up to follow us on Twitter to win this award. You can find us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/RPCMikeMNextGen.
If you do both – create a post and sign up to follow us on Twitter – you are entered to win twice. We’ll contact the winners and get you your gift card in time for you to use it for some additional holiday shopping this year.
One important note: Riverside and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt employees and contractors, and their immediate family members, are not eligible for this contest. We understand that’s a bummer, but this contest is really designed for our customers. You are, however, welcome to encourage our customers to participate, and of course enjoy their postings.
Twitters, Tweets and Facebook – Oh My!
Everyone seems to be talking about social networking. Here at Riverside Publishing, we’ve even noted that many of our parents are signing up for Facebook accounts – a sure sign that social networking has hit the mainstream.
As we think about “next generation” systems, we are exploring the extent to which educators want to incorporate social networking experiences into their usage of such platforms. In an increasingly mobile MySpace’d-Facebooked-Twitter’ed world, do such communications tools have a role to play for K-12 educators?
The example at left is a concept we’ve been playing with. Cleverly (and with a knod to Facebook users everywhere) we’ve called this rough concept ”My Wall.” Within the context of an educational assessment delivery platform, such as our own Edusoft or DataDirector, would educators want the ability to post messages to each other or status updates within the application itself? Or, would busy educators just view this as “one more place to check” for such messages?
Should we link our assessment delivery platforms to popular tools, like Twitter? Would it be helpful, for example, to “tweet” the beginning of your district’s newest benchmark exam, or to inform classroom teachers that the latest set of academic standards (think: Common Core Standards) are now available within the system?
What’s the appropriate role, if there is one, for such social networking tools? Post your thoughts and ideas. We’d love to engage in some online dialogue with you on this topic…
Capturing student assessment data
One of the hallmarks of the Edusoft Assessment Management System is its innovative use of plain-paper scanning technologies to revolutionize the assessment of students. Edusoft allowed educators to use a standard office scanner and plain office paper to administer tests to students. This innovation freed teachers from the tedium of hand-scoring stacks of papers, and also allowed them to integrate standards-based assessments into their classroom practice on a much more regular basis. Thanks to Edusoft, plain-paper scanning is now a standard feature of most assessment management systems and delivery platforms.
In recent years, more and more educators have started to utilize student response systems (sometimes called “clickers” or learner response systems) as another way to capture student response data in real-time. A growing number of providers, such as Promethean, offer such devices. Such devices have typically been used for more low-stakes and ad-hoc assessment of learning. For example, a classroom teacher might use “clickers” to quickly gauge the effectiveness of an instructional activity, or to rapidly ascertain which specific topics might need immediate remediation. The real-time benefits of such data are powerful and exciting to consider.
Riverside’s Product Innovation team has been thinking about the appropriate role for such devices in more high-stakes or large-scale assessment activities. Could such devices, for example, take the place of paper-based answer documents altogether? Are such devices developmentally-appropriate for testing situations that are part of larger accountability programs? Is the experience of using such a device so different an experience for the student (too different?) that it somehow puts them at a disadvantage when the statewide high-stakes test comes along? We’d like to read your thoughts and experiences with such input devices and what you see as their appropriate role in large-scale assessment programs. Feel free to post your comments…Helping educators use data analytics
Smart scoring and reporting represents a key area of thinking with regard to what Riverside Publishing sees for the future. “Next generation” systems ultimately must move beyond simply providing access to test data and scores to helping users derive deeper meaning from their information.
Over time, such systems will begin to help users interpret their data. These systems will begin to utilize data mining techniques to highlight patterns in a user’s data. Future systems will push such data to users via dashboard reports, and visualize the data for the user to enable a richer understanding of the information. Over time, such systems will provide recommendations to the user (suggested paths of optimization) based on the reported results. This movement from simple reporting of and access to test results, toward a deeper analysis of assessment data will allow educators to turn information into institutional wisdom. Riverside’s new assessment platform will help educators move from the lower half of the chart below to the upper half – an area of true analytical use of data.
Smart applications, such as the type Riverside envisions for a “next generation” system, evolve over time to adapt the changing needs of its users. Our ultimate goal is provide educators with an almost ambient technology that quite simply, yet completely, satisfies their data and assessment needs.
“Smart” applications
The start of the school year always reminds me of how pressed for time educators are these days. Then again, I guess we are all feeling the crush of time.
