Assessment Reflections

I've really learned a lot in this class. The biggest concept, I think, is that so many applications that I never thought of "in that way" can be used as an assessment option in the online setting. In addtion, the vast majority of those assessment applications force the student to work at a high level of Bloom's Taxonomy, which means less likelihood of plagiarism as well as letting the student build new scaffolds for their learning.

I found this link which does a really nice job of breaking down the roles of learning, teaching, and assessing in school and how they intertwine with each other. Everyone has a role to play--which ties nicely into the theme of this post--how online assessments require students to play an active role in their own learning. Whether it's discussion boards, applications, wikis or blogs, online assessing forces the student to create their own new knowledge, which in my opinion, is real learning.

Working on the Final Project

This has been a week for "challenges." First I had a huge writer's block! I knew what I wanted to do for my project, but getting it on paper was not as simple as it should have been. Then, I switched Internet providers, and the transition was not nearly as easy as it should have been. So, my access to working on the final project was not as simple as I'd liked. I finally got my Internet issues figured out on Tuesday, only to discover that the video card on my computer was failing! I quickly saved my work so far to a thumb drive, but I had to wait until I could get computer access to do anything. So, it's been an intense last couple of days trying to get caught up!

Actually, my challenges this week have made me think about my potential students. Teachers who will be taking this class could be total technology newbies, and challenges such as I endured this last week would not make them excited about incorporating technology into the classroom! Hopefully, I've designed this course and the assessments in it to be as user-friendly as possible!

Kathy

Cybercoaching--the Way We Should All Teach

This week we've been reading about cybercoaching, which I've really been looking forward to. My new job will entail a lot of coaching--F2F and cyber, so I enjoyed hearing what the experts had to say. I'm particularly taken with the idea of the regular checkins--that's an idea I plan to take with me for sure! Getting those regular checkins from your students allows you to make subtle adjustments along the way. I once attended a workshop from a teacher who had designed her biology class so that students could meet all curricular requirements, but could use different learning styles to do so. She had daily checkins with her students to see if they needed to move to a different "track." We should all strive to do that.

Bloom, Part Two

Microsoft Word - Assessment taxonomy - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Microsoft Word - Assessment taxonomy

Woo-hooo!!!! After help from many class members, the instructor, and Googling like a madwoman, I finally did it!! I figured out how to convert my Microsoft Word document to a PDF and get the whole thing loaded onto my blog!!! Yay for me!! And yay for this nifty application I found--Scribd. Solved my problem in just a few clicks. Dontcha love technology??

And for the real reason I'm posting...

This is a table showing just a few activities from a plan for a journalism class. Many of the activities fall at the lower thinking levels, and that's not a good thing in my book. I want my journalists to be able to analyze and evaluate!! But that's a post for a different blog. If this was a class I was designing, I would definitely rework some activities to not only make them applicable for online learning, like using discussion boards and web sites for content, but I would bump up the thinking levels by asking students to analyze multmedia sites for true and accurate reporting styles, for instance.

Final Project

I think I have a plan for my final project in this class. I'm going to continue in the development process from an assignment in another class and work towards creating an online staff development class on incorporating technology into the junior high classroom. The students would experience different Web 2.0 tools and develop assignments they could use in their classrooms the next day. What do you think?

Kathy

Bloom's Taxonomy

After reading up/reviewing Bloom's Taxonomy, I found this circle that really makes it understandable and usable. It is from Clark, B. (2002). Growing up gifted:Developing the potential of children at home and at school.Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall and was found at http://www.apa.org/ed/new_blooms.html. My first favorite part about the circle was the active verbs that match up with the various levels of thinking. However, when I came back to it I realized that the learning coach in me liked the outer circle the best. It's concrete, hands-on examples of how to use the various levels of thinking in the classroom.

Can you tell we've been talking about Bloom's in class this week? :) It's just as necessary in online classes as in F2F to move towards higher-level thinking. However, this circle has made me think of it more as a continuum than a timeline. Perhaps it's the master teacher who has developed the ability to move back and forth between the sections of the circle in order to teach and then re-teach a concept.

Team Assessment Project

One of the assignments this week was to work together with a group of people to create a toolbox of online assessment applications we might want to use. I enjoyed getting to see other people's perspectives on softwares, but it was most interesting seeing the interpersonal dynamics come into play. Everyone got their part of the assignment done in time, but everyone is not necessarily on the same time schedule. Overall, I think it was a valuable experience.