Final Post: Reflection

FINAL POST

Reflection

CC Photo Credit: Moyan Brenn from Flickr

           This class has absolutely been a growing experience for me. I can easily say that I have never spent more time researching, tagging, hyperlinking, and interacting with online websites or tools in my life. It has been fun yet challenging. I really did not realize how had been accomplished in the last six weeks until I put it all together in the teacher webpage/e-portfolio. I am really amazed that this is only an introductory class. I feel like we did so much and in depth work that it is difficult to imagine that there is more to come but, I am ready for that challenge also. The collaborative projects, the instructional wiki and collaborative lesson plan, were extra interesting as this is the first time I had successfully  completed a group project through an online class. The communication for these projects was relatively simple once we had agreed on how we would stay in touch. Texting seemed to be the most effective as we pretty much always had our phones handy. I believe that through everything in this class, I am ready to use technology efficient and effectively in the classroom. I now know how to create an evaluation rubric from scratch and create a functional lesson plan that fulfills state education standards while engaging students. I have a deeper understanding of learning theories and methods of utilizing those theories to communicate information or to help students discover information for themselves. I am now equipped with an online bookmarking account (Delicious) that I did not even realize that I needed but am now not sure how I navigated without. I now know that there are so many resources to support me as a teacher no matter what obstacle I might come up against. I look forward to being able to reference knowledge gained in this class to help students with special needs, like hearing impairments, dyslexia, or even English language learners to feel comfortable and excited to learn in my class. I truly appreciated the timely and constructive feedback that I received throughout the class. I only wish that I could have figured out how to interact during the virtual office hours, but this is probably my short coming. The biggest challenge for me with this class, aside from my own time-management, has been handling the APA citation formatting. This is the first class that I have ever taken that has not used the MLA format. I learned MLA in the first research paper that I completed in high school and have not used any other citation method since. I know that I should be more flexible and am sure that I will get the hang of it eventually. However, I do not see that happening with this post. Thank you professor Coleman for your patience and help throughout this class.

Resources:

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.

Teacher Website/e-portfolio and Delicious account created by April Bogar 2016

Instructional Strategies Wiki Created collaboratively with April Bogar and fellow students 2016

Digital blog post E

Ch. 4 Designing Lessons and Developing Curriculum with Technology

Photo credit: Alberto G. From Flickr.com 2016 

       I was intrigued by the “Digital Dialogue” 4.2 on page 88 in our text that

 asks us about our personal experience with test/quiz and performance based

 assessments and evaluations. The first question asks if we consider ourselves

 to be skillful at multiple-choice test and asks us our opinion on the strengths 

and weaknesses of this kind of student assessment (Maloy 88). Personally, I 

do consider myself to be a skilled multiple -choice test taker. As a rule I do my

 best as a student but, sometimes I procrastinate or over-commit myself and 

have found myself with little study time before a test or quiz. Thankfully, I 

know some tricks for multiple-choice tests. I know to look at questions before

 reading passages so that I can look for answers as I read. I also know to eliminate

 answers that are far off to increase my odds of picking the correct answer. Another

 trick that I picked up is that longer answers tend to be the correct ones because 

the test writer went to more effort in writing it out. Though these strategies are 

no substitute for studying, they have proven useful for me. For this reason, I feel

 that multiple-choice tests and quizzes are flawed. Not only do they favor skilled

 test takers but, they often fail to encourage deep learning and concept development

 by focusing on the rote memorization of facts. Here is a link to more disadvantages

 and advantages to different test questions from Faculty Focus.com. 

        The second question asks what skills and talents might be better assessed through

 paper-and-pencil tests, I presume they are asking about short answer or essay tests as

 even multiple choice tests use paper and a no.2 pencil. It also asks what skills and 

talents would be better evaluated through a performance based measure (Maloy 88). 

Through my experiences with testing, it seemed like short answer and essay questions

 appealed more to my ability to communicate information through writing, to organize

 and construct coherent sentences and paragraphs. This shows me that I was able to 

synthesize the information and recreate it in my own words, or that I was able to retain

 the information effectively through the words in the text. I know that essay and short

 answer questions are much mote difficult to guess or improvise on as the answers usually

 contain key phrases or points of information that the instructor or grader is looking for.

 That said, when I was well prepared for them, I enjoyed short answer or essay tests over

 multiple choice or true/false because it gave me the chance to be a little more creative

 in the answer. I was usually also able to interject a little bit of opinion on the subject

 within the writing, whether through tone or outright. Skills that I think would be better

 measured through performance based measures are ones of design and execution, like 

science experiments or shop-class projects. Also subjects that rely on performance like

 any music class or foreign language that has a heavy pronunciation focus that really 

requires an oral exam to test accuracy. 

       The last question asks us what kinds of performance-based assessments we engaged

 in as students and what performance-based assessments we envision using with our 

future students (Maloy 88). There are only a few tests that I can remember being 

performance based. Most of them having been in foreign language, music, or in a

 hands-on technical class like shop, ceramics, or drawing/painting. These kinds of 

skills are best evaluated in this fashion because you are demonstrating the mastery 

of technique, design, pronunciation, or composition. I did enjoy the performance-based 

evaluations because I like to demonstrate my abilities. I could see where this kind 

of evaluation could be uncomfortable for introverts but, the discomfort could be 

overcome by arranging for private test time one-on-one with the teacher. As an 

elementary teacher of general education, I am not sure how I would use a performance

 assessment. Perhaps I could assign a book report to the class on a book that we read 

together and they could give the report as an oral presentation dressed as the character

 of their choice. This would provide a performance component and exercise their 

ability to change point-of-view but, the assessment of reading comprehension would 

be the written report itself.

Resources: 

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.

Hyperlink for test question advantages and disadvantages:  

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/educational-assessment/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-different-types-of-test-questions/

Photo Credit: Alberto G. Retrieved from Flickr.com 2016