Give Me a Lever Long Enough: Learning Outcomes word clouds

Welcome!

Welcome to the blog of Zaq Roberts, Associate Head of School at The Berkeley School in Berkeley, CA. I blog about a wide variety of topics, from classroom moments I witness, to administrative events and conversations, to the educational blogs, videos, and books I am reading and watching, and how they are influencing my thinking. I hope this eclectic approach will give you insight into the many ways that I am engaging in advancing the school and strengthening our program, and I welcome your thoughts and comments!

This blog takes its name from a quotation by Archimedes that reads "Give me a lever long enough, and I can move the world." The TBS mission speaks directly to the need to engage a changing world, while many of the experiences in our program focus on the development of students' agency and authority. TBS is the lever by which we all - administration, faculty, students, and parents - can together move the world to be more humane, compassionate, and responsive. To borrow an important Montessori phrase, it is our way to remake the world.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Learning Outcomes word clouds

Last week I wrote about the process we're using with faculty to create learning outcomes. In advance of tomorrow's faculty meeting, I've created word clouds based on their responses to the survey we had them fill out last month. First I coded faculty responses to each of the questions, and then used Wordle to create these clouds, setting the size of each word to reflect the relative number of times the concept was mentioned. We'll be discussing these, and also a first rough draft of learning outcomes based on all the work we've done so far this year. Click on each cloud for a close-up!

What are the dominant trends and forces in the world?