E-portfolio ,e-quizzes, e-surveys and e-rubrics

Hi guys  ,

         Everyone has different learning styles .Why wouldn't we assess in ways that captures the unique abilities of each individual student in our classroom?

We as teachers can choose whether to be more concerned with detailed description of our student performance rather than a grade or an instrument to get a numeric value for their learning achievement .Here we are talking about assessment in qualitative terms rather then in quantitative terms .

Basically  we have standardized test and traditional forms of assessment and in the other hand performance based assessments that are more likely to use meaningful ,context embedded tasks through collaborative activities .Also it provides feedback on student strengths and weaknesses ,provide information for learning and teaching that result in improved student performance .

There are three types of of performance based assessment :performances ,porfolios,projects.

The portfolio assessment model:

It includes six level of assessment activities :(1)identify a purpose and focus for the portfolio  (2) plan portfolio content (3) design a portfolio analysis procedure (4)platform for the portfolio's instructional effect (5)identify the procedures to verify the portfolio content (6)implement the model .

Using portfolio as an assessment represents their ability to work hard toward long term goals .It measures student growth over a longer period of time .There can be stored each student made material and archive their work and things become very easy o find as a teacher .Students can see their own accomplishments and teachers can see their students accomplishments too.

I have previously mentioned that it is important to foccuss in the skill you want to teach to your students and want them to progress .E-porfolio is one way that we can use to focus on students growth on a certain skill .Beside assessing skills you can assess different courses or knowledge.In the other hand we have the involvement of students in their assessment .When students gather their work to create their portfolio they are reflecting on their learning and also being actively engaged .

Google sites work perfectly for e-portfolios .After creating their pages students can upload photos videos ,text .I think that the teacher can also have its own page and so can instruct and guide the students .The teacher can provide each week a series of questions in order to guide the students during their work and this way students wont find the task overwhelming .

E-surveys

You can create a survey ,for example using surveymoncey.com you can analyze the responses and provide some kind of graphic detail about  the information.You also can view through all of the written responses and see the sort of information you get in terms of percentages.

One activity that I am  thinking of using E-surveys assessment when I want to know the background and the information that my students already have related to the topic I am going to teach .

Another case would be when I want to know what do they understand by a term .

E-QUIZZES

Quizzstar is one of the online tools that can be used for creating quizzes.For example the teacher can create personalized quizzes focusing on the student level and the objectives and post it in each student protopage e-portfolio site. Students also can create quizzes to gather information and then use the quiz result along with other materials that thay have gathered and created for their Portfolio .

Last,e-rubrics 

Rubrics can act equally as an assessment instrument or as an instructional that guides students . For example the rubric that our teacher uses to assess our blog posts serves both ,to instruct us what a good post should and also for the assessment process.The same is the use of rubrics in assessing portfolios .

 I've checked the two rubrics creating tools that are suggested in the chapter of E-assessment and I recommend Rubistar .

thank you for your time 

#commentsarewelcommed#

Evaluation/Assessment

    Hello everyone !        

           This week i choose to write abour assessment and evaluation processes .Assessment is important in every teaching and learning environment .It shows us what have already been learnt and informs us what  is needed  to improve. Traditionally, tests have been the main form of assessment , usually at the end of the cycle for example at the end of semester or end of the  year . Now we know that this kind of assessment is called summative assessment .Students have one chance to demonstrate their learning .This is how we used to be assessed in previous years in high school and middle school . Literally  this is how i thought students should be assessed before i begin the university .Than i saw that our professors use other kinds of strategies to assess us ,and those strategies i have noticed during the years were actually the lecture on assessment was about 

.I remember a say from one of our professors during the bachelor .It went something like : Exams are like taking photos .sometimes you get a very good picture but sometimes what we get are some terrible ones .So just a snap shot of the moment can't assess your knowledge .Students may not give their best in an exam in the end of the semester because of many reasons .That’s way on this post I am going to focus more in other alternatives of assessment rather than Summative assessment.

I think that a regular self -reflection is very important in evaluation process because students become more aware of their own strength and development .That means that they are less rely on the teacher feedback and grade and gradually become more autonomous and independent learners .If we focus more in the process of learning than the end product ,strategies of learning students use and the effort they put in we give every student a chance to succeed ,

We all remember the stress and pressure of final exams because the exams were very important in our evaluation, apparently the most important ones  .I think that this pressure need to alleviate and we have to help our students have a positive experience of learning .Also this kind of assessment gives students the confidence  to react more directly . We can see that in subjects that feedback and reflection on what we learnt  is direct ,we  react immediately and with the time we know what is a decent performance we can have in these subjects .Furthermore it is very important for students to know that teachers are there to help and support rather than  to test and grade ,and to make the learning environment a positive and enriching one .

