This week I need to monitor and assess the progress that I
have made to reach the goals that I set out two weeks ago. The two goals that I
set for myself were to:
·
Give my students the skills and knowledge to
reflect on their learning and findings to improve their understanding, critical
thinking skills, planning and creative processes,
·
Be more of an advocate for and model best
practice of digital citizenship and responsibility to make sure that my
students' use of technology is safe, legal and ethical.
Most of the units in my curriculum are project based where
students research, design, manufacture and evaluate a solution to given
problems that I present to them. I have found that project based learning
activities have enabled me to provide learning opportunities that are
personalized for all students in the class and they can take the project in the
direction of their choice and use their choice of learning style in most cases.
This week I learned about four different categories of
assessment formats and it is clear that the project based format is most suited
to my classes as I could make very distinct connections between what was stated
and how I already assess my students in all of my classes.
The projects that students complete each year requires them
to use higher order thinking skills to research, synthesis and design a
realistic and workable solution to the problem. Other assessment formats such
as forced-option assessments do not allow me to adequately assess the higher
order thinking skills of my students and although I could use open ended
response assessments, my subject is so practical, I find that my students can
better express themselves and are much more motivated to physically demonstrate
and explain their designs and end products.
The progress that I have made over the past two weeks in
order to meet the GAME plan goals that I set out have been to start designing a
database that my students can use to easily look up resources that I have
sourced and that I think would be useful for the projects that they undertake.
Designing the database is quite challenging because I need to consider all of
the variable and information that may be stored, the relationship between each
of the variables and also what I can use as the unique identifier (Primary key)
for each piece of information. Any tips or suggestions for how I should
structure this database would be most welcome!
As a matter of chance, this week I discovered a resource
called flipsnacks (http://www.flipsnack.com/),
and think that this is a fantastic resource for demonstrating the achievements
and pieces of work that students have produced throughout a year of studying my
course.
With regard to being a better advocate and modeler of digital
citizenship I have started to modify the resources that I provide for my
students so that any resources such as images or statements are fully cited, I
have also built digital citizenship into my assessment rubrics for next year so
that students realize the importance of being a responsible digital citizen.
Your students are lucky to use many project based learning activities in your class. I would like to incorporate more of these into my physics classes. I'm sure your students are more engages than many classrooms. I also like that you are always looking for new technologies. Once teachers stop developing, they stop being good.
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of the database. A spreadsheet may be easier to work with, depending on your level of comfort with databases. If you tend to teach the same content level each year in the same order, you could always label the primary key as project 1, project 2, etc. You could do this even if you don't teach the same content in the same order. As long as you know what project # corresponds to which project (maybe a separate spreadsheet), your could just list the current project as project 23, or whatever number it might be.
Tim