Members of Maine’s Digital Library State Network of Educators were among 80 educators from the Smarter Balanced participating states that convened July 14-17 for a marathon work session to review and evaluate resources submitted to the Digital Library. Marilyn Joyce of Brewer and Sandra Cookson of RSU 87 along with Maine DOE specialist Morgan Dunton were on hand as the Digital Library count passed 1,000 items and kept climbing.
The Smarter Balanced Digital Library is a clearinghouse of instructional resources vetted by educators trained to recognized key criteria such as alignment to standards and elements of the formative assessment process. Each resource in the library underwent a rigorous review process. This peer-reviewed process included monitoring for essential elements as well as a quality criteria review.
During the four day work session, more than 600 items were approved through the review process raising the number of resources in the library to over 1200. That number is still climbing as the library preview period continues. The Digital Library preview will end on September 30 and is expected to go live later this fall. Specific details will be shared as soon as they are available.
For more information on gaining access to the digital library during the preview, go to the Maine DOE Newsroom article on the topic or contact the Department’s English and Language Arts Specialist, Morgan Dunton at morgan.dunton@maine.gov or 207-624-6625.
Our entire faculty is taking the sample Smarter Balance tests and Middle and High School levels, so we can experience what our students will experience. We are finding out that there are difficulties in navigating the tools, glitches in the program (such as a sentence that is in the wrong place needs to be dragged to the correct place, and it cannot be moved), and I personally couldn’t finish because the test would not let me move on until I had answered the previous question, which was the sentence that could not be moved. There were also ambiguities in questions, and the inability to highlight and choose particular passages in order to answer questions. Who is working on these fixes? Also, at what point will teachers, students, and parents actually get to look at the scores? When my Juniors took the SAT, I could give them a purpose for doing it – many colleges ask for your scores. I am really wondering, what purpose am I going to give to my students for them to try their best on this? So many questions, and I don’t want these concerns to get lost.