What will they think of next?
How about software to teach social-emotional learning?
Would it impress you to know that Mark Zuckerberg is backing this venture?
“Boston-based Panorama provides software to help public K-12 systems understand how self-esteem, family engagement and other factors affect student achievement.
“Panorama’s goal: “helping school districts take a more holistic view at growing and developing a child,” says CEO Aaron Feuer.
“The software, called Panorama Student Success, is being used in 400 school districts, including New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Dallas.
“Panorama aims to integrate the software with 300 other educational-data tools, from 20. The company’s Series B funding was led by the Emerson Collective with backing from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Spark Capital, Owl Ventures, and SoftTechVC.
“Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg backed Panorama’s 2013 $4 million seed funding round.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The company’s Series B funding was led by the Emerson Collective…”
The Emerson Collective is Laurene Powell Jobs’ organization. It’s also where Arne Duncan has been put out to pasture after his disasterous turn as the Secretary of Education. How fortunate is Duncan that DeVos followed him, or he surely would have been the worst ever head of the DOE.
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Duncan still is the worst ever. DeVos hasn’t put in time enough to earn that title yet, although as a deform phenom, she is quickly gaining on the dunkster’s legacy.
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Duane, I agree. Betsy has not yet done as much damage as Duncan. Arne paved the way for Betsy. Worse, he convinced many Democrats that progressives should support high stakes testing, use test scores to evaluate teachers, turn low scoring schools over to corptate charter chains, and close schools with low scores.
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Betsy had the poetntial to be worse, but she can’t keep her mouth shut.
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We need to keep in mind the other bits beside K-12 education that the Betsy is destroying – hindering students from getting rid of debt incurred from faux colleges like Trump University, using military families as a pretext for vouchers, gutting Title IX protections, for examples.
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Can’t disagree with you on those points, Christine. DeVos just hasn’t accumulated enough time in office yet. Vote still goes to Blarney Arne.
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Still more:
https://go.propublica.org/e/125411/l-utm-campaign-dailynewsletter/5843vc/237854474
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Still doesn’t convince me. She hasn’t had the staying power-LOL! To be a public education Hall of Shame member one has to have staying power. Now don’t get me wrong, DeVos is a phenom, but still only in her sophomore year. Will she succumb to the infamous sophomore slump that so many phenoms go through?
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One more: https://t.co/3cly9S6uwU
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Better link:
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“Software to teach social-emotional learning?
Because actual, live teachers aren’t proficient enough?
And where will all that collected data on the students go?
Another episode in the dystopian future all-tech, all-of-the-time programming, courtesy of the Corporate Rheeformers.
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This is SICK! Instead of listening to high tech on a computer how about having social workers who are human? How about live interactions with people who understand and show real compassion and caring?
I can envision a future whereby students are in a sound proof room listening to how to become a human person. Social interactions need not be with real people. I think I’ve been watching too many sci-fi movies. The endings on those are never good.
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Just watch The Giver…the concept is true to what is happening right now.
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We have used Panorama in Los Angeles.
The data from school experience survey is used to drill down into what the data is telling us. The teachers loved it. They had actionable, easy to understand data to help drive their Social Emotional Learning Instruction.
The real live wonderful, talented teachers were grateful to have a tool that was easy to understand, easy to use and have measurable impact. It does not teach Social Emotional Learning, it helps guide the implementation, by real people.
So folks, Panorama is a good thing and not a bad thing. I highly recommend it. I pushed hard for it to be used in LA.
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Run along and collect your paycheck now. You’ve done a good day’s work. I’d suggest a shower, but no amount of soap and hot water can wash off that kind of mendacity.
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This is exactly what’s wrong with the teaching profession now. This is why they want experienced teachers gone and out of the way. The new generation of teachers just down load their curriculum for the day and Common Chore, drill, skill and kill all the love of learning out of the school day. The reforms have made their way into teaching colleges…along with the TFA fake teachers that are proliferating the classrooms. Of course these young teachers love the “data”. It’s all that they have known….they are the digital natives and they have been brainwashed into thinking that tech is God.
