This digest compiles key industry resources and insights shared in our July 2024 Membership newsletter. This July we covered a variety of topics. We explore critical insights and frameworks to enhance family engagement and educational strategies. We also delve into practical tips for identifying gifted English learners and the nuanced impact of ‘little data’ in personalized education.
Possip’s Manager of Knowledge and Content, Mandy Wallace, provides a compilation of what we’ve been thinking about this July.
Summarizing each piece, we suggest ways to leverage these ideas for better communication and engagement in your community.
Quick Links from July
- Forget Big Data—Little Data Is Making Learning Personal | Wired
- 15 Tips for Improving Identification of Gifted EL Students | University of Connecticut: National Center for Research on Gifted Education
- Why I Teach (YouTube) | Nashville Public Education Foundation
What We Are Watching
Why I Teach (YouTube) | Nashville Public Education Foundation
Our friends at the Nashville Public Education Foundation recently debuted their new short film called “Why I Teach” on YouTube. It captures a day in the lives of three dedicated teachers, from morning farewells to their families to their interactions with students and peers, and finally, returning home. Their deep commitment to their students is both inspiring and a reminder of the dedication common among teachers.
Learn more and watch the film here as you prepare to welcome your teachers back to school!
What We Are Thinking About
15 Tips for Improving Identification of Gifted EL Students | University of Connecticut: National Center for Research on Gifted Education
Last month I attended a symposium by the Nashville Public Education Foundation. Dr. Jeanne Fain from Lipscomb University highlighted the achievements and potential of Emerging Bilingual students. Inspired by her talk, I wondered how we can better support children learning a new language alongside their fluent peers. This led me to discover 15 useful tips for identifying gifted English learners, providing a great starting point for educators.
Here is a quick summary of the tips therein:
- Adopt universal screening with culturally sensitive and language-appropriate assessments, including nonverbal ability tests, to monitor and identify students in selected grades.
- Create alternative pathways for identifying gifted students using native language assessments and ongoing evaluations by multilingual psychologists. Supplement by preparatory programs to enhance necessary skills.
- Form a diverse identification committee to ensure effective communication and collaboration across departments. This enhances the school’s ability to spot and nurture potential.
- Lastly, provide professional development to promote equitable representation of English learners in gifted programs and diversify the teaching staff to mirror the student community.
Do these tips resonate with your strategy to identify and engage gifted EB students?
What We Are Thinking About
Forget Big Data—Little Data Is Making Learning Personal | Wired
This read was fascinating for me to think about what schools could be- hands-on for both individuals and groups and project-based learning, that is paired with tech-enabled very personalized lessons. As defined in the article, Mark Bonchek, CEO of the consulting firm Shift Thinking, defined big and little data in a 2013 as:
Big data: “what organizations know about people.”
Little data: “what we know about ourselves.”
The article made me wonder how tricky it is or would be for educators to analyze all that personal ‘little’ data and make meaning out of it. For example, if technology can tell you a student spent more time on a certain page than any other, what if they reread that page because they were daydreaming about baseball the first time? Or, if technology shows you what they highlight on an electronic page, what if they highlighted something they wanted to share with their crush and not because it was tied to a central theme?
There are so many intricacies to human action that it seems daunting to me for an educator with multiple classes to make meaning of it in an energy and time efficient way. Whereas, big data gives space for some of those outliers. It’s a more macro view of how students perform or react.
What are your thoughts? How does your school use little and big data already to personalize learning experiences?