We as teachers don’t need to wait till the end of semester test to assess the progress of our students.As feedback is more immediate and a classroom routine ,students know what to expect and what is expected .Teachers too ,have a better understanding of student’s progress and their needs and adjust teaching methods when necessary .

There are undoubtedly many elements (that we have noticed even in our process of assessment during  the University ) of this kind of assessment that you already plan to use in your future classroom .

Now I am  going to list some of the strategies that i found really useful in this lecture .

Setting aims and objectives -It should take place At the beginning of each lesson ,what students will be learning about and what are the objectives and this will be revisited at the end of the lesson when students reflect what they learned and what they still need to improve .

Continuous assessment and feedback – actively observing the students to predetermined objectives .It contains on how well students participate during pair work ,what strategies they use to find the answers etc.This information is recorded throughout the semester and can be used to give personalized feedback .Designing a rubric might help for this strategy of assessment . 

When the two groups had the presentations last week, I tried to provide a feedback on their work lying on the rubric of the assessment of the presentation that teacher have designed and i felt  that it is a very good  strategy to use .

Peer learning –this involves being able on their own work and on the work of their classmates.

Using Learning Diaries  and Portfolios is another strategy that as i mentioned before focus on student progress rather than on a finished product .

 In my opinion   we don’t need to use all the strategies all at once .We should experiment and see what works for us and our students .

Thank You!

Develop Phase

Hello everyone

Hope you all are doing well.

This post is about the next phase of DDD-E  model .I am going to write about develop phase.

 Technology can be used to support students while they are developing their presentations, and it can be especially useful as part of the presentations themselves. For example, students can combine their oral presentations with audio, images, diagrams, photographs, animation, and/or video.

So basically at the develop phase we deal with including ,videos ,photos graphics audio files and recorded voice over narration ,animation,programming and all media components.

I am going to elaborate some of the tools that i didn't know how to use before .

Inserting a videos:

I already know hot to insert a video in PowerPoint but what i didn’t know is to set the playback to automatic so it will play automatically in your video .I am  going to explain how to do it .

When you click in in your media you get a toolbox and you have to click on video tools .

Here’s the playback video tools playback and you got to choose how it starts ..and we are going to choose automatically .You also have the options of trimming the video ,fade it in, fade it out or to loop it .you probably are asking yourself why we need this because its not a big deal just to click and start the video.

When using slideshow mode you can not start your video and also it is another reason that i will explain below.

Inserting audio :

You may have an interview of somebody or some sound recording from somewhere very interesting or music as a background (which a really like to use ) which you want to include in your presentation .

You are going to insert and way over on the right is audio and we are going to click audio from file.

Recording :if your want to comment a text or a slide or a photo in your presentation you can do it by recording your slide in slide show and then click on recording .For example if I am going to comment the video that i  inserted in my presentation we can see that the video start automatically because we set playback automatic .

We can record the whole slides using slide timing and  once our presentation is complete with text ,video and sounds we just need to record our voice over narration and slide timings.

Finally ,It very important to test how it all works ,watch it through and make sure  looks good and sounds good .

I hope this has been helpful and as always feel free to write your  comments .

Thank you!

 

PPT Design

Hi everyone ,

 This week I would like to share with you  my thoughts toward design phase in a project  .Basically doing design in a presentation is quite challenging .

We have  done so many PowerPoint presentations and I think we  know that the design is very important because it produces the blueprint for the entire project.

Outlining the content 

The very first step of a great PowerPoint presentation is to pare down your content and refine your message.I have seen many presentations ,( I might have done this mistake in my presentations too ) ,having too much information in one slide and even more than that not having a clear ,concise and memorable point.

So first of all we should spent some time to think about our slides and what it needs to tell the audience in a simply and easy way .what is exactly that we want our slides to say and how we can convey that in as few words as possible .Beginning with the title, what do we want someone to know about our slide and have it as clear as possible .

Once we have our point and we’ve written out the content for our slides we can simplify our sentences even further .So instead of writing all our content out in full sentences we can turn it into short statements ,or just remove things from your slide and put them into your talking notes so you can still bring them up .But sometimes we need to keep more text on the slides than we would like to ,because the presentation needs to stand on its own without you there talking over it .In this case the best we can do is to divide it up into multiple slides .

Creating flowcharts

I have used flowcharts in my presentations to explain processes in which steps appears as a symbol  or when I wanted to have the main idea branched into a few other topics.

You can align shapes or symbols with words so it would be clearer.I think that it is very important to use flowcharts in a presentation ,with a starting and a ending point and all the elements connected to each other you can support the message you want to share with your audience.

Specifying screen design

We all like to choose theme and templates that fits to our presentation .I personally like to search for slide design and pick elements that I like and apply them to my content.

