Digital Blog Post #J

Chapter 11: Engaging Students in Performance Assessment and Reflective Learning

There was many points of interest in this chapter. The first I would like to discuss is The Role of Assessment in Teaching and Learning. In the teacher environment, there is three forms of assessment (which I did not know), they are: New Teacher Assessment, Student Assessment, and Student Self Assessment. 

• New Teacher Assessment: I knew that this was something that teachers had to go through. Throughout teaching careers, teachers have to be assessed by their supervisors. They have to make sure that the way they are teaching is professional, effective, and covering the course material. To become a teacher, you have to take a test mandated by the state to get your license. It is just followed up by being observed from teachers who will mentor you and supervise you. Finally, you'll have to complete summaries about what you have learned about a variety of things that you will use while teaching.
• Student Assessment: You will have to find ways to assess the students' learning. This could be in t

est forms or others forms as well. This also has to deal with looking back on yourself and how effective your teaching methods are. You will collect the student assessments in data forms so that you can show their progress (or decrease) as the school year goes on. This is usually done in the form of a report card and grades throughout the year. Also, you can look back at yourself if everyone doesn't do well on something to go switch up the ways you're teaching the subject. 

• Student Self Assessment: This type of assessment is how the students engage in the assessment process. The involvement of students in the assessment process will give them a chance to voice their own opinions for how the school year is going. They can be anonymous, so that the students' feel more comfortable and will be more willing to be honest. 

To continue, the next point of interest was the Technology for Civic Engagement and Service Learning section. Civic engagement is experiences that students develop outside of the classroom atmosphere working to improve the community from their engagement. Service learning develops outside of the classroom as experiences that help improve the community while learning academic concepts and skills. Both of this skills impact the K-12 grades in many ways such as:

• Learning of academics
• Learn how to deal with real-world problems
• Students are able to connect their classwork with outside work
• Understand the importance of different things such as politics

Civic Engagement and Service Learning includes 5 steps:

1. Personal Reflection: with the reflection, students can make sense of how they can connect their involvement in the community to the classroom
2. Project Documentation: Different technologies can be ways to document the project such as video cameras, smartphones, and photos.
3. Service Projects: The integration of technology in communities and classrooms will help individuals to learn the use of these technologies.
4. Social Media Projects: With the contribution of media projects such as blogs, wikis, digital magazines, and other electronic presentations students can bring to light new ideas or things they have learned developing these projects.
5. Apps for Social Change: apps can focus on students and communities can contribute to social improvement. 

Lastly, I liked the section Reasons for teaching with Clickers. This sections was comprised in four areas.

• Active learning:
• Teaching with a clicker helps the students express their opinions with the use of technology. They are more easily able to answer something with the use of something, from their seat, with the use of technology. 
• Student involvement:
• The use of things such as clickers will involve the whole student body, especially the younger kids. They will think the item is cool and want to participate, especially if they see others doing it. Everyone gets involved and has a chance to participate in the lesson. 
• Real-time feedback:
• The teachers are able to analyze the knowledge of the students for the particular subject they are working on because of the amount of student involvement, therefore if something in the teacher's teaching method needs to be changed, it can before a test.
• Question-centered instruction:
• This type of discussion is when the students are by themselves, put in pairs, or groups to answer a question and they do so with the clicker. This will see where the majority of the class is at. Students are able to ask questions before they respond, that way they can think and develop an answer. 

 Choose Clickers, here's why!

APA CITATIONS:



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.

MSU Center for Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Video. (n.d.). Retrieved April 5, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqKPkXW0cKA