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One billion likes, Dienne!
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Lisa M,
“Common chore”. Love that!
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By the way, what the hell did the “data” tell you that a reasonably functional human (which apparently your teachers are not) couldn’t have told you? You need a non-human object to tell you how young human beings are able to function as humans? Please seek a different profession. At least you’re 2,000 miles away from my kids.
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Lori,
“. . . and have measurable impact.”
Please tell us what is the agreed upon by the users, the standard unit of measurement for that “impact”.
That is a serious request. Please let us know.
Thanks,
Duane
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One too many “the’s” in the request. Ay ay ay
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🙂
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Hmmm…does one ever question surveys and the language used in them?? I do. Of course, I question everything. Whenever I get a survey, I read a few questions, see the bias and how the questions direct my answers in a certain way and then click right out of the whole thing. Most surveys are garbage.
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No doubt Mamie! And, yes, I do the same thing.
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“Most surveys are garbage.”
How long have you felt this way? (Pick ONE):
___ A few days
___ Several weeks
___ Since November 9, 2016
___ My whole life
🙂
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As my mom would say when she wanted to avoid a question, “Why do you ask?” But, on a funny note…when my students ask who will be grading their tests at the end of the year (They know I am not trusted to do so.), I tell them I don’t know and that testing is very serious business. I tell them that their answers are kept for 75 years in a vault 1 mile underground. They laugh and ask, “Really?” Just a funny story.
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I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you didn’t see my request. Here it is again:
“. . . and have measurable impact.”
Please tell us what is the agreed upon by the users, the standard unit of measurement for that “impact”.
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My son 8th grade in public school (Howard Co, MD) came home a few weeks ago and told me they were going to have a grade wide seminar? Within a few days, an email was sent out by admin that they would be having “empathy training” over the course of 2 days. Apparently, when the “seminar” was questioned, admin had to reveal what the seminar was really about. A fun day of activities with children following their normal schedule going from classroom to classroom and working on various group activities designed to help them work in groups and to help them get along with each other better. An outside company (name unknown) would be brought in to conduct these activities in which students AND teachers would be involved. I’m a refuser of the tests, Naviance, SEL and my child is not allowed to bring home the school issued IPad. I immediately sent an email to admin informing them that my son would NOT be participating and that he would be kept home…..and the absence would be excused. I got an immediate email from admin that my wishes would be granted. PARCC testing is only 2 weeks away and our school has low scores (high FARMS population= poverty=low test scores). The VP (also testing coordinator) called me yesterday to tell me to keep my son home on testing days since the testing would be ALL DAY for 3 days and 1/2 day for 1 day (he usually goes and sits in the office for testing). She informed me that they would not attempt to have him do make ups due to his “excused” absences from the testing window. I wonder what is going on in this school? I wonder if this is why they were so accommodating? I would love to know what went on in school those 2 SEL days? This just confirms that our decision to pay for private HS is the best decision we could make for our child.
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That “empathy training seminar” sounds like perfect adminimal “look at me I’m doing something about. . .” speak! Aren’t adminimals so warm, fuzzy and cuddly?
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More CRAZINESS …
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Would it impress you to know that social engineering is based on concocted
status markers? Clothes make the man.(costumes-uniforms-sparkley badges)
You are what you drive or don’t drive. Show me your papers (title, rank, degree).
The celebrity culture, consumerism, the allure of diversionary spectacles,
continue to showcase the division of critical thinking and idiocy.
The “sway” of marketing or propaganda, IS the litmus test for consciousness,
NOT bullshit test scores, grad-rates, or the number of degree holders.
As Hamlet says in a moment of lucid madness:
“The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body.”
In other words, the body is with the concocted status markers, but the
concocted status markers are not with the body.
“Panorama’s goal”: extend the concocted status-self esteem trap, to prevent
actualization, AND grab some of the keys to the kingdom of tax payer money.
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Nice, NoBrick!
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My district is doing online SEL with this; https://www.mayersonacademy.org/thriving-learning-communities/ and this; http://www.viacharacter.org/www/
Welcome to digital “research based” quantification of character traits. You thought things like grit and growth mindset were silly. One of the traits quantified with these platforms is “hope.”
