There was a time when every time a student had to communicate new learning, it had to be using pens, papers, and written language. A research paper had to be written up. Project work meant a written report. End of a unit meant a written test. That is no longer the case thanks to among other reasons, the work of Howard Gardner on Multiple Intelligences. We now know there are many ways to demonstrate new learning. In order to enable those many different ways - speeches, drawings, diagrams, videos, interviews, dialogues, plays, music, poetry - we do our best, or we should do our best, to enable students to choose how they want to demonstrate their new learning. So now we call them culminating performance tasks and these can be narrowly defined so that students have to try create in different ways or they be left to the discretion of the student. I u ...