Week 5 Assessment

This week in MTI 562 - Technically Infused Teacher course I was asked to write a blog post assessing one of the projects based on suggested assessment criteria from Week 1.

The assignment I chose to assess was from week 4. During this week I had to research a tech ed topic I was interested in, present and write about that topic in my blog and demonstrate my good digital citizenship skills by citing sources appropriately.

By allowing students to choose the topic and presentation mode the instructor gave each student the opportunity to demonstrate his/her knowledge in a format that each of us was most comfortable with.   We were able to perform real-world meaningful tasks that demonstrated our skills and knowledge.

This research and presentation was something that I have had on the back-burner for quite some time. I was happy to be able to create this presentation that I plan to use at our school open house with parents in September.

I decided to use one of the school-wide rubrics from Sandwich High School - Use Information, Media, and Technology Effectively and Responsibly.  This rubric can also be used for assessing an assignment such as this.

The week 4 parent "Social Media and Teens" presentation I created exceeds expectations for all the performance indicators. However, I would make one exception and that would be the Ethical and Responsible Use of Technology and Information indicator. I think this indicator meets expectations. The reason is; I feel I should have included the url's for the images. MLA format no longer requires the url when citing online images but I do think the inclusion of an image url should still be a requirement out of common courtesy to the owner of the image. I usually require my own students to include the url.

As I reflect on one of the articles I read this week I realize that through this assignment I demonstrate the following:

• unpacked a lesson and applied it rigorously
• connected lessons to other learning and applied it to my own life
• took responsibility for my learning by embracing deep learning
• thought creatively with the new information
• became a stakeholder in my effort, not simply a passive consumer
  
  

The above list is from Jacqui Murray’s article  “7 Authentic Assessment Tools“   which can be found at the following website: http://askatechteacher.com/2015/02/18/7-authentic-assessment-tools/

While I know the above list is not actually a rubric I feel this type of assignment allows for assessing in a variety of ways the six characteristics Jacqui Murray indicates in her list of what "Good assessments should verify" .  This assignment was also scalable and dependent upon each student's learning style (and/or interest) by allowing choice as mentioned previously. In addition to the presentation that demonstrates knowledge the use of polls, exit tickets, game shows, etc. can also be use to further assess evidence of student learning.

I would like to close by saying how much I enjoyed this class. I truly learned so much. As a technology teacher I was not sure what to expect from this course. I found that much of what I currently do in the classroom has been validated. However and more importantly, I learned many new instruction and assessment strategies (along with some new tech tools) that I can now use and apply to improve the learning in my classroom. Thanks everyone!