Formative and Summative Assessment

Formative assessment is a way of assessing students' understanding and knowledge about a particular subject. Worksheets, brainstorming, using manipulatives to show how a student solved a problem are a few ways to execute a formative assessment. A summative assessment is about asking questions and only wanting one answer. The most obvious type of summative assessment is any standardized test. Unit tests are also summative because you test a specific number of units that you have discussed in class. You give students questions, and you grade based on whether the student responded with the correct answer or not.

Formative= look for understanding

Summative= Test/grade on specific answers

A technology tool that a teacher can have students use as a formative assessment is blogger. The purpose of our class being given specific prompts to respond to allow our professor an opportunity to go through each post to see if we are understanding and learning what we need to be. We can convey confusion, excitement and many other feelings simply by how we react in our blogs.

For a summative assessment, I, as a teacher, may require my class to make Prezis about the 13 original U.S. colonies. I may have them work in groups and work on one colony per group. The key thing that would make this assignment summative is a rubric. If I issue a rubric ahead of time to the class and demand that they follow it, I will grade based on how well they followed it. The Prezi may indeed allow for some formative assessment, but the act of grading according to a rubric makes the assignment a summative assessment in the end.

Professional Organizations

http://www.screenr.com/nYd8

Professional Organizations are useful resources for any and all people entering any type of profession to build professional relationships. They serve as a bridge between students and professionals. Professional Organizations allow for communications amongst many people within the same profession to share concerns, thoughts, ideas, advice, etc. For me, personally, I will strongly consider joining NSEA (Nebraska State Education Association). I believe that this organization would serve as a great resource when I begin my teaching journey. I picked this particular organization for two reason: 1. It's in Nebraska and I feel that I will start my teaching career in Nebraska and 2. I have access to the organization already in college. One of my current professors, Bill Lopez, is a sponsor for a UNL base of the organization, so I already have access to this organization. As a student, I can become involved with the organization for an annual $60 fee, but with that fee, I will have access to money saving opportunities. The organization provides discounted traveling fees as well as retail and insurance discounts. There's also a money management program that this organization offers its members, which would benefit me greatly due to my lack of control in my spending habits.

Digital Divide

Lesson Plan

The digital divide is the rift between people who have access to the internet and those who don't. I feel that because of the way technology is dramatically improving everyday, the digital divide is beginning to decrease. The stress that the school system puts on teachers to include technology within the classroom is, in my opinion, a big reason as to why the divide is narrowing. People are beginning to use advanced technology at really early ages as opposed to what was happening just 20 years ago. When I was growing up in a small, rural town, technology was a luxury, but anymore, seemingly everyone has access to technology (especially the internet).

As I begin to start my teaching career, incorporating technology into my lesson plans won't be a surprise, it will be an expectation. Technology allows teachers the opportunity to help students learn how to discover things on their own. Instead of a student asking some random question and we, as teachers, may not be able to tell them immediately, we will have taught them how to find the answers to all of their potential questions on their own. There's going to be a learning curve, but everything in life does. The availability that we teachers can provide technology for our students is going to play a huge role on how our students perceive and are able to work with the new technology advances we experience on a daily basis.

Mind Mapping

Nebraska History Mind Map

Bloom's Taxonomy, I feel, is exactly what a mind map is presenting. A mind map indicates a specific idea or topic and Bloom's Taxonomy is all about the learning process of that idea or topic. Bloom's Taxonomy is about complete understanding of an idea and a mind map shows all concepts or ideas of a main, central idea, so when going through the steps of Bloom's Taxonomy, the learner would be able to completely understand everything represented on a mind map about that particular idea.

Both, mind mapping and Bloom's Taxonomy, can be used when dealing with instructional technology. A mind map can give a person a visual representation of what is being discussed as well as all aspects of that idea, so with instructional technology, a mind map may display various technological tools that could be used within a classroom setting. Bloom's Taxonomy can certainly be used in instructional technology. If a person, such as myself, does not have much experience with technology, we as learners need to go through the steps of Bloom's Taxonomy so we can appropriately and efficiently used multiple forms of technology within our future classroom.

Digital Citizenship

I chose to focus on a couple of key aspects of digital citizenship from the article we were given about citizenship. In the classroom, I can easily discuss these characteristics of digital citizenship by tying them to each child's citizenship within there own community. We could discuss the roles they play in their immediate community and tie those roles into their digital community. I can stress the importance of security inside the digital community by comparing it to situations in the physical life, such as personal information they do not openly share. If they wouldn't want to share information aloud to peers, they should know not to share information online with their digital community. We, as teacher, need to be responsible for discussing and modeling how to use digital media in proper and productive ways. We need to be sure that our students understand the usefulness of digital communities but we also need to be sure they do not abuse their privileges of being in a digital community. We all the advancements and dependencies our society has with technology, it is vital that we incorporate it into the classroom, but it is also extremely vital that we use the tools we are given appropriately.

Univeral Design for Learning

Pablo the Penguin

Stories created on bookbuilder.org qualify as UDL sources because of the features the internet site offers. With all UDL's, we are trying to connect as much material as we possibly can to all of the students in the classroom. This is easier said then done. In all classrooms, there are all types of diversity, so with things like this internet site we used to create our own story, we try to reach out to those different diversities. There's an audio feature that would be useful for people visually impaired, there is also a feature that allows the creator to translate his/her work into another language which would be awesome if you, as a teacher, were trying to help some ELL students within the classroom. The pictures are good for beginning readers of all diversities because it allows them to match what is being read to what is going on in the story. With all of the features of the story building website, it doesn't matter what subject is being discussed because there are many ways of adapting the reading to suit multiple needs that a classroom may have

Social Media

Social media is any internet site that allows interaction amongst peoples all around the world. Social media has made a huge impact on the entire world during the past few years. The impact of social media has impacted schools throughout the years. I know, being a student myself, that peers around me are constantly using sources of social media constantly throughout the school days. Because of this observation, I believe that it is important to embrace rather than shun sources of social media. TappedIn is an example of a social networking site that I believe can be vital as a teacher. It is always great to have people working with you who have experiences and advice to give, but with TappedIn, we are exposed to educational professionals from all around the world to get advice from. If I, the teacher, were determined to incorporate an activity into the classroom about a specific topic, I could go onto TappedIn and ask other education professionals for help and advice. Resources are endless with tools like TappedIn. All social networking sites can be used as learning tools when used correctly. I feel that the biggest issue that schools have with social networking sites is that when they discourage them, that discouragement encourages students to use the media even more. Instead of shunning all social networking sites, schools need to be smarter about it. Schools should encourage social networking sites, but encourage using the sites for a purpose. I believe that their are times that no student should be on a social networking site, but it is my (the teacher's) job to establish those moments. Social media is a huge part of the world today, and will continue to be, so instead of acting like it is a bad thing, we need to embrace it and use it to our advantages as teachers.