Ran across another great infographic and post, “The Inside-Out School: A  21st Century Learning Model,”  from Teachthought.com.

Here’s the infographic:

More on this later, but I particularly want to point out #7: Climate of Assessment. The first bullet point is, “Constant minor assessments replace exams.”

This is what I see happening in education reform – the move to continual formative assessments, rather than one big culminating assessment, such as an exam or final exam. I suppose people argue that the final exam is a way to make sure the student retains all the content from the term, but I wonder if this is ever really successful. I’d think a more successful model for ensuring a student retains content is to constantly build on it, week after week. Cramming for one exam doesn’t ensure that the content is learned beyond the exam. Yet, working with content, either building on it or doing more project based learning where the content is lived, may better ensure that the content sticks.