I wonder what Tiger Mom would
think about the use of blogs, wikis, and surveymonkey for assessments. Since she seems to be rather technology averse as far as her kids are concerned, I wonder if she’d relent if they were required for a class.
The Sunday Morning segment today indicated that she is a Yale law professor. I’d like to audit her class to see what type of a teacher she is–learner-centered or teacher-centered.
I wasn’t sure what to expect in the online assessment class. Visions of surveymonkey-type sites first came to mind. But as we progressed through the week, I discovered that what I might label as an “assignment” (students practicing what they learned) is really (or can be) an “assessment.”
At this point in the class, I’m still figuring out the difference between an assignment and an assessment; perhaps there isn’t a difference. But from the discussions I think that maybe an assignment is an exercise used to see if a student understands factual information, subject-specific vocabulary, or basic operations. In other words, an assignment checks to see if the students understood the teacher-centered or curriculum-centered material, the lower-level thinking stuff.
An assessment might go deeper. Assessment gets to the critical thinking skills (synthesizing, for example) that indicates a deeper understanding of what a student has learned. Assessment seems to be student-centered and self-evaluative.
In the online class I teach, I struggle with getting to know the students on a personal level. The interview assignment gave me an idea to establish relationships with them. Since we have the Google Education portal, I think that I will open a shared document in which all the students will answer a fun, “what-if” question. The students will all have access to the document; so they’ll get to know one another better as well.
Hi Denise,
I’m glad you want to know more about me.I also would like to know more about you and other persons in the class; with some of them I was in the two Fall classes.So I’m looking forward to know new people.
“La città della gioia” means “City of Joy”, written by Dominique Lapierre.They also had a movie version of the book (I have not seen it). Maybe you’ll find you have read the book or seen the film.Anyway it is about three persons (Hasari,Max and Paul) who at a certain point of their life find themselves in Calcutta (Kolcata, India).There they experience the everyday life of the slums people and have the opportunity to see and share with those persons the difficulties of the life.But those people even though extremely poor are full of joy in their hearts.That is kind of lessons we have to learn from them.
Yes, I’m in the marketing field, but I must confess that I don’t use assessments for my job.I’m a career changes and teaching is all new to me.This is the third class I’m taking for this certificate, because in the future I want to teach Business and Marketing classes.In a few month I’m going to move in Wisconsin and marry a lovely person, so I will take the path of teaching.
Actually I travel for my job for the fairs and furthermore I like to travel on my own to as a backpacker.I usually don’t like luxuous places, I’m happy to travel and visit different cities and friends.i’ve travelled through Europe, US and have been twice in Buenos Aires and twice in Dubai (for work). But I’d put on the top of places (still to be visited) Vietnam, and any country of Africa.Turkey affascinates me too.
I was (still I am) as fan of the ABBA’s and once in NYC saw the broadway show of Mamma Mia, which was simply marvelous.Have watched the film too.By the way I’m a real mediterranean person, since I was born and lived in Albania til the age of 20.Then I moved in Italy.Have been in Greece (Athen) too, where I have some relatives.
So Denise, this is me in a few lines.And I’m sure we will have the opportunity to know each other much better and I’m looking to get from all the persons in the class the precious help I need on this new challenge.
Please feel free to ask me other questions if you have any.
Have a nice evening!
Albana
Ooops, here is evening now,while it is still midday by you.I have my daily conversation with my future husband, so I’m continuosly in contact with your area.
Photo: NASA
Denise and her husband live right outside of Stoddard, WI, which is just south of LaCrosse. She lives close to the Mississippi River out in the country, which I imagine is just beautiful!
Denise has a BA in business education and an MA in Education–Library Media Studies. She has been a librarian media specialist for almost 20 years! That’s quite a record. She said she is finished earning degrees, but she is enrolled in this course because she wants to earn the online teaching and learning certification. She also currently teaches an online course for high school students and would like more options for assessment.
She has the same problem I do with online courses: finding the time to do it the way she really wants to. Hopefully this course will give us some “pre-made” tools that we can use toward that goal.
Tania Messina
Collaboration and Assessment
For the past two weeks, I’ve been immersed in research and study of online assessments. Exposure to this information has me wondering what types of assessments I already do using technology.
I’ve already altered one activity I do with 6th graders. To teach them the finer points of locating information on a particular topic, the students develop a poll that is given to all of the middle school students to determine their nonschool-related interests and hobbies. In the past, the students would brainstorm questions in groups of 4 with one student acting as the record keeper. I would move to each group to make sure that all members were participating, but when I moved away from a group, I didn’t know what was going on with the group. The number of questions that the students developed were not extensive enough to give us a good idea of how students spent their time outside of class or what their interests and dreams were. Plus, the whole task of writing down the questions with pencil and paper slowed down the whole process.
Today, we brainstormed questions a little differently. I opened a shared Google document for the class. Each student brainstormed questions and added them to the shared document. I was able to monitor who was contributing by the “flags” that appeared in the document indicating who was editing the document. If I didn’t see a student’s name, I could ask them if they needed further directions or if they were having trouble with the technology. As I watched the document change, I pointed out questions that would yield lots of answers. Then the students could see right away what the expectation of a “good question” looked like.
The students loved this exercise! One student even said “That was so much fun!” When I asked her why, she said, “It’s like being in a chat room.” I had to agree with her on that point.
As a teacher, I liked it, too. Not only did the shared document exercise yield more and better questions for our pool, it served as an immediate assessment for whether or not each student understood the task. If not, I could provide an intervention immediately.
I like that the online assessment class is giving me ideas to incorporate in the classes I’m teaching right now.
Learner- v. Teacher-Centered
I was able to drag the descriptors to the correct box. I got one wrong but not because I didn’t know the answer. My mouse slipped as I was dragging. I agree with my results and found the descriptors easy to identify. Again, the subject of ”control” slipped into my mind as I was completing the exercise. Sometimes, it’s hard for teachers to admit that they too are learning which is why, I guess, it’s difficult for teachers to give a new technology a try in their classrooms. Assessing and then reteaching, if that’s necessary, might seem like the teacher didn’t “do their job right the first time” and perhaps that’s difficult for teachers to admit. Right now, the 5th graders are learning how to find nonfiction books using the Dewey Decimal System. I assess after each hands-on activity and then try a different activity. The assessment is quite easy actually as putting numbers in a correct order can only be right or wrong. After reteaching, students do better on the next hands-on activity and then we can proceed to something a little more challenging.
The challenge is to make teaching to standards a more learner-focused exercise . . . A difficult task to be sure.
