Next Meeting
will be November 12th!
Please email me if you want to be added to the mailing list
Next Meeting Date – Save the date email to the cluster.
The next meeting of the NW Education Cluster will be November 12th 2008 hosted by Inspiration Software (www.inspiration.com) and featuring a panel discussion on the current state of hiring and recruiting in the education market here in the northwest. The panel will include members from Inspiration Software, Insight Schools (www.insightschools.net) and Jack Farrell & Associates (www.jackfarrell.com). All three of these organizations have a local presence and can speak about their hiring and recruiting practices. The panel will be moderated by Alia Jackson.
Here are the details
When: November 12th from 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Where: Hosted by Inspiration Software
Address is 9400 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy
Suite 300
Beaverton, OR 97005-3300
http://www.inspiration.com/contact-us
Why: In this uncertain economy, hiring and retaining talent in any industry is becoming more important. Will HR departments have to change their approach in the way they recruit and retain employees in the coming months? In the past 2 years Insight School has hired over 450 in over a dozen states, Inspiration Software has also been hiring and retaining valuable employees and Deb Postlewait of Jack Farrell has worked to bring educational recruitment to the northwest. This is a great opportunity to learn about what 2 great local educational organizations have been up to as well as how recruitment can be a part of either a hiring or job seeking decision.
Agenda
There will be networking (and pizza) from about 6:00 to 6:30.
Introductions and announcements from 6:30 to 6:50
Each of the panel members will spend about 20 minutes talking about their organization and their hiring and/or recruitment practice and then there will be time for questions and answers.
Please RSVP to me. The space is limited to about 35 people. Look forward to seeing you there!
Regards,
Jim Snyder
NW Education Cluster
www.nwedcluster.com
503-702-7420
Check out the new (10/1/08) job posting from Insight Schools in the jobs section
Hello NW Ed Cluster members and friends,
This message was prepared for an outside blog but since it is more introspective we felt it would be better if just the cluster saw it.
Members of the NW Ed Cluster head east to Boston to network
One of the main reasons the NW Education Cluster exists is to share ideas and network with other like minded companies and organizations that provide services to the K-20 market. Just last week many members of the NW Ed Cluster attended EdNet (http://www.qeddata.com/Conference/EdNet/YrCurrent/EdNet.aspx) – QED’s annual Education Networking Conference – that was held in Boston.
Companies in attendance from the cluster were:
NWEA (www.nwea.org),
Learning.com (www.learning.com)
Clarity Innovations (www.clarity-innovation.com)
Inspiration Software (www.inspiration.com)
Avant Assessment (www.avantassessment.com)
MemeSpark LLC (www.memespark.com)
FableVision (www.fablevision.com) and
Jack Farrell & Associates (www.jackfarrell.com)
The goal of EdNET is to share ideas and learn about what other organizations are doing in the K-12 space. The NW Education Cluster starts all of their meetings with short introductions from everyone in attendance and so did EdNET. Everyone had 30 seconds to go on-stage in front of 450 people to talk about their organization and what they hoped to get out of the event. I was impressed with the energy and the turnout. It was the same type of energy that I see every quarter from a NW Ed Cluster meeting – only our meetings don’t involve a plane ticket or hotel room or the $1,000 conference fee!
Two events from EdNET stood out in my mind as useful and impactful to our cluster.
One was Doug Stein of Memespark giving a 5 minute Foresight talk “How Can We Afford Differentiated Learning on a Mass Indoctrination Budget? Where could/should K-12 schools and the marketplace be in five years and how do we get there?” His talk on use of data and differentiated learning hit a chord with me – many of the products and services in the Cluster attempt to do just that in the K-20 market. Here is the outline of his presentation.
Opportunities for effective differentiated learning mediated through:
* adaptive authentic (formative) assessment
* interactive constructivist/connectionist instruction (individual and small
group)
* project-based classroom design principles
...all working together in a virtuous cycle that empowers children to be creative agents (as opposed to passive receptacles or trained parrots).
One of the challenges in current practice is that it is more focused on homogeneous instruction for heterogeneous groups. We build one linear scope and sequence based on one set of standards (per state), buy one set of materials correlated to the same standards, and then hope we create a complete 'coverage' in a student's mind - but measure this indirectly with uniform directed-response testing.
Instead, we should seek the construction and *direct* measurement of 'effective' concept maps within each child. Materials and experiences should be chosen for their 'scope and composability' instead of scope and sequence. They should be adaptive and active instead of uniform and passive. Assessment should be an ongoing process of measuring each child's emerging coverage of a nonlinear coverage map and progress along a psychometrically-valid linear scale.
Finally, the effectiveness of the school, teacher, class, and student's year should be measured by 'growth' (educational value-add). The techniques of data-mining (especially segmentation and prediction) and social networking should be used to assist the student and teacher in identifying how to navigate a concept map in a way that supports both individual learning and group collaboration.
The second was a conversation I had at an evening networking party with Deb Postlewait of Jack Farrell & Associates and Andrea Sutherland of Inspiration Software on what the topic of the next Education Cluster meeting could be. With so many organizations and recruiters in the mix at EdNET there was some energy around how do companies and recruiters work together and each can leverage the other most effectively. This gave us the idea to potentially reserve our next cluster meeting talk about it. We thought there could be three things discussed.
The role of the recruiter
The role of HR
The partnership and cooperation of the two groups plus the hiring manager
Inspiration Software does not currently include recruiters in most of their hiring situations but other cluster member organizations do. Will this be the next topic of the NW Education Cluster? Stay tuned…”
Let me know if you are interested in being apart of the potential panel.
Web Survey on the Cluster
Since August 2003, the NW Education Cluster has existed to discuss issues surrounding education in the Northwest. This survey is to take stock in where the cluster is and where you would like it to go in the next year or so. Please take the time to answer the survey.
Linkedin Group
For all you Linkedin type people out there, I have created a NW Education Cluster group for you to join. Here is the link
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/108123/6E5E48001F19
EdBizBuzz column
I was the Friday’s guest columnist for http://www.edbizbuzz.com/, a daily online Education Forum by Marc Dean Millot that is covered in EdWeek. I wrote about the NW Education Cluster (Northwest Education Cluster:
SY 2008 Goals and Progress
) and the meeting is progress towards our 2008 goals. This is part of a quarterly guest column will help bring us more exposure going forward. Let me know what you think.
Also check out the April 2008 column
"Northwest Education Cluster: A Continuing Saga" on the meeting about Accelerate Oregon and the January 2008 column on "Consider the Northwest Education Cluster" as well as the blog entry by Fred Phillips, one of the founders of the cluster, titled cluster bucks.
Also, read about the April 17th 2008 meeting about Accelerate Oregon
Jim Snyder
Director of the NW Ed Cluster
Link to archive information
Link to people in the cluster
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