What are the 3 most important things you learned during this course?
I must say the GA GOSA site was one of the greatest things I learned about. I have used other sites to find data before but GOSA will be where I go from now on. The 2nd thing would be Excel. I am fairly familiar with Excel, but I had not used many of those features in quite a while. Knowing how to sort and graph data helps it be more engaging and useful. Lastly, the data vocabulary has helped me in my new role as Department Chair be more confident when I talk about assessments and PLCs.
What was the most valuable field experience in this course and why? How do you plan to continue applying this learning in your school?
The Summative Assessment Analysis i found to be the most valuable. In PLCs we are always looking at our assessments and talking about how the students perform. This related and taught me better vocabulary to be confident with what we are seeing in the data. I have used the terms Validity, Inflation, and Reliable many times since this assignment. Now being the Department Chair I am on the Data Team. This experience will give me skills moving forward in my new role. Our next step is talking about teacher clarity in regards to standards. Using the skills here I will be able to dive into assessment scores and train my team better.
What challenges do you anticipate as you continue to implement these ideas in your school?
The challenging part I have started to experience. Even when you have the data to show the trends people sometimes still cannot accept it or look past uncontrollables. I will be on a team that has time to dive into data like this. A challenge I see for our PLC is time. To complete a thorough dive into assessments it takes a lot of time to set up the tool to collect. The assessment also must be designed to help aggregate the data more efficiently. With us doing common assessments and having to agree I can see others not wanting to take this time.