Formative Assessments
The tools listed on D2L are very helpful in assessing students in a traditional, blended and virtual environment. Many teachers at my school already use Kahoot! to engage students and assess their current knowledge on content. Student’s enjoy playing the game and it brings out their competitive spirit. As a busy teacher, it is great to use free assessments and modify them as needed for my course. It is also helpful to have a preview of student’s level of understanding by using a review assessment. It is beneficial to learn what part of the content students struggle with and to determine which students are struggling. The game also provides feedback to students which helps them determine if they are ready for the upcoming Learning Management System (LMS) formative or summative assessment. It also can provide a student with feedback for self-reflection on whether they need to spend additional time studying or reaching out to me or their learning coach for support prior to taking the LMS assessment. This tool can easily be used in a flipped classroom by assigning students work to read or view at night and then assessing the students during the class time. Teachers can also use the feedback from the Kahoot! game to provide targeted reteaching or remediation. Screencasting The first time I used Screencast-O-Matic, I was extremely nervous. I found it helpful to write down what I wanted to convey prior to recording and I also performed a walkthrough presentation prior to recording. Those two steps, combined, reduced my anxiety and helped tremendously. I currently use a screencasting tool with my students via Adobe Connect, which is the e-learning software embedded in my school's LMS. Using the screencasting tool in Adobe Connect is helpful both in our synchronous and asynchronous sessions. In showing students how to access and navigate resources to use for research, for example, The Central Intelligence Agency’s The World Factbook, I can use the screencasting tool to walk students through navigating and finding essential information on the website. During synchronous sessions, students can ask questions and I can provide immediate feedback and answer their questions while showing them on the site. If students are viewing the content asynchronously, they can watch the recording of the screencast and pause or rewind the recording as needed. Another purpose to use the screencasting tool is for the Kahoot! game. Students use their devices to login and answer questions while they view my screencast of questions. Teachers in a traditional, blended or flipped learning environment can use the screencast recordings of step by step instructions. This will limit the number of times a student asks a student how to complete a task with numerous steps. Teachers can also use the Kahoot! game for students on BYOD day, one-on-one learning sessions or students working in stations or groups to assess learning. Please find below my screencast describing and comparing Edpuzzle and Nearblog: Screencast Recording on Tools
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Alan November does a great job of providing an eye-opening reflection on student learning and how teachers need to teach in the digital age. As a parent of young children and an adult child, I both agree with and disagree with his theory that educators should entirely change teaching methods that are proven to work. Young children need a proper foundation developed prior to reaching the higher levels of blooms taxonomy that November desires students to attain. As a former teacher of high school students, and as a parent of an adult student, I do however, agree with November’s statement, “When students have purpose in their work (e.g. making a contribution), they take more responsibility for quality.” Students need to be provided with a sense of purpose, a collaborative space to think critically, and with skills that enable them to solve problems. As a teacher of students in a virtual school, it is all too common for students to copy and paste answers to open ended questions from the internet. They use sites such as Answers.com, Quizlet.com, Wikipedia, Course Hero, and the often used by my students, Brainly.com and Jiksha.com. As a result, I do not look forward to grading their LMS generated quizzes and tests. I do enjoy reading and grading their discussion prompt answers with responses to peers and their projects. I agree with November, because students need teachers to create the higher order thinking questions and problem solving-based assignments, while helping them make connections with others as they analyze content in an authentic context using 21st century skills.
I am looking forward to learning about critical thinking tools to help me develop life-long learners and problem solvers of my general education students, but I especially am looking to learn about specific tools to help my students with IEPs and ELL students. While showing a brief video to my students last week, one of my students reminded me that I did not turn on the closed captioning while showing the video. I appreciated the student’s awareness of her learning style. I was able to replay the video later for her and the rest of the class with the closed captioning. Many of my students benefit from this type of tool, but not all of them are as self-aware or as confident as the one student who spoke up and asked me to address her need. I address multiple intelligences in my lessons, but adding components of universal design, that include the facets of representation, action & expression, and engagement would greatly benefit my students. As an educator in a virtual school, we collaborate constantly using Google Hangouts. We use it to share ideas, provide feedback and to conduct meetings. We also use our Google Drive to share and collaborate on documents, presentations, resources for lesson planning, and professional development. In addition to receiving training documents on Google Drive, we also receive trainings via our LMS and via Adobe Connect. As grade school teachers in this virtual environment, we are at the forefront of the next generation of education, but we are still learning how to best use tools in this setting. Our students come from a variety of back grounds with varying learning styles and skill levels. We must meet them where they are. We use e-text, video, games, synchronous sessions, recordings, our LMS and a variety of other resources to guide our students’ learning, and at times, we provide students with choice in determining the form of their assessment. I would be the first to admit however, that we sometimes fall short in teaching our students additional skills that would enable them to own their learning, while collaborating and learning other’s points of view. I believe that once teachers are trained in effectively using the appropriate resources to support our students with IEPs and ELL students, we will enhance and advance all students learning experiences. During ITEC 8500 I learned about the positive impact of social media, how to work collaboratively with a peer on using a new technology, and the research behind the structure of my capstone. Before taking this course, I was unfamiliar with twitter and only knew what I heard on the news and other outlets. I thought it was used for entertainment purposes only. Through this course, I learned that Twitter can be used to share instructional technology knowledge and to network with others in the instructional technology field. Collaborating with a peer is not novel to me, but collaborating with a peer on selecting and learning a new technology to complete an assignment was a new experience. I thoroughly enjoyed working with my classmate to select Popplet and use the mapping program to categorize journal articles. It enabled me to learn so much about the instructional technology field while applying an authentic activity at the same time. During this course I was also able to determine the topic of my capstone and conduct research to support its creation. The readings in this course prepared me for the research that was required to support my capstone idea.