Also there are ways to download different themes according to your needs .

Create storyboards

The Storyboarding feature in PowerPoint is an easy to use tool ,that helps you to turn your ideas into visuals through animations,shapes and text ,making it easier for instant feedback and modifications until the design of final product.

We all know that PowerPoint is a visual medium and often it feels like we have to be more professional in order to know how to create great slides.

Something that can help to make our presentation  more interesting is to replace words with visuals or simply adding them in .We can do that by breaking up the text into chunks and by adding visual elements like picture,graphics icons or simply shapes.

For example in my presentation last week I’ve simply added colored and outline shapes around my text in a way that makes the overall slide more visual .Images and icons are a good choice too.

I also  like to include white space in slides for example if you  chunk up the content into blocks and bring them closer your slide will be easier to look at .

To sum up , everything you do, you should have your audience in  mind ,make sure all your slides are properly aligned ,use "menus "to better control your slides or objects design  and keep it simple .

Thank you !

#commentsarewelcomed 

Teaching Grammar and Vocabulary .

HELLO EVERYONE !

I HOPE THIS POST  FINDS YOU WELL .

Our  topic for this week was  about Critical thinking on learning  grammar and vocabulary .

Students might be too low in their language skills to practice critical thinking  or students might have the language skills to practice critical thinking in English by they might not be accustomed to doing it. These are the two first things  that came to my mind  about this topic.

We all know that critical thinking is so much harder in second language  because the learner encounters unclear language in reading or listening  and teachers expect them to be clear and exact in their writing and their speaking , so it might be a bit challenging to be a critical thinker in a second language considering these facts.

Firstly , no matter what kind of activity you choose to use, you can adjust it for your student’s needs and definitely you can make them think whatever their language  level i is . How can we do that ?

 If we are going to use  a reading passage ,before reading you can show your students a photo .This will make  them  think ,guess ,ask questions ,wonder what has happened ,how,where ,when  and so on .

Photos always  inspire questions .

 Secondly ,whether critical thinking is the main focus of the lesson  or just a side of a story ,a couple of extra questions in a grammar or vocabulary lesson it could really deepen students’ engagement in the material. It will be more just a language class  for them ,It will be something more meaningful .

Preparing  some good questions  ,which  are general and  do not have only one correct answer might be a good idea.

So just as we design a powerpoint  presentation to make it more effective and interactive  we can do the same with the activities  we use in class to make students think critically.

Furthermore, I was very attracted by  the following questions  that are suggested for us  in the webinar we had on “Out of your seat grammar”.

Why are you doing each activity ?

If you’re not sure why….don’t do it.  If it is worth doing…is it worth all of the time you are dedicating  to it?

It has  happened to me in those projects we are asked to prepare a lesson plan and put ourselves in teacher’s role  ,as we are doing now in this subject, or  in Teaching Culture that  I REALLY try to be very active, to use many methods ,to include so many activities  and to make my best in that class I ‘m going to teach . Maybe I worked hard to prepare the whole thing   and maybe  i could do the same even  if I were in a real class. But  in fact if I asked myself these questions it would turn out that  no matter how interesting the activities are and no matter how advanced ,varied  and how hard I have worked on them , the result might  not be what I expected ..But how could this happen?

 First of all, we  should  consider that for our students  the new topic  we are going to teach is a new information for them .Even though  they  might have had that topic in previous grades but now  it comes to them more advanced .For example we used to learn about History of Albania in 9^th grade and also in high school too but of course in different levels.

 Do you remember when we were in middle school or high school and we struggle on learning one page  and a half in history ?  Whereas  now we can study the whole chapter  in one week . So we should be aware that for our students, what are we going to teach them is something new,too many activities ,too many skills to teach might not be the right thing to do .They might be confused with so many activities you are trying to do or distract from some important points and focus on some others  and we won’t have the result we desire .Or maybe some things will remain unclear just because we provided them to o much activities .

Sometimes "the best" is not to pick  all the good activities you know and bring them to your students ,but to be sure that whatever activity you use will achieve your goals .

 Hope you enjoy it !

Using technology tools in project work.

Hello everyone ,

I hope all of you are feeling good. This time I would like to share with you two apps that can be used in classroom to create and present   projects.

You know that I'ts tough keeping kids engaged today .They ‘re used to communicating  and multitasking on computers and smartphones .Even teachers are destructed with all this new gadgets ,so when it comes to create a classroom project, asking young learners to use these tools that result in static  posters like this,

might be considered a bit boring .Fortunately today there’s  a whole new way to erase paste and cut. Glogster.edu .is one of the apps that helps learners to do that .
You are probably asking yourself what is a glog?

 With glogster students and teachers create posters and integrate graphics ,text images videos and sounds .

