How Do You Assess?!

When you think of an assessment what do you think? 

Well as a student when I hear assessment I automatically have the fight or flight feeling come.  For most students that hear assessment it means they have to take some big test that they will either cram for the night before, or just say "screw it" and not even study for it.  That is the fight or flight feeling that most students feel when they hear assessments. 

As a teacher though we are told that assessments are our friend.  They help us to help our students, and from a teacher or someone of powers point of view it is the best tool we can use to help students to keep improving.  There are many ways to assess students, and I think that by using various methods to assess them is only going to benefit you as a teacher to then help your students even more.  When looking at a philosophy for assessment of students it is a "necessary evil" for the growth in students.  We need to be able to assess where the students are with their learning and see what they may not comprehend.  Assessments are the means to truly get the students to learn.  We can use these assessments for not only our benefits but also to challenge the kids to see what they really do understand.  It gives the students a tool to help them to see what they understand, and then with feedback from us it helps to understand what they might not understand.  Assessments are a circle for comprehension of the students learning and a helping aid for teachers.  In my mind, I do not think that assessment strategies should be used as a way to punish kids or to lower their self confidence.  In turn I think that assessments should be fully explained to the point where kids understand that the point of the assessment is to literally assess what they understand and is not to be used a way of punishment for those that do not understand.  For teachers we should be able to help our kids by using a lot formative assessments, they can be easily implemented into any lesson.  Since each student is an idividual and all are different each student will learn in a different way and therefore will also test differently.  So each formative assessment should be a little different, they can vary from small quizzes to just going around the room to have kids answer certain questions, to even doing a small project.  Ways to assess should be different to make sure you are not just separating certain kids.

Rick Wormeli is someone that has high knowledge and a very compassionate view of formative and summative assessments. In his youtube video of him talking about these assessments he brings in some very good points about how important they are, and more importantly how important formative assessments are. Every day teachers should be using some kind of way to check to see if the students are truly taking in all that was covered in a lesson.  Wormeli talks about how each teacher should incorporate check for understands in every lesson, and then also have ways for other students to express that they understand as well.

In a video by Scott Kinkoph, he talked about how each new system of teaching will not be growing or expanding the students minds or horizons if they are not introduced to different formative assessments.  In his lecture he talks mainly about two different assessment tools: one is PearDeck, and the other is EduCanon. 

PearDeck is a very simple and easy way to get the kids involved. According to Scott, PearDeck is a super simple and easy way to check to see if the students are understanding and comprehending what he is teaching.  In this tool, there are several different ways you can assess your students.  Many of the different options for this site have an easy way to not only yourself see what your students are understanding, but then also giving students peer feedback for each other.  Each response from the viewer can only been seen once the teacher gives permission, but at the same time once the responses are then shared it gives the students direct and immediate feedback for each other.  Because the responses can be private at first it helps to  make the kids think for themselves and to really see if they understand it before getting help from classmates.

 EduCanon is the other tool/site that Scott talks about in his lecture.  This site is a very good demonstration of using different online resources as a real classroom setting.  In this tool, the teacher sets up a video for the kids to watch and participate in.  Then after/during the video the kids have activities to complete.  But these are not just worksheet type activities, they are more interactive and connected actives for understanding and comprehension.  I did not like this one as much as Scott was showing and presenting it, it did not have the same hands on feel as the PearDeck did.  It was a good idea to have incorporated video and live feed to make the connection to the teacher more concrete and defined but at the same time, it did not have the same appeal to me.  

In my thoughts, I think the most interesting and stricking thing to me about Scott's lecture was the amount he put into perspective that the formative assessments are really the tool and idea that make or breaks a teacher and the students learning.  Scott was able to make the comparison of how much a student can really learning by having these formative assessments to push them, and challenge them that actually makes a big impact.  This is the idea that will be most valuable in my classroom, for it brings in a wide load of ideas to check my students for full understanding and comprehension of a lesson.  This idea will impact my classroom by influencing me to constantly have simple and quick assessments of the students to help them in their learning.  To be the best teacher I can be requires constant understanding of my students and their knowledge base, and according to Scott this is the best way to help my students. 

Cool Tools For You & more!!

Last week for cool tools... Well for many of you, you use YouTube almost everyday to watch crazy funny videos, when you are bored you just look up random things, to listen to music, and to even find that song that is stuck in your head but you cannot think of the name of it.  We use YouTube as an everyday tool for the most part just for entertainment.  Well this week I thought I would really look through it and see what all it really does have to offer!

