Finding and posting videos and assessment stories

I wanted to find and then post here a video of Grant Wiggins discussing his Understanding by Design. I wanted to hear his theories in his own voice, thinking that would add an extra dimension to the PowerPoint slides we viewed during class last week. Unfortunately, it's not possible to embed his videos here. You can view them by searching for "Grant Wiggins" in YouTube.

I decided to look further for videos about assessment for learning. I wanted to find another way of understanding the concept as well as practice the skill of embedding a video on a blog. That's how I found Ramona Pierson's story.

Ramona Pierson has a remarkable personal story of triumph and recovery after a horrific accident. Now, she is creating algorithms for matching students and their learning needs. I came across her TED talks while I was looking for something else. How often does this happen on the web?

I'm most impressed with her recovery following an 18 month coma and a long period of being unable to see or talk. A number of academic degrees later (including two doctorates!), she wants to revolutionize education. She aims to invent ways to deliver exactly what a student needs in order to learn. It's a prescriptive approach, but she doesn't describe exactly how the students' needs will be discovered/diagnosed.

She's a driven, inspiring thinker, but her methods don't seem to fit in the picture of alternative assessment that we've been studying. What do you think?