Student Assessment Technology
Technology can be used in the classroom for more than enhancing learning and teaching it can be used to assess students in both a formative and summative assessments. Students have a love of technology from the use of blogs, social media to online games. As a result students may find taking tests on a computer to be more enjoyable than doing a test in a more traditional manner of pen and paper. With the use of technology teachers can gather data from assessments and improve their teaching and how they approach a unit. Three tools teachers can use to assess their students with, improve their classroom with and implement in the classroom are Blubbr, Socrative, and Poll Everywhere Technology to Facilitate Ongoing Efforts to Assess Student Learning Teachers have to keep their students engaged and finding new ways to do this can seem like a challenging task. Using technology to help assess students throughout a unit can be difficult but using technology can help. Teachers who use web tools to create their assessments follow ISTE standards 2 by being able to create, customize and provide students with varied assessments that are both summative and formative. Using technology based classroom assessments focus on the use of technology by teachers and students by creating learning products, promote technology skills and examine student strengths and challenges along with the outcomes of daily classroom instructional and social actives (Salend, S. J., 2009). Teachers can spend more time with students who are not understanding the unit being taught because using the technology biased assessments throughout the units help teachers see which students need a little more help and which ones are doing fine by using daily polls, quizzes and other short assessments that can be individualized or done as a class. When teachers use technology in the form of formative assessments they are using something that is both helpful and informative in monitoring the learning progress of students and can help make decisions about how to improve instruction (Salend, S. J., 2009). Using these assessments will not only improve the classroom in both the short and long term goals but also maintain student engagement. Blubbr: Blubbr is a web tool that allows for a teacher to create a formative assessments with videos to help explain what the next question as well as to help them understand what it is that they are doing. Using this program would be more of a formative assessment during a unit to see how much a student is learning and where their learning progress is at because of the videos that are a part of the assessment. In the classroom it would be use weekly to help students understand the main points of that week with reinforcement of information and help the teacher see which students are struggling and which ones are excelling on any given week or day. Socrative: A web tool that would best for summative assessments at the end of a unit because of the types of questions that a teacher can use when creating the assessment. This web tool offers teachers a choice of multiple choice, true and false or sort answer assessments to test student knowledge after the end of the unit. In the classroom this would be a good way to see how much students learned and what knowledge was gained during the unit. It gives teachers the chance to save, examine and use their student data to change the unit and the information that is covered to give students a better understanding in the future. Poll Everywhere: Poll Everywhere, can be used daily to help teachers see what parts of the daily teaching is being understood by students, daily questions and quick information about the class as a whole. Poll Everywhere is able to be accessed by a computer, tablet or smart phone and results given in real time. This program would be used in the classroom as a formative assessment tool helping to change and direct the teaching and learning progress of students on a daily basis. Formative and Summative Assessments Formative and summative assessments are different and have different uses throughout the school year. A formative assessment is described as “a wide variety of methods that teachers use to conduct in-process evaluations of student comprehension, learning needs, and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course (Hidden curriculum, 2014, August 26)” Formative assessments are used by teachers to help see where students are struggling and where they are excelling during a unit. Meaning that formative assessments test and evaluate students’ progress within the unit. Giving the teacher an idea of who may need extra help and who is doing just fine and can work independently. A summative assessment is used to “evaluate student learning, skill acquisition, and academic achievement at the conclusion of a defined instructional period—typically at the end of a project, unit, course, semester, program, or school year (Hidden curriculum, 2014, August 26).” Such as a final or an end of year project to see where the student is after completing all the work for the period of time. The summative shows teachers what a student has learned or not learned. Technology can be used to facilitate both by using online quizzes, Google Docs, and daily or weekly polls. Pros and Cons of using Technology to Facilitate Assessment Using technology to facilitate assessments to see student learning can have a positive impact on student achievement because “it supports students to engage productively, and assists them in the development of self‐regulated learning dispositions (Baleni, Z. G., 2014).” Not only can it help students learn to do their work on their own it can also provide a system for student support while monitoring learning and provide formative feedback throughout the course (Baleni, Z. G., 2014). Many parents may argue that the use of technology in the classroom to do assessments distract students by allowing them a chance to go online and use tools that may not be constructive to what they are learning. Though when students are able to get feedback quickly and are able to stay focused on their own it can make the classroom run smoother and allow for the teacher to work with students who may not voice that they are having issues with a subject other than through daily, weekly and unit assessments. Conclusion Assessments are an ongoing process in any classroom and are used by teachers to help their students. When assessments can be done regularly teachers are able to change lessons, work with students, and save information about their students as students need. When a teacher is able to help their students in ways that encourage the students and give them support students succeed at a higher rate making using web tools like Blubbr, Poll Everywhere, and Socrative valuable tools in the classroom for many teachers. References Baleni, Z. G. (2014). Online Formative Assessment in Higher Education: Its Pros and Cons. Proceedings Of The European Conference On E-Learning, 43-47. Hidden curriculum (2014, August 26). In S. Abbott (Ed.), The glossary of education reform. Retrieved from http://edglossary.org/hidden-curriculum Salend, S. J. (2009). Technology-Based Classroom Assessments. Teaching Exceptional Children, 41(6), 48-58.