The Ohio Improvement Process now recommends districts to have SEL goals, which further opened the market for these sorts of things. Unreal. Like Diane said, what will they think of next?
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Thanks for the two links. Diane spoke at the Mayerson Academy in Cincinnati while she was on a book tour. I first heard her there. The Mayerson Academy is where the Cincinnati Board of Education holds meetings and where formal professional development happens, often dog and pony shows.
For SEL, the Mayerson Academy offers some online games organized around names for character traits with a video to help market these. I note in a list of users that many are in greater Cincinnati and many are also Catholic schools.
I had not heard of the VIA institute but it too is located in Cincinnati and has this revealing info at wikipedia.
“The VIA-IS is composed of a 240 item measure of 24 character strengths (10 items per strength). VIA stands for values in action. … Since 2001, the 30-to 40-minute survey has been online for free at http://www.viacharacter.org I judge it is not for children, perhaps of use in middle or high school and for teachers. Participants are instructed to answer each item on the VIA-IS in terms of “whether the statement describes what you are like (1= very much unlike me, 5= very much like me). Sample items include “I find the world a very interesting place,” which gauges curiosity, and “I always let bygone be bygones,” which gauges forgiveness. Score reports show the participant’s strengths from 1-24, with the top 4-7 strengths considered “signature strengths”.
Overall, these resources are different from the online tests from Tripod (Ron Ferguson, MET studies) and Panorama (piloted in CORE districts, California). Other tests and prompts for curricula are in the mix.
Brainology is the online program with tests from Carol Dweck (growth and fixed mindset middle school). Brainology offers a “badge” for teachers with proven competency in Dweck’s theory and documented use of it with students.
The Yale Ruler program for SEL (Recognize, Understand, Label, Express, Regulate your emotions) has some teaching aids to name emotions and to place names of emotions on a scale for degree of pleasantness (vertical axis) and intensity (horizontal axis). Like Bainology, Yale has online and onsite training for teachers.
Kimochis (Japanese for feeling, mood, sensation) includes soft Pokemon-Like characters for students to pass around as prompts for discussion of their own feelings and to guess how others might feel. These are used in grades k-3 in some Rocketship schools. For the upper grades, there are characters developed for “having mixed feelings” and for “sudden changes in feelings.” YouTube videos and a guide book are part of this package.
The Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) offers online training for teachers, but CASEL also collaborates on writing standards for SEL and evaluating tests for SEL. CASEL is cited as the authority for Illinois SEL standards, among the first in the nation and beginning in pre-school. CASEL’s work is rooted in sociology, especially Albert Bandura’s demonstrations of learned aggression in young children. There is often little difference between SEL and character education concepts (e.g., self-control, self-management; social intelligence, social awareness).
The big and strange news is that Angela Duckworth’s Character Lab with character strengths and skills identified as Zest, Grit, Optimism, Self-control, Gratitude, Social Intelligence and Curiosity will be offering that fare toTeach for America recruits enrolled in the no-graduate faculty Relay Graduate School of Education. The TFA recruits also have to master Doug Lemov’s 49 non-nonsense Teach Like a Champion techniques, all clearly devoted to “self-control” and “grit” and skills in mustering efficient and effective displays of subservience to the teacher.
And one more, endorsed by Rutgers’ Social Emotional Learning Lab expert Dr. Maurice Elias, for the wee folk under age 6. From a press release: Bouncy’s You Can Learn for the “most challenged four to six year olds is a suite of apps with a teacher’s edition. The avatar-based apps use videos, games and the adventures of animated avatars to instill academic mindsets. These mindsets include caring about learning, believing you can learn, knowing that learning requires effort and grit—practice and persistence.” The package includes a “Howmuch-ometer” for young students to register their own mindsets, multilingual guidance for families, data management tools for teachers.
Bottom line: SEL is big business. It is filling in for on-site and in home caring adults and peers, and professionals certified in clinical psychology, school counseling and school social work.
