Online Assessment

Assessment can be the bane of every teachers' existence. To some, teaching would be a breeze if there weren't countless hours of designing quizzes, marking tests, and inputing scores. The biggest thing that it comes down to is time. So why, in the 21st century do we not utilize technology more?

There are plenty of great online resources that can be used to create exams and quizzes, a list of which can be found here. I'm going to focus on two today, both of which I've mentioned before but now I'm going to go more in-depth. The first one is for summative assessment, the second for formative. The first is Google Docs. I have been using Google Docs for years and I was completely unaware that it had a quiz making feature. The feature, found under the free app SmartSheets, is very efficient. It is easy to use in that the quiz layout is simple: you can choose multiple choice, matching, short answer, etc. and quickly create a test that you can send out to your students. The best feature of this program is how it organizes the results. Rather than spending hours inputting scores in by hand, the program enters all of the information itself (after automatically marking the questions which you chose to have it mark). It not only tells you what the test scores are, but informs you which questions the most students got the wrong, which ones they right, and which students struggled where. For anyone who has ever designed a test, this knowledge is invaluable. It will calculate for you which questions are working and allow you to easily edit the exam so that they are improved for next time. It is a very effective summative tool.


For a formative tool I return to a website I've lauded before: Edmodo. I love the formative assessment of Edmodo because it's so easy. Students can respond to every assignment, quiz, or link posted by the teacher right as they encounter it. The teacher, of course, has the option to make these comments public or keep them private for their own records. The site also has a handy 'Reactions' feature where the students can respond by simply choosing an emoticon. Emoticon reactions range from 'I like it!' to 'This wasn't taught in class' to 'I'm bored'. The teacher receives these reactions in a nicely compiled list showing how many students and which students said what. This incredibly quick tool serves as a handy way to check where your students are at without a whole lot of effort.

Flipped Classrooms

I have discovered a new passion in teaching styles and that passion is called flipped classrooms. You can check out everything you need to know about it, including how to implement it, just by clicking on the link below.

http://prezi.com/5nmz-a_qhnsq/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Digital Citizenship

With all this talk about technology I feel it is important to touch on digital citizenship--about how to be a safe and respectful users of the Internet. Because the Internet wasn't around when my generation was born, we have grown up as it has grown. But there are students being born who have never known a world without Internet, and aren't immediately aware of how to conduct themselves appropriately. Using the Internet incorrectly can result in everything from cyber bullying and online stalking to much worse. The very relevant situation of Amanda Todd is a large reminder of how important it is that kids know how to use the internet not just effectively, but safely as well.

Teaching kids moral and ethical implications in the real world will help overflow this mentality onto the Web. You can use books like "What's in Your Bucket?" to teach young kids that there are consequences for what you say or do, and this includes the Internet as well. As the kids use the Internet more you can teach them about the permanence of the Internet, and how pictures and comments, even if they have been deleted, can still be used against you.

As a teacher using a computer in your classroom, there are some things you can do to make it a better experience for your kids. You can install an Adblock on to your computer to prevent racy images from accidentally popping up. You can also be aware of using copyright images or encouraging students to use websites that are illegitimate or possible dangerous. As a teacher, teaching digital citizenship is just as important, if not more important, in this day and age as any other subject.

For some extra info and helpful tips on digital citizenship you can check out here, here, or here.

Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 Tools are about taking the online classroom to the next level. Instead of one-way communication, Web 2.0 Tools allow for interaction between the creators and the users of the web tool. An excellent example of this is VoiceThread, which can be found at www.voicethread.com.

VoiceThread is the most interactive video service I have ever seen. It takes all the features that normally come with a whole classroom and places it within the program. Teachers can use it to make videos for their students and students can respond in many different ways. The videos can be a stream, a screenshot, or even a document. Students can comment through words, telephone, microphone, doodles, pictures, or even create their own reply videos. They can respond to videos in real time and have their comments attach to the video itself. They can make their own videos which they can easily create voice-overs for, and which other students can then interact with and respond to. This whole system is INCREDIBLY interactive and, for someone who wants to incorporate flipped classrooms into my own teaching style, I can see it as an invaluable tool. It promotes great differentiation through effective technology use.

A website designed by my peers to help explain VoiceThread can be found at http://ed4702voicethread.weebly.com. You can also check out the video below for a little more info: