Technology Supports Authentic Assessment for President

In my last post I delved into my philosophy of assessing students.  It is rooted in authentic, non-traditional approaches of assessment.  Although it is quite possible that these assessment practices will be traditional in the near future.  This notion is supported by the overwhelming number of technological applications to classroom learning.  Students are now able to show what has been learned in much more exciting ways than just a fixed response test.  Blogs, Wikis, and personal websites, for instance, are excellent tools for students to put together portfolios of learning and receive peer and teacher feedback.  Collaboratve tools such as GoogleDocs and Blogster are excellent for students to learn to work together.  These are just some of the Web 2.0 tools that support Authentic Assessment for president.

Authentic Assessment Toolkit

Assessment is twofold. First, and most obvious, is student assessment, which should always be continuous, dynamic, formative, and never-ending. Second is the assessment of instruction. Like student assessment, assessment of instruction should be continuous and never-ending. Instruction assessment should be reflective. Assessment of instruction can be broken down into teacher assessment, material assessment, and instructional method assessment. Please let me elaborate on my philosophy of assessment.

My personal philosophy dictates that student assessment is most valuable when it is done formatively. Continuously and routinely circling back to previously learned material in order to evaluate retention and establish connections. Connections will be made in my classroom; connections between various parts of the subject matter, connections between the subject matter and other subjects, and connections to real life. The instruction needs to be authentic. It needs to relate somehow to the student’s life or else the material has little meaning, is in jeopardy of not being retained, and is harder to teach. For this reason I believe in finding out the interests that students have outside of school. This may be accomplished through the use of alternative assessment tools such as portfolios and journals, both of which I plan to use throughout my teaching career. Student assessment in my classroom will be dynamic. It will be fast-paced, slow-paced, and be based on instruction that entails more than the topic at hand. Whenever possible, I will like to establish connections between the topic being taught and other topics within the same subject and different subjects as well. Establishing interconnectedness among different subjects [in my opinion] makes school more meaningful for the students. For instance, relating a recent Math lesson to a lesson on industrialization in Social Studies, or a Science lesson on plants to a Social Studies lesson on Native Americans and how they grew their food. The connections to be made are endless and will aid in helping the student answer “why do I need to learn this”.

Assessment of instruction is an intricate part of my philosophy. During instruction, I will not only be assessing the students, but myself as well. Are the students reacting as expected to my instruction? If not then take a step back and adjust. Did I assess the students’ prior knowledge of the topic accurately? If not then ask more meaningful diagnostic questions. In addition to assessing myself during instruction, I will assess the day’s lessons after instruction as well. Personal reflection will allow me the opportunity to give meaningful instruction which ultimately will lead to more accurate student assessment.

In summary, my personal philosophy of assessment is based on more alternative assessment practices rather than traditional methods, and is well-aligned with the Essential Learnings Framework. Tests do have their place, are a fact of life, and are a chance for the students to test their knowledge. If tests do need to be administered then I would rather give a series of short quizzes as opposed to one large exam at the end of a unit. I would not assign grades to these quizzes, but rather use them to gauge the effectiveness of my instruction. I feel that journal writing, exhibitions, demonstrations, and activities related to instruction are much more valuable ways for students to demonstrate knowledge. I would assign grades to these alternative means of assessment. Assessing ones higher level thinking skills is a valuable indicator of knowledge. Thus, assessment of these alternative practices is focused on higher level thinking skills. After all, the goal of all assessments should be the students’ preparedness for the highly dynamic workplace of today. It won’t be enough to know facts, but rather to have the confidence and the ability to think a process through to a solution will be more valuable for the students of today.

4 Models of Teaching

The chart, 4 models of teaching, is a graphic organizer for some various methods of teaching created by my professor, Dr. Ludmilla Smirnova.  The methods outlined are; Social Family Method (aka, SIM for Social Interactive Method), Information Processing Model (IPM), Personal Family, and Behavorial Systems Family. I am familiar with SIM and IPM since I was introduced to them in another class.  I am not familiar with Personal Family and Behavioral Systems Family.  The link was broken to the referenced article.

The Social Interactive Model is just as the name implies.  It promotes student learning through collaboration with peers.  CWPT (Class Wide Peer Tutoring), Jigsaw, and any type of project activity where students are learning from each other are all methods of promoting a social learning environment where unity is promoted and bullying is dissuaded.

The Information Processing Method is used when the teacher wants to teach a method of solving a problem.  The Scientific Method, for instance, is frequently taught and used to solve problems.  Concept Attainment is another framework for solving a problem; having students devise the concept from random content.

I gather that the Personal Family teaching method is based on the personal profile of the student.  From the graphic organizer it seems that instruction is closely associated with affective nature of the student.  Instruction is one-on-one.

The Behavioral Systems Family is a direct instructional strategy.  From the limited details on the organizer, it seems that the method promotes student mastery of a topic.  Mastery can be promoted through teacher-student tutoring, the availabily of addiitional resources, or additional classroom instruction for a makeup test.

Web 2.0 Tools For Classroom Instruction

The Cheeky Lit Teacher's blog, What's The Web 2.0 Buzz is informative and refreshing for those digital immigrants (like me) who feel  cautiously intrigued and not quite fluent yet.  I say "cautiously intrigued" because of the dynamic nature of Web2.0 tools.  What tools should I invest the time in to learn?  What tools will still be here in 1,3,5, or 7 years?  I say "not quite fluent" because there are those of us who were not born into the world of Web 2.0.

