In this unit, I’ve learned
about several different assessment tools that benefit both teachers and students.
The first time I heard the word ‘rubric’ was from my son’s fourth
grade teacher. I thought it was brilliant! The teacher was basically showing
the students exactly what to do to earn their best possible grade; it was like
a little contract. I don’t recall ever being given rubrics when I was growing
up, and as a result, there were a lot of times when I had to guess at what my
teacher wanted. Rubric Gallery is an
extremely comprehensive site, where the user can tailor a rubric by filtering
grade level, subject, type, and specialize the details of an assignment. The
end result is a ready-to-use rubric, complete with a breakdown of the percentage
of the grade allocated for each section. With Quizdom, using any web-enabled device, students are able to build
confidence by preparing more effectively for state mandated testing. Students
post-test scores increased by an average of 42% by using Quizdom’s online tools,
including quizzes, instant feedback on errors, and information on how to
correct them. Quizdom also helped teachers assess the overall knowledge base of
their students to determine areas that needed more emphasis. Software programs
available through Inspiration allow
users to integrate visual learning into the curriculum by mapping, graphing, or
diagraming their topics, while the program simultaneously creates an outline that
will subsequently guide students in their writing assignments, or provide them
with a PowerPoint ready outline to help them verbally explain their thought
process and ideas.
Over
the course of this semester, I have learned about quite a few valuable tools for
my own classroom. Some of them I’d never heard of before, and I learned some new
ways to use those tools I already knew about. Webquests
were new for me. My focus is on teaching high school English, and Webquests
will be very instrumental for students’ research and writing assignments. MS Office will be beneficial in
creating assignments using Word and Publisher, and I will undoubtedly use Excel for keeping track of students’
assignments and grades. The Multiple
Intelligences Lesson Plan was less of a technology lesson, and more of a
teaching lesson. It provided a necessary reminder that students learn differently,
and their needs should be accommodated through the use of multiple learning
formats. Blogs are a really great
way for students to demonstrate their knowledge and express themselves creatively.
The student composing the blog has a sense of working individually and can personalize a lot of aspects of it, but the ability for a teacher and student peers to critique and comment on blog
posts makes it a collaborative effort, allowing for the sharing and assessing of
knowledge. I intend to use Screencasting
to eliminate the cumbersome process of shuffling papers back and forth by
grading students assignments online and providing them with instant,
personalized online feedback both in writing and with verbal recordings. I have
used PowerPoint in the past, but I
was able to refine my skills with it and learn some new tricks. The program
will come in useful as a visual aid for classroom lectures to help keep
students engaged. Prezi was fun to
use and play with, but since I’d never used it before, it took me a really long
time, and the constant moving of everything on the screen drove me a little
crazy. I may try it again, but at this point I don’t think it would be my first
choice, especially in front of an audience full of high school students. And
finally, the e-Porfolio we created
on Google Sites was new for me. It
was a little complicated getting it set up initially, but I can certainly see
the benefits. Being able to organize and store all of a students work in one
place, and having it there to refer back to has some real benefits for the teacher
and the student. Although it will take some time to get it going initially, I
think the e-Portfolio is definitely worth the effort.
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