Week+5

__ Week 5: Photostory, Assessment and Evaluation __

Agenda:[[image:3119_photostory.jpg width="130" height="128" align="right" caption="http://jennasmith0508.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/photostory2.jpg"]]
1) Short Smartboard Introduction 2) Cyberbullying Reading and Discussion on Professional Development Cyberbullying workshop 3) Mark Prensky"Digital Natives" Article Discussion 4) Presentations of Movie Maker videos 5)Photostory Introduction 6) Assessment and Evaluation 7) MarkBook 2009 8) [|www.turnitin.com] 9) Rubric Development for multimedia assignment

Smart Boards:
Smart Boards are great for interactive student lessons. The one issue I have with Smart Boards is that only a small number of students can work on them at once. To remedy this, I would integrate the Smart Board into my lessons as an activity station in which the students can use as an assessment for learning tool.

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This is a video that explains how Smart Boards can be effectively incorporated into lesson delivery.

Today's Reading and Cyberbullying Workshop:
Today's reading focuses on the topic of cyberbullying. This reading added to the information I learned at the professional development workshop on this issue. For a full description of what I have learned surrounding this topic please see my Professional Workshops section of this wiki. In this section you will read about cyberbullying and its presence in the educational system. You can access this page by selecting if from the menu on the left or by simply clicking here

For a copy of today's article, open the web link by clicking here

Digital Natives Article Discussion:
From the information recieved in the article as well as the class discussion I feel that I am growing up as a part of the digital natives group. I feel this way because throughout my high school and university education I was constantly using technology during my daily life. One area that influences my opinion that I am a digital learner is the fact that I studied GIS and GPS technologies extensively throughout my undergraduate degree. During these courses I used technology constantly to gather, adapt, interpret and publish information.

Photostory:
You use still images but narrate a story as the images flow by. You can also set the pictures to music. This is a good tool whenever editing or clipping may be too difficult or time consuming for students to do. You can edit photos and build your photostory very easily as it is a step by step process. I would use this as a tool in my lessons as it allows students to become more engaged with the text they are reading or studying.

Assessment and Evaluation:
Can be one of the largest thorns in your side as an educator. It is presently a contensious issue in today's schools. It is constantly changing and will continue to change in the future. There are different views at different educational levels ie: elementary, secondary and university. Traditionally the marks would be generated by the computer, now they want teachers to evaluate whether or not the student is worth this mark. This makes it very difficult to defend the grade given to students. Using the percentage system, it is difficult to assess the difference.

Markbook 2009:
This is a tool that allows teachers to keep all of their class data and assessment information in one easy and accessible location. I belive that this would be an effective tool to use in the classroom as long as all aspects of it were understood. As I was browsing around this program I felt that there were many processes that this program could compute, but I did not feel competent in many of them. I believe that as the program was used, I would become comfortable and familiar and take on the use of this program within my classroom.

Turnitin.com
This is a program that allows teachers to input student work to check for plaigarism, grade and peer review assignments. This would be an effective program to use in the classroom whenever you wish to share assignments and check for student originality. The one negative aspect is that it is quite expensive for school boards to purchase.

Rubric Creation:
As a class we brainstormed the aspects of the final multimedia that should be assessed. The overall aspects were decided and the final more finite details were left to the discretion of the teacher. I feel that allowing students to contribute to the fabrication of assessment tools is a very positive action as it allows for students to explore what exactly must be present in their project in order for them to achieve each level. Select the following PDF to see the finished rubric and how our 21st century learners multimedia presentations will be assessed.