Formative vs Summative testing - Final Blog!

From what I understand from the wikipedia articles, Formative testing is more useful for actual classroom use, whereas summative testing is used more by 3rd parties to evaluate overall scores and effectiveness of a classroom.

Personally, I think formative testing is much more useful for a teacher. It allows teachers to assess their students learning (instead of just a raw score like in standardized/summative testing) As a teacher, if I can see what my students are struggling or proficient at, I can modify my future lessons to be effective to the maximum amount of students in my class.

Web tools can be used to create these types of tests. Kids are tested up to their ears these days, so any way to make a test fun and exciting is fine by me. Sites like quizlet make a game out of it, which can facilitate learning and make it interesting for students.

Professional Organizations

Professional organizations provide members more security in their field. The organizations lobby for its members, and may have high ranking contacts in government. These organizations advocate for its members, and try to get policies passed the benefit their field.

I'm an elementary education major, so I have quite a few possibilities when it comes to my professional organizations. A big one is the LFA or Learning First Alliance. They are an organizations comprised of 16 member organizations such as the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.

Another organization is Education for Change. They advocate for every child to have free public education.

The benefits of joining these groups greatly outweighs the costs. For some, you may have membership fees or other joining costs. But those costs pale in comparison to the effort and advocation that your organization does for you.

Digital Divide

I think teachers have very limited power in the issue of digital division. The local, state, and federal governments have great power (and great responsibility) to make sure that all students have access to the same resources. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Rich school districts have the best equipment, and enough for everyone. Poor school districts are short on equipment and may have lousy or old devices.

As a teacher, the best thing I can do is work with what I have. Like in my lesson plan, I adapted it to three different scenarios. All three scenarios are certainly plausible in my teaching future. I consider myself to be above average in the technological knowledge department. I believe that I would be able to teach my class effectively weather we have access to one computer or 25. I would prefer one for all my students, but you can't always get what you want.

Blog #9 --> Popplet

My popplet: http://popplet.com/app/#/228795

I first learned about Bloom's Taxonomy in my Family, School, and Community class. We had to make maps of how different institutions acted upon a students life. (Community, teachers, parents, media, etc) Bloom's pyramid includes 6 intellectual skills important for learning. A mind map can cover those 6 skills in an organized and good-looking fashion. Popplet made it easy for that to happen.

I can use these two tools to make sure I'm learning what I think I'm learning. I could be a more effective student by using Bloom's taxonomy and mind mapping.

TEAC 259 Glog + Discussion

I chose to focus on what I did because it pretty much covers all the bases of digital citizenship. It is a good resource for parents and children alike. As a teacher, I will definitely teach these themes of digital citizenship to my students. In an increasingly online world, education is the best way to protect children online. Not only should children be educated on online etiquette and safety, but parents should be educated on how to keep their children safe. Parents need to know how to protect their children's online privacy and recognize signs of cyber bullying. Knowing that I taught their children these tips and now the parents know these tips should put them at ease.

Cyber bullying is on the rise. By educating children and parents on the signs and signals of cyber bullying, many incidences could be avoided. Parents need to be involved with their children's online activity so that cyber bullying can be cut off at the source.

UDL Book

(Link to my book: http://bookbuilder.cast.org/view.php?op=view&book=57240&page=1)

The entire book hinges off my guides, so don't be confused when there's very little on the page.

I liked the idea of guides, considering I am neither a very good author or illustrator. The Book Builder seemed dated in that after ANY change to your book it had to reload the entire page. Not to mention the pop-up windows to edit anything. That being said, the guides brought a human element to my book in allowing my readers (presumably children) to see an animated character talking to them. Some of these kids won't even know how to read, so having the pictures and spoken word in there qualifies me for UDL. Maybe I failed miserably, but I never claimed to be good at making books.

Blog #6 Social Media

(My Google docs spreadsheet link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjghPaXqe8GadDZjMW80MjE5Y2poSUdaSzFQQUp4eFE)


What counts as social media? According to Wikipedia, Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. 


I couldn't agree more! I think the main point of social media is to bring people together, all in one place. Most of them are extremely easy to sign up for and access. How could I use these in the classroom? Well, first off I would have to weed out the bad eggs. Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, GetGlue, and some others are purely meant for social interaction. Those really have no place inside the classroom. Others like Google+ and Diigo could definitely be used as tools for learning in a classroom setting. Reddit can be a powerful news and opinion tool, if used correctly. The success of social media in the classroom really hinges on how they are utilized.

Blog Post #5

What makes a good online resource? Well, I think a better question is what makes a bad online resource? I think that it's much easier to tell if a resource is bad.

The first thing you can check is to see if it's a .com, .org, .gov, or .edu website. You have to remember that most .com websites are representing a company or other money making entity. The chance that their info is biased is much higher than that of a .edu or .gov resource. Once on the website, do a quick scan of the webpage. Does it look professional? Are there grammatical errors and typos all over the place? Is there an author listed anywhere on the page? Are sources cited within the page or at the bottom?

If your answer to any of the above questions is no, you may want to rethink your resource. Starting with a .edu or .gov website is your best bet. Those suffixes can be trusted more times than not.