The three most important things I learned during ITEC 7305 occurred during the elevator speech, the instructional initiatives inventory and the data overview. During the elevator speech, I was able to write an persuasive statement that would provide the "why" for using data and also let everyone know their essential roles in making the process a success for our students. I learned the importance of connecting the staff to their purpose. During the instructional initiatives inventory, I learned how important it is for a school to know where it is investing its resources. Our school invests more resources into language arts than they do in math or any other subject. This brings me to the third important thing I learned. I learned how to use data to help identify areas where our school needs to improve. I also learned from our readings that the first ideas that teachers have about where the deficits are in a school and why are not always accurate. It's important to study the data a do deep dives to identify issues and come up with a plan to address them. I plan to continue this learning at our school by having dialogues with department chairs about deep diving into data to determine areas that need improvement and helping them come up with research based strategies for addressing these issues. There may be some challenges regarding the additional work that will be required for teachers to dive into the data, plan the strategies for improvement, and implement the plan. Hopefully, the teachers will remember their "why" as they progress through the process.
During ITEC 7460 I learned a great deal about who I am as a teacher and as a coach. Helping others comes naturally to me, but the requirements of this course challenged me in new and exciting ways. I learned how social networks and preconceived ideas can negatively and positively impact the attainment of my goals as an instructional coach. We were tasked to provide coaching sessions with someone in my school and I was paired with an experienced teacher who, based on the results of the adopter survey created by my PSC, is an early adopter who is willing and open to learning about new technologies. Even though she is new to the virtual environment, she is an experienced teacher. I learned from our readings that I need to always make sure that Mrs. A knows that I view her as a collaborator and peer. Because the foundation of our rapport is based on mutual respect, when she became frustrated while struggling to complete a newly mandated task, we were able to discuss the problem, step away from it, and return to it later with new vigor.
The task of creating a technology workshop was outside of my comfort zone. While I excel when working one-on-one with peers, I often become nervous when presenting to a group of my peers. After seeking guidance from the department chair about topics to present in the workshop, I was told so present on live streaming. This is a topic that I knew very little about. One of the career newsletters I read stated that a person should never lead a presentation on a topic that they know little or nothing about. My dilemma meant that I needed to become very knowledgeable about my new task very quickly, while simultaneously overcoming my nerves. Knowledge is power. Armed with my new-found knowledge about live streaming in Adobe Connect, I was able to align the selected topic with purpose. I decided to align the livestreaming topic with creating equity and increasing access at our school. Not only did it inspire me to do my best, because I was passionate about the reason for the workshop, I wasn’t nervous and my passion transferred over to my co-workers. They were all excited about the purpose for the workshop and they all agreed to put the technology they learned in to action. Knowing that my co-workers are also my collaborators helped me grow from their constructive criticism and meet their needs in the best way possible. During and after the workshop, we were able to have a positive dialogue about how we could grow the workshop forward and create an ongoing project. Professional Learning and Technological Innovation has enabled me to become effective influencer or change agent at my school and a more reflective collaborative partner with my peers. As my first class in the ITEC program, ITEC 7400 immediately challenged my preconceived ideas about what made a good project. Projects that I implemented in the past and proudly discussed with my co-workers were suddenly below par when evaluated against indicators of engaged learning. As a teacher who has always infused technology in my instruction and with student activities, I learned with chagrin that including some technology was not enough when trying to attain a LoTi of 5 or the ever illusive 6. Thank goodness for the numerous examples of technology integration in the Roblyer text which gave me new ideas and reasons for including technology in my activities. Also immeasurably helpful was both the feedback on my evaluations of project examples of LoTi by Dr. Williamson and the collaborative constructive spirit of my group mates in the discussions.
As I used the "sniff" test and researched resources to help my peers increase the Indicator s of Engaged Learning and LoTi with their Engaged Learning projects, I inevitably recognized the shortcomings in my own Engaged Learning project. The 21st Century Teaching and Learning has changed my thought processes about what it means to truly engage my students with authentic assignments and recognize their ability to direct their own learning in a positive and productive manner. Even though my students are in a virtual setting, I was challenged by this course to think about cultural responsiveness, ELL and ESL in ways that I had not even crossed my mind in my virtual setting. I realized that I had short changed myself and my students in not realizing that my virtual setting was not a limiter in interaction with my students. It was just a challenge to overcome. I learned, from this class, that with collaboration and expert advice, I will continue to become a better teacher and coach just as my students will become better learners and participants in our 21st century global society. |
E. DrakeVirtual School Educator, ITEC Ed.S. Candidate Archives
May 2019
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