The Connected Educator Month (CEM) initiative networks educators and education stakeholders through connected professional learning experiences worldwide. Over the past three years, millions of educators and others around the world have participated in hundreds of professional development and other educational opportunities, offering highly distributed, diverse, and engaging activities to all stakeholders at all levels.
This year NCTE is again a theme leader. Our topic is, “Innovations in Assessment“. Assessment is something educators use daily to gauge what students are learning and inform how they teach. Assessments come in many different forms and serve different purposes. However, most public conversation around assessment tends to focus on state testing and its use for evaluating teachers and schools. How might we shift the conversation toward a more holistic and well-rounded understanding of how we can know what kids know and can do?
Join us throughout October (and beyond!) for core programming being planned by NCTE and our partners. In addition, follow along as we take on the theme Challenge, “How can we re-envision assessments for accountability and equity?”
We invite everyone with something to contribute to this conversation around this topic to do so in several ways:
- Post Your Events: Consider hosting free online events (webinars, Twitter chats, video viewings, discussions, etc.) during Connected Educator Month dealing with assessment. Put it on the CEM calendar and be sure to indicate the connection to the Innovations in Assessment theme. If you have online events already scheduled around this theme, please post those too. We will help to get the word out about them.
- Be a Part of NCTE-Hosted Activities: Share with us how you would like to participate in an event we are scheduling (blogging, online discussion panel, radio broadcast, discussion board, etc.) or put us in touch with others you know whose voices should be a part of this assessment conversation. We’ll be sharing more information about what we have planned on this page soon.
- Get Others Involved: Share information about this theme and CEM in general through your networks and on social media.
- Blog for Us: We’re looking to share unique perspectives on this topic, so if you have a particular take on Innovations in Assessment you’d like to share, let us know and we’ll find a place to post your thoughts.
- Focus your contributions on the Challenge: How can we re-envision assessments for accountability and equity?
Ready to join in? Let Lisa Fink, who is leading the NCTE CEM team, know by writing her at lfink@ncte.org.