My hope for PA's SAS Portal

I'm in recovery mode right now after about six weeks of intense work with the PA Department of Education and the PATIMS (Intermediate Unit representatives) and the Classrooms for the Future Mentors (now known as the 21st Century Teaching and Learning Program) as we put together a four day Institute designed to unveil the Standards Aligned Systems and the SAS Portal. It was a wonderful, albeit exhausting, experience and I'm very excited about the potential that this brings to Pennsylvania. This SAS system is unique to PA in many ways, and I really believe that it has the potential to put PA on the global map for Education.

One aspect of the portal will be a section containing lesson plans that have been submitted by PA teachers, vetted, and arranged by topic and standard. That will mean that any teacher can go to the portal to find quality lesson plans that focus on a given PA Standard and, soon, down to the Anchor level. Imagine a time when we can say to businesses that every child in PA is being taught to these standards.

There is one part of this process that I'm hoping will change just a bit, however. That is, the way that lesson plans make their way onto the Portal. Right now, lessons are submitted and reviewed by a small group of people who make the determination as to whether or not that lesson makes the grade and gets published. But, I'm hoping that YOU can help to make that determination.

Here's the vision: Teachers submit lesson and Unit plans to the Portal. Those plans must identify which standards and anchors are addressed in the lesson, etc. But then you - we - have a chance to rate it. There could be several categories for rating. One rating for how high it reaches on Bloom's New Taxonomy, maybe, and one rating for how it ranges in terms of its approach (didactic to constructivist, etc), another for its appropriate use of technology, another for its inclusion of "21st Century Skills", etc. And, there would be a field in which we could add a comment about the lesson. We could use that field, perhaps, to suggest an alternative website or to suggest another activity for the lesson. There would be a check box there, as well, so that we could flag those comments as being inappropriate - in case that's a concern. You get the idea. YOU/WE do the vetting.

The pluses to this kind of system, in my opinion, are many. First of all, instead of a small handful of people (who have the experience and subject matter knowledge of just a few) deciding on what qualifies as excellent, it's teachers from around the state - even from around the world who are making that determination. Subject matter experts with Masters degrees in their fields, and possibly many years of classroom experience. If you're familiar with the book, The Wisdom of Crowds, then you are aware of how powerful it is to have many people involved in making a decision like this. Instead of someone with limited science background judging the lesson, it's perhaps hundreds of science teachers deciding.

Another plus is that the vetting/rating process is continuous instead of occurring just once - a snapshot in time of what someone thought qualified as a good lesson. The world around that lesson could have changed drastically, but the lesson plan and its rating might not have. But, in a system that allows us to rate the lesson, that rating, as well as the comments to the lesson, change all the time to include better resources, better strategies, etc. One of our mentors, Ralph Maltese, a former Teacher of the Year in PA, commented to me recently that he had gone to the IMDB website to check on an old actor who was a member of his family. He was surprised to see that the actor's popularity had dropped by 6%. But, the guy has been dead for years! The point is that perceptions change over time, so what once was considered to be an outstanding lesson might one day be outdated.

In a system where we're asking for the professional opinions of our teachers to determine what is good and what could be better, we're providing constant professional development. Teachers visit the site, look at a lesson, read the discussions about the lesson, join in on those discussions, and thereby make the lesson better. Everyone benefits. And, how cool would it be to have the world be able to watch the growth of our teaches through their dialogs with other teachers? And, how cool would it be if a teacher in another country were to also suggest ways to make the lesson reach globally.

Yes, it's true that some teachers might refrain from submitting a lesson plan for fear of criticism. True. But, if I submit a lesson and it's not rated a 5 out of 5, I'm going to find out why not and adjust it accordingly. Everyone learns. Everyone - including the students - WINS!

I had a chance to talk with one of the developers of the portal and, as it turns out, this idea was already presented to the Department but was rejected. The thought was that they didn't want anything on the portal that wasn't excellent to begin with. Not a criticism of those who rejected the idea; that was just their thinking, I'm told. But, I think that when they start to REALLY think about it, they'll change their minds. I'm SURE of it.

So, keep your eye on PA, folks. "Something is going to happen. Something wonderful!"
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(UPDATE 12-15-2009)
I just heard that the decision has been made to include many (if not all) of the ideas expressed here. VERY VERY GOOD NEWS, INDEED!!!