YouTube it has the ability to upload videos, songs, create your own videos, you can upload movies, watch anything on the site.  On YouTube you have the chance to create your channel as well, in the channel you can upload videos, and if you have a lot of videos you have crate different stations for different videos.  If you are just a viewer on YouTube you can subscribe to different people or channels.  If you are a constant  viewer of a channel, the station will keep track of the different videos that you have already watched.  YouTube has a program that tracks the videos that you have watched and then will recommend other videos that you may also enjoy watching.  This site really does have a lot to offer, you can search different videos based off of creators, title, subject matter, or even part of a phrase.  This tool can be used in so many different ways and a lot more ways than we use on a daily basis'.

This tool can be used in a classroom for several great reasons.  It is not only an entertainment site but it also a good educational tool.  YouTube can be used for doing demo tutorials of a new subject material, In the classroom YouTube could help to introduce a new topic with a song or video that relates both the old and new topic together.  YouTube is a good source to connect other subjects to each other as well, each video on the site has more than one piece to it and each piece of it connects to another.

For students this would be a good tool for them to not only use as entertainment but also as another viewpoint for them to get.  Each student learns differently and with that being said YouTube can be a great tool that each student can learn from.  Because there are so many different movies on it there are so many different ways that something can be said.  If a student learns more from doing, then they could find a video that gives them several problems and then goes through the problems to make sure you did it correctly.  If a student is a visual learner then they could find a video that goes through the subject matter by showing examples and explaining each step.  Or even if the student is a audio learner they have the opportunity to find a song that explains how to so something.  Their are so many different ways to learn and YouTube has the advantage of having all these ways availible at the touch of a finger.  You can even have your students create videos, it is simple but you need to be careful with showing faces and such on the web.  It could be a great tool if a student wants to share with others a good way to maybe do a problem or to teach a lesson but in other terms that they might understand better.

 You can look at different videos by going to YouTube and then to create your own account and upload videos just go to the right hand upper corner and click to start!

For this review I also wanted to play around with it and created my own station and channel for my Major Project. As I have stated I am doing a FlipBook for my major project and this week I decided to start uploading my different steps onto YouTube into my own station that then also has its own playlist just for my major project.
This week I started to come up with what I actually wanted to start drawing for my subject of my flipbook. I have decided to start with mountains that fade in and with a plane that fly's over top and then moves into a person snowboarding.
Here is a video that I started for my topic!

Learning in Spaces

Learning spaces are constantly changing due to the constant evolution's of the world around us.  We experience change starting all the way from technology in education to foods we eat at home.  With the constant changes in technology comes all the changes in the learning spaces that we use in educational settings.

With the constant changes and advancements with technology we are able to create new designs of chairs, furniture, tables, desks, computers, and even the idea of board usages.  With all these advancements it is becoming a new learning environment for the students.  In the new learning spaces we are making it easier for kids to be able to be engaged in a class and learning by learning to adapt to what the kids actually need.  Learning spaces are adapting to the student behaviors and actions and also how they learn.  By having learning spaces it provides students with a controlled and stable environment and opportunity to enhance their learning.  Learning spaces provides kids with the opportunity to engage in topics and subject matter better than just trying to lecture kids.  Learning spaces are now providing students with the ability to be more active with each other by having easier ways to move around and be comfortable.  One of the main examples with the learning spaces is that they are creating kids with a better sense of closeness with each other, and making it easier to then engage with each other as well as the conversation of topic.  Having chairs that fit kids needs better for movement are a big part of making these spaces more advanced and better for learning.  When the kids are able to quick just roll a chair, or slide a chair it makes group work better engaging the kids into the subject matter faster and with more ease.  That is just talking some PHYSICAL learning space things, we also have the idea of online learning spaces.  In this article they talk about how everything is changing and how we can adjust to them, check it out to see what your thoughts are.



For the most part many school systems, university, colleges, and outside educational places are starting to use the idea of Google in a lot more aspects of learning.  Google is becoming a very big part of our everyday lives, many places are using it to be able connect and share with students via all their new and different apps they now have.  In many cases these apps are making it easier to contact kids, hold assignments, share documents, and even just share more information.  Google Apps are starting to play a much bigger role in how we are learning and teaching kids.  Because of the ever changing world, we are relying more and more on technology of the internet and now we have created so many different learning spaces online.  Google Apps plays the role of now being a central hub for all the information within a learning space.  It creates the different abilities for accessing the information as well as creating and sharing. Learning spaces such as Google Apps is now what we consider to be a very big impact on how students are learning and also how teachers are teaching.

