Three ideas from your reading that you are of interest to you:
1. I am definitely an advocate of performance assessments. As I have mentioned earlier, one of our focuses in my fifth grade classroom is the understanding of PowerPoint. Many of my assessments for social studies and science include performance assessments. I require that students use PowerPoint for some of the projects, while I leave PowerPoint as an ‘option’ for other projects. The students are quick to find out that some projects are better off without PowerPoint presentations, while other projects are much better suited for PowerPoint.
2. I must say that the example with Mrs. Blake and the question “what is the most important invention in the past two thousand years?” is a fantastic question that would make a great project. It would be interesting to see what a classroom full of fifth graders would come up with.
3. I agree with the authors that multiple assessments need to be conducted throughout the instruction. I also like that the authors suggest a variety of assessments within both the formative and summative categories. I am a believer that if an educator properly uses formative assessment, that summative assessment is not as important as it traditionally has been.
Two new ideas for integrating technology for student learning in your own classroom/content area:
1. I like the example with Mrs. Blake and the timeline of technological innovations over the last 2000 years. The reason that I like this activity (and why I may use it in my classroom) is that it really makes the students think twice about the definition of technology. This activity will really put technology into perspective.
2. I am interested in implementing digital portfolios to my classroom. The past few years I have had my kids keep a science portfolio in which they keep their graded science lab write-ups. Some of them come out fantastic, while others can be lost or wrinkled up, etc. A digital portfolio could be a great next step.
What is your one main concern about integrating technology for student learning after reading this chapter?
1. My main concern regarding taking kids in to work on word processing is that my kids have such drastic differences in typing abilities. Unfortunately, some of my kids would be done typing multiple pages while others would still be working on their first few sentences. Managing this has always baffled me, so I usually give my students the option of handwriting or typing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Dave,
ReplyDeleteYou shared such interesting ideas and possibilities for classroom use. Have you or your students used action buttons with the PowerPoint design? I had not thought about the typing issue with 5th grade and am glad you shared that. I'll pass on your solution of allowing written or typed work. At waht grade do students have a keyboarding class?
Thanks for your ideas and comments!
Joan
Hi Dave,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what other districts do but we have a formal keyboarding class at 6th grade. It is an 18 week class for 50 min. a day. All 6th graders are required to take it. Prior to that some students acquire keyboarding skills, and many acquire bad habits because they are allowed to hunt and peck. We really encourage our 6th grade teachers to not have students do word processing (lots of text and editing) before they have taken the keyboarding class--it is just too frustrating for the students.
PowerPoints on the other hand can provide the opportunity to integrate technology and not have to do a great deal of typing if students use the rules of 6--6 bullets per page and 6 words per bullet--it really makes them think about what is important to include, and not read their powerpoint presentation when presenting.
Cathy Ziebarth