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Entry 3: Differentiating Instruction through Technology
Introduction Differentiating instruction is defined as the way in which a teacher anticipates and responds to students needs in the classroom and the variety of ways those needs need to be met (Carlson, A., n.d.). In the classroom this helps many types of learners grasp and understand their lessons by helping the student and the teacher find which teaching strategies best help the student learn. Differentiating instruction brings in more elements to the student than just a lecture and often involves teachers being open to using new technologies to improve instruction so that all types of learners can take advantage of what is being taught. A teacher who is using differentiating instruction through technology may use YouTube, Edmodo and Glogster to bring in a new content for many different types of learners. Technology to Differentiate Instruction YouTube: Students often use YouTube as a way to escape and have a few laughs because of the funny videos on the site but it can be used for more than just entertainment. YouTube is a learning tool for students and can give them free videos to use for presentations, research and help with projects they may not understand. Students can also use YouTube as a way to make video presentations of what they have learned and in doing so can use ISTE standard 1 for students by becoming creative and having fun with the project. In the classroom this can encourage students of all learning types to get involved from being on camera to being behind the scenes and working on other parts of the video that they wish to create. When students are able to create or use skills that they are comfortable with students will try harder and enjoy their work more which can improve their achievement. The use of video has its advantages in being able to show historical reenactments, concepts of motion, and observation of dangerous situations in a safe environment (P. Duffy, 2007) which allows students to experience content for the current lesson in a more realistic setting for them. Edmodo: Many students today cannot get enough of being on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, so as a teacher why not use the students love of social networking to an advantage? That is what Edmodo allows teachers to do as well as for parents. Edmodo for students and the teacher really does work on ISTE Standard 2 for students by opening up communication and collaboration. The site allows students to do assignments, share ideas, problems and helpful tips as well as getting help from the whole class and the teacher (Cauley, P., n.d.) , With Edmodo “a teacher can access numerous tools which facilitate learning and collaboration for students within a classroom, and with students from other classrooms, both near and far.( Dobler, E., 2012)” because of this it allows for all teachers to be able to give their students more than just one view on a subject and connect with people who may be more knowledgeable in that subject. Being able to grade, give feedback and help quickly through a social networking site like Edmodo means that students will be encouraged to achieve higher grades and teachers can keep track of where a student may need extra help. This site is centered on students by giving them an outlet that they would enjoy to do their homework, and communicate with their teacher. Glogster: Students of all ages enjoy interactive things and for this both teacher and student can use Glogster. What is Glogster? “In the most basic sense Glogster is a place to create interactive posters (Glogster in the Classroom, 2010)” These posters can be anything from content teaching tools created by other teachers or students, an assignment students use, or an informative experience that adds flavor to the classroom. Glogster uses ISTE Standards 1, 2, and 3 in the classroom by giving students a chance to create, collaborate, and research all in one in a fun interactive setting. As a teacher, using already made Glog’s can encourage my students to find more and have fun with what they make. In doing so can increase achievement by adding a fun assignment to the lesson plan. Pros and Cons As with any technology in the hands of children there are always good and bad. With YouTube students could become distracted looking at funny cat videos while on Edmodo students could get into a debate over a simple mistake on someone’s post. Glogster is full of all kinds of posters that have information and students could become distracted by finding posters off topic. Even though if students are left to explore these sites on their own they could become distracted. Each of these sites have a chance to be great teaching tools for students to explore their world by opening creative outlets that are more realistic to them than writing an essay and that out ways some of the cons to using them in the classroom. Concluding Paragraph Web tools are becoming used in a number of classrooms around the world and because of this it means that teachers have more access to each other and different ways of teaching. When students have a chance to explore in a safe environment like Edmodo it means that there can be collaboration with each other opening up for students to be willing to work together easier. YouTube and Glogster can be used both for information and entertainment as interactive sites and will always need to be monitored but with the right guidance students will be able to find ways to enhance their projects and have fun doing so. In the classroom all three of these sites are going to be useful in adding to differentiated instruction by giving students hands on learning, learning from those outside of the classroom and so much more. Which will enhance a classroom and a student’s experience while keeping engaged in their schoolwork. References: Carlson, A. (n.d.). What Is Differentiated Instruction? - Examples, Definition & Activities. Retrieved December 7, 2014, from http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/what-is-differentiated-instruction-examples-definition-activities.html Cauley, P. (n.d.). A Guide to Explain it all: Edmodo. Retrieved December 7, 2014, from http://www.csub.edu/~tfernandez_ulloa/Edmodo User guide.pdf Dobler, E. (2012). Flattening Classroom Walls: Edmodo Takes Teaching and Learning across the Globe. Reading Today, 29(4), 12-13. Duffy, P. (2007). Ngaging the YouTube Google-Eyed Generation Strategies for Using Web 2.0 in Teac. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 176-178. Glogster in the Classroom. (2010) ISTE Standards for Students. (2008). Retrieved December 7, 2014, from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-S_PDF.pdf Cauley, P. (n.d.). A Guide to Explain it all: Edmodo. Retrieved December 7, 2014, from http://www.csub.edu/~tfernandez_ulloa/Edmodo User guide.pdf Row 1
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