Digital Badge #8--Chapter 9

Digital Badge #8--Chapter 9

If I had read the title of this chapter--Expressing Creativity with Multimedia Technologies--six or eight weeks ago, I would have thought, "I don't have a creative bone in my body, and technology won't help THAT at all".  What a difference a few weeks and a lot of patience makes!

The section on PowerPoint, beginning on page 220, was very timely, as a young man from Dunbar High School just won a prize for being the best PowerPoint creator in the world.  The WORLD!  That is pretty awesome for a high school student, and for the high school.  We have come so far since the days when PowerPoint was basically a bunch of slides tied together with some sliding type or flipping pages.  While visiting our grandkids one spring, we were able to see Brigham, who was in the third grade, present his PowerPoint on Bengal tigers.  I don't have to tell you, Grandma was IMPRESSED!  He understood a concept many adults forget:  the slides should be attention-getters, not a script for the teacher to read aloud to the group (p. 224).  And now, Grandma will have to share her PowerPoint with him; after all, Education is Everywhere!

Beginning on page 225, the section on video in the classroom really caught my eye.  The number of resources that are available is amazing, and it is easy to find videos that are suitable for children and also cover the content you are teaching.  I was not aware that YouTube had an Education channel; that will certainly save a lot of time digging through totally inappropriate videos!

The section explaining strategies for using cameras with students (p. 234) made some points I had not considered.   Generating, editing, and publishing student writing would not have occurred to me as an area where video cameras would be of use.  Having taught reading in summer school, I can attest to the fact that students don't consider setting or characters when writing.  What a great way to illustrate the necessity of these parts of a story!  Creating a video production area in the classroom would certainly help a teacher use videography regularly and not just on special occasions, and also recording events as they happen.  What a wonderful "diary" of the school year can be created when all the pieces are put together, maybe with some background music (depending on the sound quality of the original videos).

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin, Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Digital Badge #7--Chapter 4

Digital Badge #7--Chapter 4

Looking at the student learning objectives on page 78 made me wish this had been presented as concisely when I was preparing to be a teacher.  Instead of acronyms (SMART goals) and fancy language (relevant, attainable), the bottom line has to be determining "WHO is going to do WHAT, WHEN, HOW much or how often, and HOW it will be measured or evaluated" (p. 78).  This is really what planning is all about: deciding what you want your students to be able to do at the conclusion of the lesson.

Once you have decided what you want your students to be able to do after the lesson, it's time to decide how you are going to determine IF they have met the objectives; this is where assessment comes in.  Many people do not realize that assessment is not just what happens after the lesson is completed, it also includes what happens during the lesson as the teacher monitors student performance (p. 83).  As a classroom teacher, I had a progress check at the beginning of each class.  Without going into all the details, there were a couple of review questions, a couple of questions from last night's work, one problem-solving question, and one question from today's work.  Students could earn up to 106 points, so there was really no penalty if they didn't answer today's new question correctly.  At the time, I had to write each quiz on acetate for the overhead projector; how much easier it would have been to use Kahoot! to create these quizzes!

Any discussion about assessment has to look at high-stakes standardized tests (pp.86-89).  I was saddened to see the consequences that have resulted from the overwhelming amount of standardized tests: focusing only on the information from the test, abandoning "teachable moments" in favor of teaching to the test, and adjusting testing conditions, even actually giving answers! (Popham, pp. 1-3)  It seems that every year we hear about another teacher or school being investigated for questionable testing practices.  With the stakes so high for students, teachers, schools, and districts, it's no surprise that students (and teachers) have upset tummies on test day, that administrators do not allow any extra activities that don't directly relate to the test, that districts cut budgets for field trips in favor of extra tutoring.  I wish I had the answer!

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin, Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Popham, W.J. (2002, May/June). Preparing for the coming avalanche of accountability tests.  Harvard Education Letter, 18(1), 1-3.