Weekly Reading 10: Response to Keynote Speaker

What is the main argument being made by the speaker?

I believe Yong Zhao’s main argument is that it is not enough to reform education; we need to know what the end goal is.  What are we trying to create?  As Yong Zhao (2012) stated, “If  you chose the wrong goal to measure yourself, if you chose the wrong objective to go after, no matter how good,  how efficient you are, you are not going to get where you want to go” (ISTE Videos, 2012). 

 

Do you agree or disagree with his argument?

I completely agree with Mr. Yong Zhao.  Education is changing.  We know that our students need to be 21^st century thinkers and creators that can compete in a global society.  However, as educators, we are lost on what exactly this goal is and how to measure student success at it.  Even as the United States recognizes that educational reform is crucial, as a country, we are still concerned with who’s on top but, as Zhao stated, “To the top of what” (ISTE Videos, 2012)?  Instead of focusing on the process, we are concerned of only measuring the end result.

 

Make connections between the ideas presented in this Keynote and concepts explored in this course. 

“Test scores may just be like the giant stone heads . . . they look beautiful, they look nice, they’re seductive but they don’t really lead to real education, what we need (ISTE Videos, 2012).  Too often we look at test scores, and other means of assessments, as an evaluation or judgement of a child’s work.  However, assessments can be so much more powerful.  As Alvermann, Hagood, & Williams (2001) stated, there is an “important relationship between instruction and assessment” (Alvermann, Hagood, & Williams, 2001, pg. 1).  When used to inform and drive instruction, assessment can help teach students to become critical consumers of their work and the work of others.  “Students learn to assess texts rhetorically-their own texts and the texts of others, as they compose and after they do so. In this way, assessments of student work become part of instruction” (Alvermann, Hagood, & Williams, 2001, pg 2).

According to Yong Zaho (2012), China did not celebrate when the PISA results showed that they had topped the worldwide list in math, science, and reading testing because they had a different goal in mind.  They are facing an economic transition from ship labor to innovation and they do not believe their current education system can help them make this transition.  In actuality, according to Yong Zaho’s (2012) research, there is a negative correclation between PISA scores and entrepreneur scores (ISTE Videos, 2012).  Yet even though, American students do much more poorly in math, they actually have more confidence than Chinese students.  “Asian countries look at the lack of confidence as a problem because confidence underpins creativity and entrepreneurship, underpins the drive to be innovative,” (ISTE Videos, 2012) a skill needed to meet the demands of their changing economy.  Like China, America is experiencing "fundamental changes in the economy, jobs, and businesses (that) have reshaped industry and the nature of work” (NCTE, 2009, pg. 15).  It is great that our students feel confident in their abilities but this confidence must transfer to technology as well.  Multimodal instruction fills this need because it “is comprised of multiple modes or communicative forms (i.e., digital, visual, spatial, musical, etc.) within various sign systems that carry meanings recognized and understood by a social collective (Sanders & Albers, n.d., pg 8). 

“Now some literacy experts want the federal tests known as the nation’s report card to include a digital reading component” (Rich, 2008, para. 61), however, is this truly what we need in educational reform? In Yong Zhao’s speech (2012), he states, “If you want to compete over one thing, over test scores I can bet you, like me, I did, in those impoverished classrooms, I can do this but that is reducing a 10,000 dollar education to a 10 dollar education” (ISTE Videos, 2012).  Does the gap between test scores matter?  What are we trying to measuring and are our current evaluations measuring this task?  What does the future require?  Rather than focusing on standards-based test scores, we should be focusing on how to best help “people to critically evaluate and cultivate best practices” (Greenhow & Gleason, 2012, pg 463) in regards to preparing our students for entrepreneurial minded careers.  

Resources

Alvermann, D., Hagood, M., and Williams, K.  (2001, June).  Image, language, and sound:  Making meaning with popular culture texts.  Reading Online, 4(11).  Available: http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=/newliteracies/action/alvermann/index.html

Greenhow, C. & Gleason, B.  (2012).  Twitteracy: Tweeting as a new literacy practice.  The Educational Forum, 76, 463-477.  http://www.kdp.org/publications/theeducationalforum/pdf/TEF764_Greenhow_Gleason%20%282%29.pdf

ISTE Videos. (Producer). (2012, July 9).  ISTE 2012 Tuesday keynote featuring Yong Zhao.  [You Tube video].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKXeNKsjoMI

National Council of Teachers of English. (2009).  Literacy leaning in the 21^st century.  Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Magazine/CC0183_Brief_Literacy.pdf

Rich, M. (2008). Literacy debate: Online, r u really reading? New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Sanders, J. and Albers, P.  (n.d.)  Multimodal literacies: An introduction.  Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:ZnRBedCgj_IJ:https://secure.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Books/Sample/32142Intro_x.pdf+are+literacies+and+Discourses+used+interchanably&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjE9pBd2JmN_g_xuDVosAj01ImYkr6u-oyjriG0tREXG8fzwbyeuhcmDw0rrbTA1rug-bgizHwuiUlocJcQwdvcCiPOxZYWVExNgQ8BmulksyeRUcUX4LJmfxLlw7e8UTdG2TuT&sig=AHIEtbSZ7RHTNL_Rfe2bglUQRg9zzCD2JA