My graphic organizer:
http://www.lucidchart.com/publicSegments/view/4f3ae47b-89f0-4c05-b3fd-0a8c0ace7185/image.pdf

Article Review Post

I read an article that talked about a professor that uses what's called a "mind map" to help her students be more prepared to teach. Basically a mind map is a treelike diagram built around a central idea. The idea can grow and branches can be added as it grows. It helped students organize what they learned during the semester, in hope that they would turn around and use it again in their classrooms.

I thought that this was interesting, because I'm sure a lot of first time teachers are overwhelmed on their first day of school. If they use this mind map tool, they can be better prepared to teach, and use it as a teaching tool for their students. Plus, since it can be added to, future classes can build upon the central idea and make it bigger and better.

(Article- Using 'Mind Maps' to Explore Teaching Resources, published May 8th, 2011 by Josh Keller)

Week 4 Blog

I think that Diggo could be a powerful collaboration tool in higher education classes because it allows teachers or students to highlight and annotate web pages without hassle. Teachers could use this tool to pull up webpages and share important points with the class.

RSS feeds make following news and blogs a painless activity. Teachers could require students to follow news stories or blogs to keep them informed on current events. Teachers could also use feeds to follow student homework postings without having to track down each individual post.

Wikis are powerful sources of information. If it exists, it's bound to have a wiki about it. Wikipedia is a well known (albeit controversial) source of most topics that you'd ever need to research. It has come under fire in the past for inaccurate information being posted. Wikis can't always be trusted because they are usually edited by the community.

Blog #3

I think we actually did a pretty good job on our video. In a perfect world, we would have had more time to polish things and upload it in HD (like we filmed it in). But, considering the time constraints, I think we put forth a good effort.

One thing that helped was meeting up on our off week to plan out and actually film our footage. Without that planning, I don't think our final product would have been as smooth as it was and we probably would've had to re-film or film additional footage.

This sounds very isolationist, but I don't care for group projects. I enjoy working with others (the social aspect) but I am kind of a control freak/perfectionist when it comes to projects. I may not be the best student in the world, but I like having my projects be 100% mine and they usually turn out better if they are. So, that would be my main gripe. Otherwise I wouldn't change anything that I didn't already mention. (time mostly)

TEAC 259 Blog #2

With the advent of the internet, it's become easier and easier to collaborate and share ideas worldwide. But with that ease comes new sets of rules and laws concerning what data can be put where. Copyright laws have been around a long time, but fairly recently had to be added to to cover the internet. Just like you can't copy someones book and claim it as your own work, you can't copy a video or movie and legally post it as your own. All the time on YouTube you see videos being taken down due to copyright claims by Viacom, TWC, and other music and media groups. This is because whoever made the video may have used copyrighted content from one of those companies in their video. That's a no-no.

Which brings me to fair use. Fair use states that small clips or portions of media may be used verbatim if it's being used to criticize, teach, or research without having to give credit or payment to the original source. I watched a video recently where this professor did a whole lecture on Inception and used clips from the movie to add to his lecture. Under fair use, this is legal because he was using those copyrighted clips to teach. Fair use definitely has limits, but it's a good thing for the general public.

Creative commons is a form of copyright that helps foster creative and collaborative work. For example, if I were to make a short film, I could pre-authorize it for creative commons use so that others in the population could change or improve upon it. The original author still retains some rights, but not "all rights reserved" like with normal copyright.

The way I can use these three things in my classroom is #1, not infringing on someone's copyright and #2, teaching my kids that it's not okay to use someone else's work without properly mentioning who's work it was originally. I'm sure as the internet continues to evolve, these laws will evolve with it.

Blog #1 1/16/12

Question: How might you facilitate collaborative learning in your future classroom setting? Use your reflection on Johnson's video and your notes on the reading from Davis to inform and support your ideas.

As a future educator, collaborative learning should be a big part of my classroom. In one of my other classes, we were discussing the question of whether or not cheating was ever acceptable. When it was my turn to voice my opinion, I said that there were many forms of cheating, and not all of them were unacceptable. All throughout primary schooling, we were told that comparing answers with others or "copying" was cheating and a bad thing. Well, in the real world that is called collaboration. Sure, straight up copying someones work is cheating, but in the long run it usually ends up just hurting the copier. As educators, I think we need to facilitate collaborative learning by reinforcing students about working together with their peers. It also needs to be taught that thinking for yourself is very important to your success as a student. The negative stigma surrounding collaboration (often times called cheating) needs to be remove so that students learn early that working together is a good thing. In Johnson's video, he tells us that a lot of great ideas come from groups of people, not an individual. While individuals may have great ideas, allowing them to grow further in a group makes them even better. While a lot of people think that the internet is decaying our children's minds, it also can be used for good. More than ever, ideas are being shared around the globe. Research, technology, and a plethora of other things are growing and changing faster than ever before. If we as future educators can harness the power of things like the internet, our children will be fascinated with learning and sharing new ideas.

Which brings me to a whole different topic about getting children interested in learning...but that's for another post.