Assessing Student Progress Using Blog-Based Porfolios Editor’s note: Kathy Cassidy is the author of a new book from Powerful Learning Press, Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades. During a recent webinar (free archive here), Kathy shared many ideas from Chapter 5 of the book, “Using Blogs as Digital Portfolios.” The webinar was rich in content and full of great discussion — so much so that there simply wasn’t time for Kathy to share her thoughts, in depth, about where formative and summative assessments might fit into this digital blog/portfolio model. So we’ve asked her to write this article. Much as she does in her eBook, she’s included short videos, useful downloads, and links to other valuable resources. ~ John Norton A Great Tool to Continuously Assess Progress
How To Be A Terrible iPad Teacher I published this off my site: teachingwithipad.org about a month ago. I hope you enjoy the read. Please leave any comments that may be useful. The following is a list, written in the first-person, of ideologies or stances from a Terrible iPad Teacher: 1. I own an iPad and I use it in class. The 5 Elements Students Should Look For When Evaluating Web Content March , 2014 In a section in her wonderful book "Understanding The Social Lives of Networked Teens" Danah Boyd talked extensively about the concept of digital natives and argued that this nomenclature does not really capture the essence of what a digitally savvy teenager really means. Dana argued that the mere fact of being comfortable with a social media tool does not prove that the user has a digital fluency to allow them to better use it for educational purposes : Just because teens are comfortable using social media to hang out does not mean that they’re fluent in or with technology. Many teens are not nearly as digitally adept as the often-used assumption that they are “digital natives” would suggest. The teens I met knew how to get to Google but had little understanding about how to construct a query to get quality information from the popular search engine. Learning how to evaluate online content is an essential step in the process of developing digitally literate students.
More reasons to love iPad with iBooks Author iPad Published on February 29th, 2012 | by Mark Anderson You won’t have failed to notice the big launch by Apple a few months ago with various links to education. They released 3 big education related items that have (if they hadn’t already) made educational establishments really sit up and notice the iPad as a serious learning tool. Checklist for Evaluating Web Resources Is the Web a good research tool? This question is dependent on the researcher's objective. As in traditional print resources one must use a method of critical analysis to determine its value. Here is a checklist for evaluating web resources to help in that determination. Authority: Step-by-Step: How to Create a Collaborative Class eBook Previously, I have published the following posts about creating eBooks: More and more classrooms are wanting to take their already created content and turn it into an eBook to share with parents, grandparents and the community who own eReaders. Here are some possible ideas to create content: Any Unit of StudyBook Report AnthologyPoem AnthologyVisual Quotes CollectionCreate your own TextbookEssay Collection about a Specific TopicDrawing/Painting CollectionPortfolio So, how do you create a collaborative CLASSROOM eBook?
7 Pillars Of Digital Leadership In Education 7 Pillars Of Digital Leadership In Education by Eric Sheninger, Principal at New Milford High School in New Jersey As schools change leadership must as well. 7th Graders Publish Their Own Textbook Mac Life wrote an article titled Super 7th Graders Publish Their Own eBook to the iBookstore. It explains the project in more detail. "Each student has to choose an organisms they wanted to study and were required to submit their topic for approval. Afterward, students had to write informative – but entertaining! – articles about their organism."
10 Interactive Lessons By Google On Digital Citizenship YouTube has a firm place in the current classroom. From Khan Academy’s videos to YouTube EDU and beyond, there’s a reason all these videos are finding a home in schools. In an effort to help keep the ball rolling, Google just launched a set of 10 interactive lessons designed to support teachers in educating students on digital citizenship. A topic obviously quite close to Google’s heart. Google (which owns YouTube) built the lessons to educate students about YouTube’s policies, how to flag content, how to be a safer online citizen, and protect their identities. BioBook, A Gates-Funded iPad Textbook, Would Create A Free Database For Customized Learning Since the launch of the iPad, colledge educators have been seeking an inexpensive alternative to paper textbooks that could leverage the collective knowledge of teachers and students. With a $249,000 grant from the Gates Foundation's Next Generation Learning Challenge, Dr. Daniel Johnson of Wake Forest University and education technology firm Odigia might have found it. Their BioBook, an iPad and web-enabled interactive biology textbook, creates a fully customizable experience for both students and educators. For educators, the BioBook allows professors to track individual student progress and develop their own textbooks from a national database of professor-generated, mix-and-match chapters. On the student side, linear chapters are remixed into "branches and leaves," where students explore concepts as interlinked ideas, moving from fundamental facts to an array of detailed chapters, which students can explore in their own way.
Focus on portfolios: 4 advantages of alternative assessment I’m happy to say that my school is currently dipping its toes into alternative assessment in the form of writing portfolios. Although I’m a big fan, it is the norm to view portfolios as a ‘non-traditional’ approach to judging performance. Nevertheless, portfolios, and alternative assessment methods in general, are frequently used in education to evaluate students based on objectives tailored to their learning needs. In contrast, traditional assessments such as multiple-choice exams estimate a learner’s improvement in content knowledge against other exam takers. As the sole criterion of improvement and/or competence, traditional testing can create faulty comparisons and overlook achievements.