Assessment

Assessment is something a teacher keeps in the back of their mind at all times. It's the way we figure out if we've achieved our main goal: student learning. To me, rubrics are a very important tool that can be used to measure student learning. They break down your criteria into different categories where you can rate or score each using a scale. Another type of assessment can be through a test or quiz.

I think informal assessments can be quite valuable as well: student responses in class, ticket-out-the-door exercises that aren't graded, but used to gauge how much your students have learned. Informal assessments help you along the way.

Overall, teachers use a blend of formal and informal assessment strategies to see where their students are at. You do have to think very carefully about how you're going to assess and what's important and not important to assess, keeping the end goal in mind....

PBL

If I could picture my dream classroom and dream lesson plans, each and every day would incorporate Project Based Learning. PBL uses everything a science classroom needs to be successful: collaboration, inquiry, student-centered, constructivist, and realistic. Unfortunately, I think standardized tests diminish the use of PBL in the classroom because of limited time and limited resources. I think teachers also carry this fear with PBL in that using this type of teaching strategy can hurt their CRCT or EOCT test scores.

Overall, my main mission after reading this weeks articles is to try and find ways to incorporate appropriate uses of PBL in my lesson plans. There's no arguing that PBL is one of the most effective ways to engage your students and get them learning at deeper levels than traditional teaching would. To me, its about finding that balance. A balance of giving the students what they need to do well on a test and also achieve long-lasting and effective student learning.

LoTI Thoughts...

So I took the LoTI survey and it ranked me at a 4, which is what I expected. Definitely experienced with technology, but always room for improvement. I'm not currently teaching, so during the survey I went off my experience during my student teaching last spring. I want to try and take this survey again when I eventually have my own classroom and see what I could improve on then.

As for rating my webpage examples on the LoTI scale, I quickly see that the ones I first chose were maybe level 2's or 3's...so I'm now trying to find more challenging student-based learning webpages, not so much teacher-based. I think that's the key here. I'm so glad were doing this webpage examples activity, it really has opened my mind to what is good information technology for our classrooms and what is not. Before this course I have never heard of the LoTI scale, but now I can't help but try and rate every webpage I find!

A Couple Webpage Examples...

The first webpage that came to mind when starting this project was about a lesson I did on The Peppered Moths of Manchester. This is for a 7th grade Life Science or 9th grade Biology classroom. Students will need to use a computer lab to do this assignment. Students go to the website, learn about the life cycle of the Peppered Moth, the story of how pollution effected the population of Peppered Moths, scientists' research on the matter, and finally play a game where they get to be the bird and actually simulate natural selection. This activity is through a flash player.
URL: http://www.techapps.net/interactives/pepperMoths.swf

Another really cool webpage shows the relative size and scale of a cell and other very very small structures. The animation allows the viewer to slide a horizontal bar across the screen to zoom in and out. The animation starts with the size of a coffee bean and zooms all the way in to a carbon atom. This site really gives students the feel of how small some of the things they are studying really is!
URL: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/