For the future the learning spaces will continuously change and be redesigned based on the new kinds of technology that is being invented and used by children and teachers.  In the future though we need to be taking on the idea that learning cannot all be just online, so we need to challenge the facts and be able to keep a balance between face to face and technology based learning spaces. As we become more and more advanced in the field of technology we will want to keep the idea that technology is the BEST way for kids to learn.  But that will not and should not be the case, creating learning spaces in the future there will have to be a line drawn for the fact of human interaction and group based learning. These learning centers need to be well adjusted to the new forms of technology but also then adaptive only incorporating them not be solely based around them.  This will be a major challenge as we look to the future for education and learning spaces. Many schools have different ideas and many different ways of being able to add in numerous kids of learning spaces, the future is here and changing.  This school Woorana understands that and is already looking to the future for education for kids with different learning spaces.

Being part of the University of Akron, and as an active student we have the learning spaces of very traditional based classrooms, as well as library based traditions.  We use online sites such as springboard as a center for learning in a very informal way, where it is just based on information and no real interaction between student and teacher.  I personally hate how much that our courses and teachers depend on springboard to get us through the semesters.  My attention span is some what small, and having all these assignments that have to be computer based, I get super side tracked with all the other things that are online. So I personally prefer to be in a traditional setting, even though these learning spaces could be adjusted, they are still better than so much online.  We use Google to share all kinds of information and to keep in contact with our professors and classmates.  This is a good way to keep everyone engaged in project, you do not necessarily have to meet up anymore, due to google docs, several people can be updating and changing the doc at the same time making group work a lot more do able.  There are so many different things that are changing in the ways of learning that adapting and learning how to change the learning spaces is going to be a constant challenge no matter what.

Flip-book Fun

New week, more progress!!

For my major project I have decided I am going to learn how to create a flip-book, and not just your "I am bored in class lets doodle flip-book".  I have looked up several ways to start to create a real flip-book using several different websites
wikiHow
Student Resources

So far I have done a very simple example of what I could do before I started the project last week.  This week I started actually working on how to make things look like they are moving from frame to frame.

I have always enjoyed doing little artistic things, and flip-books I have always found interesting to me.  Even though I was never good at them, so I have decided that I would give this a try.  In reality using a flip-book could also be helpful and different in a classroom, and it does not have to be contained into an art classroom.  More and more we see the arts being cut out of schools, this would be a cool creative way to keep it in the mix...

Here is what I have learned and done as an update with my Flip-book Project

Cool Tools for you #4

Cool Tool for this week I choose to do Word Tagul Clouds.  This is a word association Tool, that takes a list of words of your choosing and combines them into one shape.

 For my creation I just incorporated four words that had to do with this class, I used Educational Technology, Major Project, Flip-book, and Moving Animation.  I chose just four words to keep it simple.  Once you choose the words you want to work with you can choose different colors for each words, fonts, angles, and even size.  Once you have all the words you select a shape that you want your words to take the form of.  Last step is to import the words and make it animated.  In this Tool, you can actually make the words Animated, one you have created the animation you can go over each word and it will get highlighted in which you can then click on it to go to another web page.  Once you have created your word animation you can then download and share what you have created, or you can print it on to a t-shirt or other things.

As a teacher this would be a good source of technology to incorporate with any word based lesson.  For the classroom this would be good to use for getting kids to associate vocabulary words with each other and even definitions.  Because you can actually incorporate a link to each of the words it could also be beneficial for things other then just vocabulary words.  In association with words, you could put in different dates, people, theories, etc.  and then have them all connect to each other and also some outside source.  This would be a very cool to use with any subject since you can incorporate almost any different background to the words.

For teaching it would be interesting to have in order to keep your students engaged, by having them pull the cloud up on a computer and use it for worksheets or research for homework or a project.  Because it is a word association tool, if put together well then it could be a good source for students to use to study with.  In order to be a good study tool tho, the teacher must be well versed in their subject matter to have all the necessary aspects in the cloud.

As a teacher there are many ways to help kids learn and even study.  Tagul Clouds would be a good way to have students use what they know and make a cloud to show that they understand the connection between certain words and definitions, dates and events, or even person and what they did.  As a teacher it would be a good way to have students use it to present what they know to the class as a study for them.  It is an easy way to get students to be engaged in the way they should be learning and making connections to material.

Go to Word Tagul Clouds to start your own now!

I Book, You Book, and E-Books?