.So if students are asked to illustrate a topic they can use text visuals and sound and images and they can show off to teacher, parents and other learners who can access the project online by going to  the glogster link .Students can work in groups and turn all their ideas into a  well designed project.

This app is online ,it is free and it is easy to use .

If i learn how to use it for a couple of hours ,imagine what young learners can do .

Students can use their imagination  and customize all the elements to best fit their project.

The second app I am going to write about  is more advanced and it can be used from adult students .It is called Pictochart .It is also a free app and  help students to create stunning presentations  ,infographics ,posters  and many other things .

Which grabs your attentions more ?

A giant block of text or a colorful smartly arranged visual ? Obviously  the visual .You don’t need any professional experience  to turn that giant text into a visual project in minutes.There are thousands of eye –catching templates with choices for every need which can customize however you like. This way students ,even teachers  can get their  message across with ease .

You can add online maps ,videos from youtube and also create many designs .

THESE ARE SOME PROJECTS CREATED BY STUDENTS .The projects might  consist of many pages like a presentation  or it can be a flyer or just a poster  and through designs they express their ideas easier.

I already love these apps and I am planning using them in my future classroom.

Thank you!

#commentsarewelcomed

Constructivism and DDD-E model.

Hi there!

This week's topic is Constructivism theory and DDD-E model..I would like to share with you my reflection about these topics .

      YOU KNOW THAT THERE ARE DIFFERENT THEORIES AND STUDIES regarding   THE WAY PEOPLE LEARN .When first read about constructivism it seems to me like what Curriculum of our education system  is trying to apply even though in my opinion there is still a lot of work to  do .What   I understand from this theory is that everyone is able to construct its own knowledge ,has its own interpretation and creates the meaning based on his or her experiences. Since everybody has  a different set of experience and perceptions ,learning is unique and different for each person.

I think it has happen to all of us to meet someone that  may not have read something in books but he knows that think .He or she has faced that thing and come up with a conclusion that in fact it is true for every one .

Furthermore there  are other theories how people do learn but constructivism seems to me the most logical one .It is like how everybody learn or there may be different ways of learning but this can not be suppressed .People will always learn from what they experience. It is good that there are different theories ,methods ,tools  because as we know what may work with some people may not with  some others and considering the levels of knowledge of their learners ,the thought processing ,the generation of ideas,  teachers can  decide what strategy to use. For example some of the applications that  constructivism suggests are

Case studies

Research projects

Problem based learning

Collaborative learning /group work

Discovery learning

Multimedia can take place on these methods .Both students and teachers can use it in order to make it more understandable and easier to get the meaning . For example they can use animated content to capture learners attention ,can capture powerpoint presentations ,produce and share videos via YouTube ,educators can  put themselves in a video to make things clearer ,also students can do that .Teachers  can integrate concepts from the theory of Multiple intelligence ,constructivism and use of multimedia to help students construct new knowledge.

Constructivisms means to construct meaning not just to acquire it or learn by hard consist on interaction ,leaner   experiencing things and and learning from them. It is based on the idea that the more often a learner  reflect on a task the more often they have the opportunity to modify and refine their efforts .This makes sense  to me . 
I think that without reflection people will continue to repeat their mistakes.According  to constructivism one can learn himself using  just past experiences and knowledge to a current situation and to have an interpretation on that. A person who has a better understanding or a higher level to that task or process like teachers in our case, can guide them and then they will be able to draw a conclusion by their findings .
The teacher is not anymore a knowledge transmitter .This theory is used to focus on preparing people   to problem solve. Learning is an active process and it is a social activity.That means that it is something we do together in interaction with each other.

In contrast with traditional educators ,whereby knowledge is simply passively transmitted by teachers to students Constructivists learning theory consist on a variety of student –centered teaching methods and techniques . The role of the teacher keeps being essential .As I mentioned teacher is the person who is going to guide them to have the desirable result . How can the teacher do that ?
Creating and bringing the appropriate activities and problem solving cases. I think that this is way  most of the teachers prefers traditional teaching  rather then this way of teaching because they might find it challenging and difficult to adjust and to address activities to their students.

DDD-E model

Now as for DDD-E model I would like to start with quoting 

Stiven Covery  who offered this advice in his book “Seven habits of highly effective people”

"To began with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination .

It means to know where you you’re going so that you better understand where you are now so that the steps you take are always in right direction."

It means that you should began by determining the desired outcomes ,how they will be measured ,and then design the learning activity.  

It is somehow what this model suggest .DDD-E MODEL helps us to be effective

In the table below you will find what DDD-E MODEL consists of.

 

Although I think that it might be  helpful to use this model as a guide in "real life" too.In order to achieve what you want you should  set some goals, create a plan  and follow some steps .

Thank you!

#commentsarewelcomed