It is being treated as a palliative for students who are still being subjected to too many tests and test preps, too few opportunities to learn how to get along with others when the rules are not clear, and more.
The underlying ethic is that you kids have to learn to manage your emotions (self-mange) and if you can’t take the ups and downs you will at least learn how to fake being full of zest, grit, kindness, and so on. If I sound crotchety, it is from reading too much hype about SEL.
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Laura H. Chapman: “It is being treated as a palliative for students who are still being subjected to too many tests and test preps, too few opportunities to learn how to get along with others when the rules are not clear, and more.”
How about NO tests so that students don’t have to be subjected to correcting the problems of ‘too many tests and test prep’? Should we be happy that tech companies are acknowledging that computerized tests are causing problems for students? And the answer is more computer work?
Glad I’m retired so that I don’t have to stress out my brain from all this needless crap. Personal involvement through human contact is the best way to learn. Teachers are much better at seeing problems than any computer. Children playing with toys, and each other is the best way to learn when young. They need more opportunities to learn how to get along with each other at an early age. Adding tech studies and taking away play time is a disaster. Taking away recess for kids is another disaster.
Administrators who fall for all of this need to find some other way to make themselves feel like they have accomplished something useful.
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…because Facebook’s previous attempts to help people connect have worked out so well…
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“Panorama’s goals. . . ”
I first read that as “Paranormal’s goals”. Hmmmmm.
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Mark *uckerberg’s (replace the asterisk with any letter you want but not the “Z”) next program will be software to reverse the damage caused by poverty to a child’s physical and mental development without doing anything to end that poverty. What it will do is create another river of money flowing into *uckerber and Facebook’s bank accounts increasing their wealth and profits.
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How about we name him Uberjerk?!
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Better yet, sentence *uckerberg to an Uber self-driving car in Arizona and he can’t leave the car that never stops driving itself around for at least five years. He has to live in that car 24/7, and can’t step outside of it and the only time that car stops is to gas up. One passenger seat in front can be converted to a porta potty and he can eat all his meals at fast food drive-throughs.
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I use books. Paper books. I teach with books. My district tries to get me to use software. They try. My students and their parents love me.
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Good for you. You certainly have my respect.
School has become the only place where kids can get a break from the incessant electronic “drumming” . Many teachers ban smart phones from class, so if a teacher doesn’t use other gadgetry in the lessons, it at least gives kids an hour to actually think.
The idea that tech is “necessary” for k-12 education is just scare mongering by people like Bill Gates and Laurene Jobs who require a new market in schools to satisfy their voracious greed.
Isaac Newton never had a computer. Nor did William Shakespeare. Nor Albert Einstein. Nor Robert Frost. And look how — and what — they turned out.
In the intellectual department, people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg are not just not in the same league but not even on the same planet with the former folks. The latter are very shallow thinkers, if one can even call them “thinkers”.
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“The Mood Meter”
An app is what we need
To tell us how kids feel
Control their fervor speed
And keep on even keel
To keep them from the harm
That comes from ups and downs
With very loud alarm
And vids of dancing clowns
That shocks them when they stray
From straight and narrow path
(And sends them on their way
To certain psycho path)
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“Social Emotional Learning (SEL)”
SEL SEL SEL
It’s all about
Lacks an “L”
But SELLs them out
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SEL is pretty damn dystopian. Here’s something the edu-preneurs are cooking up that’s arguably worse:
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Software to teach emotional learning?
Awesome, let’s bring that in right after we have the NRA teach non-violent conflict resolution.
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From Lori Vollante’s post it sounds like this is a big data intake terminal with lots of checkboxes and prompts. She says they love it but what makes it different from a paper survey? Does it store information? Do parents have to consent? Who sees the data? I picture a “product” that includes links to research, like if your student has violent ideation, click this link to learn about teen psychosis… But I don’t get the personalization part – do corporations learn all about how messed up kids are so they can refine products or sell data? Who knows, did Lori read the terms and conditions?
I’m just waiting for the first automated suicide help line. Press one if you feel like everyone hates you, press two if you feel like you are going to hurt yourself, press three if you feel you might hurt others…
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