Assessment Tools

I really like the idea of rubrics for assessment purposes, regardless of whether technology is involved or not.  Rubrics offer a great opportunity for teachers to monitor a student’s progress and find their weaknesses both formative and summative assessment purposes.  I believe as a teacher in order to have a clear idea of what you are expecting from a student you need the assessment tool.  This takes out the guess work for the teacher and the student and often the parent that may be assisting the student.

I believe that clicker assessment tools would be most useful as a review tool in the classroom.  This resource would allow teachers to get an idea of how well the classroom as a whole understands the material as they could use their clicker to answer questions simultaneously.

Inspiration/Kidspiration software allows the students to want to be more interactive in the assignment which allows the educator to disseminate the student’s knowledge level. I believe any method that gains and keeps the student’s attention is a positive resource.

Jonassen, D, Howland, J, Marra, R, & Crismond, D. (2008). Meaningful learning with technology. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Merrill/ Prentice Hall

Digital Storytelling

Our text explains Digital Storytelling by Kate Kemker as technology not being the focus of the lesson’s activity, but rather the tool used to create the story.  Digital storytelling allows the student to utilize their critical thinking skills through, first, researching, writing and organizing information about the structure of their story.  Second, critical thinking skills are applied via collaboration with other students in organizing the various roles that will be played in the video for the story.  Finally, digital storytelling allows for critical thinking by students when they edit their video in the final stage of postproduction.  Kate Kemker suggests that a rubric should be used to help the students access their progress.  I believe digital storytelling could work in my classroom, but only with matured students (possibly grades 7^th grade and up).  Undeniably, the opportunities digital storytelling offers students to practice their creative skills which would require critical thinking skills would be a benefit to the student.

The textbook suggests a visualization tool referred to as Geometric Supposer to help students visualize mathematical concepts in geometry.  Through the process of constructing and manipulating geometric objects student’s can explore and the relationships within and between the objects.  This could be a good tool for testing the knowledge and even expanding upon the student’s knowledge of geometry.  This visualization tool offers the promotion of analytical reasoning on the student’s part.

Everyone learns differently, so when posed the question “Is it possible to learn from watching TV instruction in and of itself?” I believe it would depend upon the learner, but it all likely hood, there would need to be some form of hands on or verbal assessment of processed skills.  As the text offers, a mental process is also involved with performance of any skill.  There is a need to perform certain process such as making decisions, questioning and ultimately resolving the task at hand.  This feedback, even if only a think aloud step is incorporated into the TV learning process seems to me to be a necessary one.

Jonassen, D, Howland, J, Marra, R, & Crismond, D. (2008). Meaningful learning with technology. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Merrill/ Prentice Hall