The blog is informative because it mentions some Web 2.0 tools; blogs, wikis, RSS Feeds, and forums just to name a few.  There is one common thread with all Web 2.0 tools.  Tools need to posses this thread to be deemed a "Web 2.0 Tool".  That thread is Collaboration.  The collaborative nature of Web 2.0 tools is refresting to me because of the human quality.  Blogs, for instance, promote connectiivism by encouraging one's reflection and inviting comments from others.  Wikis encourage collaboration by inviting others to add content and comments.  RSS Feeds (Really Simple Syndication) promote inquiry because the user can subscribe for future content based on personal interests.  Forums are online communities and discussion groups for the purpose of collaboration on a particular topic.

Web 2.0 tools are not static.  To get the most out of these tools one needs to collaborate by being engaged and immersing him/herself  in the technology.  It is an exciting time to be an open-minded digital immigrant.

The BIG Question

So, what have I learned that has served me well throughout my life?  The answer to this question needs to be of a conceptual nature rather than a specific skill that I am proud of.  The skills that I learned, and learned well, in the past are not really serving me in today's technological climate.  But, the quagmire of skills have been combined to form the answer to the BIG question;  What should I learn?

Early on I learned how to navigate a computer.  I learned how to organize files.  I learned how to search the computer's hardrive and find things that I thought were gone forever.  I learned how to "defragment" the computer, keeping the machine healthy.  All of these things are no different from the things that anyone else my age learned about a computer.  At the time, the skills seemed to be compartamentalized, not really leading to a bigger purpose.  They did though.  According to Holly MacDonald's article, The Big Question, knowing how to categorize, organize and search are vital for adapting to the dynamic nature of technology.  Tools will continue to come and go. Knowing how to find what you want, organize what you want, and categorize what you have found is paramount for getting the most out of technology. 

As I said, tools will come and go with time.  The real concern is will you know how to get what you want even if the tool that you have used in the past is gone.  Having an open-mind and the persistence to try new things is perhaps the most beneficial skill that an educator can have in the 21st century.

Is Your Learning Environment Personal?

Stephen Downes' presentation of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) cements the meaning of the name and explains that there is an infinite amount of information availiable online to all who want it.  The trick of course is effectively managing this weath of information and turning it into your own personal knowledge.  To turn this information into knowledge that makes sense to you is the basis of the Constructitive Theory of Learning.  The PLE is a community of learning, of your own interests, where the outcome is not just factual knowledge [like in a traditional classroom], but is total immersion into what you are trying to learn.
According to Downes, there are six major components of one's Peraonal Learning Environment:

1. Profiler System:  This stores your personal information on all websites that you subscribe to.  It is essentially your online profile. 
2. Aggregator System:  This system manages all of your interests.  It manages the reasons that you visit particular sites.  For instance, if you want to keep abreast of all information concearning education then you can set up an RSS feed or Atom feed (there are various aggregator systems avalaible.  This system retrieves education information from all subscribed sites and feeds it to you.  These web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a website. To provide a web feed, a site owner may use specialized software (such as a content management system) that publishes a list (or "feed") of recent articles or content in a standardized, readable format. The feed can then be downloaded by websites that syndicate content from the feed, or by feed reader programs that allow Internet users to subscribe to feeds and view their content.
3. Editor System:  This is you opportunity to see all information in one place on your machine and create your own knowledge.  Here, you edit the information supplied by the Aggragator to create a piece of text that you understand.
4. Scaffolding Systems:  These systems essentiallly connect one PLE to anothe PLE.  Here, you can take your newly created knowledge and input is into another learning environment to create something.  For instance, there are various websites that help to make you own personal website.  The site asks you for bits of information for the purpose of creating something unique to you.  The content (facts, video, data, results of your aggregation) are being merged with the manipulation of the data.
5. Third Party Services:  A prime example is an online class where people are collaborating via services such as Elluminate or Webex.  This is where the connection between your PLE and your teacher's and Peer's PLEs takes place.  This essentially takes creation of knowledge to a new level and cements understanding.
6. Recommender System:  This system watches & inputs alll data and recommends other sources of information based on the work that you have been doing.

So, it seems apparent that the construction and utilization of Personal Learning Environments is the wave of the future for students.  To me, it seems like creating a Personal Portfolio electronically.  Then, for assessment purposes, the learner creates a finished product - a compilation of information in the PLE. 

This finished product will demand students' higher thinking skills. 

Teachers will be able to assess students' higher thinking skills. 

Todays' students, for the most part, are not assessed based on higher thinking skills. 

Embracing the use of Personal Learning Environments and other Web 2.0 tools will be critical in the education of the 21st Century Learner.

Utopian Technology

An article by Stephen Downes, Nine Rules for Good Technology, is so refreshingly simplistic at describing what people want from technology.  We want it to ALWAYS be availaible.  We want it ALWAYS to be on (or can be turned on quickly).  We want it ALWAYS to be connected.  It should ALWAYS be standardized..  Good technology is ALWAYS simple.  Good technology does not require parts.  It is personalized.  Good technology is modular, able to be easily rearranged to fit our needs.  And good technology ALWAYS does what we want it to do.

Now, I did take some liberty by adding "ALWAYS" to all of the steps.  Afterall, technology is man-made, and with everything man-made there are kinks and setbacks.  The referenced article was written in 2000.  Take a moment and think how far technology has come since then. 

The producers of technology  have persevered through the obstacles to get to what consumers want.  This perseverence is a testament to the progressiveness of technology over the passed ten years. 

Teachers in 21st century will need training with new technology.  Teachers will need patience.  But most of all, teachers striving to utilize new technologies in the classroom will need perseverence;  perseverence to get through the occassional kink and setback.  Our students deserve it.