My self I was never that into reading and writing in school, I was much more interested in coloring and doing my own thing.  Though at home and in my free time I like to write because I had the freedom to write how I wanted about whatever I wanted.


With eBooks becoming such a big influence in our everyday life and also in schools I can see the use of eBooks having a major influence on how students are learning to write.  With eBooks students now have the freedom to write what they feel and have it shared with the world.  Since it is being shared with the world it helps with the writing process for students to know what is good and bad writing.  Letting the world know what they are doing is a big step, but it gives students an end goal for wanting to improve their writing to be able to impress the world with what they can do.  Writing is a skill that students must learn in order to progress and develop in life and school.  The past and traditional way of teaching kids to learn to write is hard when the students have no interest in writing about any topics they are given, which leads to the notation of not wanting to write at all.  With that line of thinking it is hard to teach kids how to be good and effective writers, but now with eBooks we can expand on the horizons of what the kids can write about to spark an interest to get them to focus on how to be effective writers.

It is going to influence how teachers now teach in the classrooms now, since students are finding more interests in what to write about it is going to be a little more challenging to get your kids to have a focused idea of what needs to actually be done.  There is also going to be a more direct and pressure on when and how the kids learn sentence structure and grammar.  In writing an eBook it has the ability to have the autocorrect and spell/grammar check, but you will have to start somewhere before that in order to have the kids form a basic idea of how sentences and grammar should go.  Like Jon Smith talked in his lecture: The World is my Audience, he said said how the kids would write down the material then the teachers would help them put in into the computers.   This is a good form to get the kids to learn the grammar, spelling, and sentence structure before applying it to the actual eBook.

Since it is an eBook it takes into consideration more then just one aspect of learning.  It helps kids understand the ideas of presentation, speech, structure, etc.  One eBook can contain many different sources of ways to look at the topic at hand.  It becomes more than just a typical book, it becomes an interactive piece that helps bring in more than just writing.  An eBook is a great way to help the kids want to learn and be creative creating things they want to get involved in and to get them interested in topics that would normally be boring or students would want to avoid.  The main guy that talks about eBooks in the classroom is Jon Smith, and what he has to say about getting kids involved and creating makes a lot of sense.  We all know that growing up we hated going to school because we knew we would be doing the same boring thing every day, with the idea of eBooks it helps bring what we as teachers are teaching to life! It gets the students to think and be creative with it the subject matter.
 Jon Smith made some interesting points about how a simple idea of creating a book can make such a big impact on almost any student, grade level, and school.  He claimed that almost anyone can get involved and learn by the simple suggestion of creating a book and sharing it with the world.  But the claim that kids learn by creating, sharing, and getting a sense of the world.  This claim was what caught my attention the most, for it makes the most sense.  The idea that kids are bored and will not learn if they are bored means that we need to learn to adjust in the classrooms to help engage the kids.  EBooks are a great way to do this for they introduce new ideas to help kids learn.  It could work in almost any subject, for me going into high school math the concept of creating an eBook would be able to see how the students are actually learning the material and how then how they can apply it, while also bringing in other subjects.

"When children create for the world they make it good. when children create for their teacher they make it good enough." 

                       -Rushton Hurley

Cool Tool #3

Well it is week 3 and I thought I would try and combine my major project into my cool tool this week!

This week I worked with Haiku Deck.  This is a nice and simple way to make a presentation without using the boring old power point.  Here you can use more variations of slides and animation to make presenting a topic a little easier and presentable.  This website is easy to share your ideas in different ways, and also to make the presentation personal to some extent.  You have the freedom to create your own kind of slides and material that you would want to share. For the the free version of the Haiku Deck all your creations are shared to the public, but you have the freedom to put tags on them and share them with specific groups such as a science, art and crafts, etc.  If you pay to upgrade you can put more privacy onto your creations.

For this week I decided to use this to show a little knowledge and create a very simple how to presentation of how to make a simple flip book! Check it out at My Page.  Also check out this super simple diagram of how I started my Major Project...

This would be a fun and creative tool to use in a class room, I remember growing up with a lot of my teachers always using power point to make presentations.  And when we had class projects we would have to use power points to then present our findings and projects to the class.  This was such a boring way to do things, with this tool you can the presentations much better. Add more creativity and the kids own sense of personality to the slides.  It is a super simple and easy way to get kids involved and also keep them connected.  Students can use and create their own, and you can use them to teach in the class room.

Check it out yourself by clicking here and start working on your own presentations now!! Haiku Deck