We’ve been thinking a lot about “smart” systems at Riverside Publishing. How can we build systems that offload some of the work that our users must do? The Japanese have a term – poka-yoke – which means “fail-safing” or “mistake-proofing.” The concept of poka-yoke first emerged as part of the Japanese “lean manufacturing” process made famous by Toyota. In this process, a poka-yoke is any mechanism that helps an equipment operator (yokeru) avoid mistakes (poka). Indeed, poka-yoke systems attempt to eliminate product defects by proactively preventing, correcting, or directing attention to human errors. Interestingly, originally the Japanese used the term baka-yoke (which means “idiot-proofing”), but the term was softened to the milder poka-yoke.
There are numerous examples of poka-yoke in everyday consumer products:
- Automatic transmissions – the inability of the user to remove the car key if the transmission is first not placed in a “park” position,
- Microwave ovens – a door switch automatically disconnects the activation button when opened. It is impossible to cook anything (and thus be exposed to microwaves) unless the door is closed,
- Cellphone SIM cards – the card is trimmed diagonally in the upper left corner to help users position it correctly
Poka-yoke is, in many respects, a form of what can be called defensive design. Defensive design is the practice of planning for and anticipating all the ways a user might misuse a device or program, and then designing the device or software so that such misuse is impossible (or nearly impossible). Indeed, “Murphy’s Law” is an often-used statement that speaks to why such defensive design is so important. Homer Simpson represents, perhaps, another argument for its importance.
The “next generation” assessment delivery platform being developed by Riverside Publishing adheres to this overall design philosophy. Riverside is embedding the concept of poka-yoke into the product design, designing the system so that the proper conditions exist for the user in the system before a process begins, preventing problems before they happen. For example, the system will give users information or tools to fix problems as they arise. The system will also attempt to prevent users from working harder than they need to by taking over some (if not all) of the complexity of a task. In alignment with Tesler’s Law, the system will shift as much of the complexity for a task from the user and to the system as possible.
Riverside is currently working with users to identify what the core complexity of an assessment delivery platform is – to better understand which parts of that complexity a user might want some control over and when. Riverside is designing the new system to do the types of tasks that humans have trouble doing, but that computers can do more easily. Such activities include rapidly performing computational tasks, doing several tasks at once, remembering things indefinitely, and detecting complicated patterns.
Smart applications, such as Riverside’s “next generation” system, evolve over time to adapt the changing needs of its users. Our ultimate goal is provide educators with an almost ambient technology that quite simply, yet completely, satisfies their data and assessment needs. Feel free to post your thoughts and comments about how “smart” systems might be employed by educators…
Simplicity
From "The Laws of Simplicity" by John Maeda
We’ve been doing a lot of thinking about where things need to go next in terms of educational assessment platforms. Educators, like all of us, are being asked to do more, more often, and with less time and resources in which to do it. Clearly, this environment breeds a need for simplicity.
I’ve just finished reading a wonderful book by John Maeda called “The Laws of Simplicity.” In this book, Maeda explores the tensions that often exist between the need for systems to be robust, yet also easy to use. How many of us, for example, really use all of those functions and features in Microsoft Word? Yet, I bet we all have our favorite set of features in Word that we would argue Microsoft must never remove. Spell check comes to the top of my mind.
As employees of an educational media company (and in many cases, also former classroom teachers), we constantly struggle with this tension between “How Simple Can We Make It?” versus “How Complex Does It Have To Be?”
Maeda offers an approach for this dilemma. He suggests: “The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.“
Riverside currently enjoys the benefits of providing two major assessment delivery systems to our customers: the Edusoft Assessment Management System and DataDirector. Each are wonderful in their own way, and each have their own relatives strengths and weaknesses. I’m curious, however, if our users could really play the role of despot and determine which functions/features in either of those systems “lives” or “dies,” what would they remove?
My first official blog entry serves as a challenge to our users of sorts. If you had to, what function(s) or feature(s) of either system would you place on the chopping block? Any thoughts?
Welcome to Our Thoughts…
Riverside Publishing’s Product Innovation Team welcomes you to our new blog. We intend to use this space as a way to engage in informative conversations with our community of users about ways we can build better solutions to help you attain your goals and objectives. Right now, we are doing a lot of thinking around what educators need in terms of the creation, delivery and management of assessments, as well as how information from assessments can be turned into actionable data that truly impacts classroom instruction. We encourage you to come back and visit this space often, contribute to our discussions, and help us create a true sense of community. We look forward to reading your good thoughts!
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September 18, 2009 at 7:15 pm Leave a comment