Engaging Students in Performance Assessment and Reflective Learning

1) One thing I learned about were Digital Portfolios. (Maloy, et al, 2013, p.284) I think these would be an awesome thing to implement in the classroom. I am familiar with portfolios. I have had a couple of teachers have us turn in a portfolio at the end of the year as a final grade, instead of us having to take a final test.

I think this is an awesome alternative and because it shows a student's learning over the course of the year and can better evaluate their full understanding and allows them to think a bit more abstractly. Some students are not good test takes, so to have one test account for such a huge portion of their grade isn't really fair.

Digital portfolios appear to have all of the same great attributes of regular portfolios. Plus, it is probably easier to keep track of everything inside it and keep it organized. It also gives students practice with technology and helps them get used to using it, which is crucial in the 21st century.

2) Pre-assessments are tests given to students before the lesson is taught to them to see what they already know, so the teacher can plan the lesson accordingly.(Maloy, et al, 2013, p.285) I think that pre-assessments are crucial to teaching.

If everyone in a class already understands something, there isn't really a point in spending a lot of class time in it, when you could be working on things that most of the kids got wrong on the pre-assessment. They help teachers be more effective and efficient when teaching lessons.

3) Teaching with clickers was something else I learned about in chapter 11.(Maloy, et al, 2013, p.288) They seem like a great way to make sure all students participate and give them a judgment free opportunity to share their input and answers in the classroom.

We did something like this in our Human Growth and Development Class, in which we went on Kahoot and did a class quiz. After each question, we would see a bar graph of the number of people that chose each answer, and then we had a class discussion on why the answers were wrong or right.

I thought it was a fun, different, and effective way to learn. The only downside is that every student needed their own smart device. This could be a problem in other classrooms without these resources or classrooms with younger students. In these situation the clickers would be an awesome tool!

All in all, student assessment is a necessary part of learning. However, there are other ways of doing it, rather than just the classic multiple choice test and technology can help with that. We can make digital portfolios, use clickers, have students take online surveys, and so much more.

Resources

• 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.
• Burke, M (November, 6, 2015) Digital Blog Post J. Presentation created with Haiku Deck: www.haikudeck.com