Notions and Assessment.538 #3

Wow! What a week! Technogized by the FOE virtual conference…postings and presentations, acquainting myself with educators who are totally immersed in educational technology….drawing on their energy and knowledge to boost my own.

Through FOE, I became part of an active dialogue regarding the learning that goes on in a wiki…or whether learning occurs in a wiki! How serendipitous for me since wikis are the focus of my summer energy. I am developing a hybrid professional development workshop that incorporates f2f, a course management system and a wiki for the purpose of bringing middle and high school teachers into the Web 2.0 fold. When I get my wiki all done, I’ll post and link it through this blog and get some feedback.

And, I’ve been reading…Assessing Online Learning. Got to chapter 4, “Online Collaborative Assessment: Unpacking Process and Product”and was reminded of a series of workshop trainings I received as a high school teacher based on the Richard Stiggins model. I really bought into his stance regarding process and product, formative and summative assessments, and the difference between assessments for learning and assessments of learning. During our training and the subsequent development of an informal study I conducted with my 11th grade students, we “unpacked” the Illinois Learning Standards as they applied to reading in developing a standards based curriculum focused on the end product. The whole process is much like like Wiggins’ Backward by Design and frankly, very amenable to development on wikis. Are you hearing the theme?

But the week wasn’t over and I was far from finished in connecting wikis with what I read. My teaching background you picked up from the previous paragraph is English–which to me is all about communication…and so I am focused on reading and writing and listening and speaking. That’s why I am so confident the wiki can help teachers help kids to be come better readers, which is really all about thinking. And now I’m back to Assessing Online Learning again, chapter five: Using Virtual Learning Models to Enhance and Assess Students’ Critical Thinking and Writing Skills. Wikis are all about communication: reading and talking with others in order to make meaning and then communicating that meaning with others to refine, define, extend, create more meaning that again gets communicated and sifted through the thought processes of another to go the gamut again.

These texts I’ve referenced: written, spoken, virtual, all come full circle to what is going on as I write…I am reconstructing, if very briefly, the texts that have engaged me this week; I am constructing meaning as I connect one to the other through reflective and cognitive thought, questioning their origins and relationships, and now, I am communicating those thoughts to you, looking for someone to challenge and extend my thoughts in an intellectual and fun exchange.

Has anyone ever actually had a learning experience in a wiki? Has anyone ever had a learning experience in a blog? Is it possible to have an experience and not learn? I pose those as rhetorical questions, but you can chew on them if you like and if you are further moved, let me know what your notions are about such theoretical meanderings.

Assessing distance learning. 538 post #1

Many educators have the notion that assessment is something they do after instruction is complete. Assessment, then, they see as a means of evaluating a student’s learning. I call this perception of assessment a “notion” because definitionally, that is just what it is…an idea, “a mental apprehension.” According to Merriam Webster, the meaning of the word “assessment” can have connotations of evaluation, but also included in the definition is the word, “installments.”

In an educational sense, a sense for which MW does not provide a definition of our term, Grant Wiggins applies the concept of installments as he explores the differences between assessment and evaluation. In his discussion, he attributes the qualities of assessment with those of feedback whereas the qualities of evaluation are “value judgments made about the facts and their impact.”

 So what. One of the concerns many have regarding distance learning is the ability of the educator to assess and evaluate the progress of the learner. From the standpoint of assessment, if one (like me) subscribes to Wiggins’s theories, assessment is key to distance learning. Assessment is ongoing and informative; assessment flows in two directions, from student to teacher and teacher to student–it is Socratic in that teachers and learners are involved in a process of questioning and responding and adjusting and reflecting and questioning. Learning doesn’t end; the time in which one has to demonstrate their learning comes to a close. And all of this activity is done promptly, unlike the classic educational systems that place time limits on learners without like constraints on evaluators. Assessment is the flipside of feedback. To see assessment not as evaluation but as a Socratic practice that benefits all involved in learning is to put a positive spin on one of the most needed aspects in education today…a motivation to learn and prove that learning.

Using etools for distance learning. 438 post #1

In my soul, I am a writer and I am a teacher and sometimes I have been a teacher of writing. Because I am a teacher and writer, I was afraid, at first, of technology. I saw it as having a power to undermine the beauty of langauge and world of books, two things I love.  And I worried about technology being misused as a mechanistic replacement of the act and art of teaching. But for a long time, now, I’ve appreciated the power of technology as it enlivens and enrichens langauge, stretching the reach of the written word and giving words lives they otherwise may not have had.

 I encountered a site today that clearly does all of this. Voicethread incorporates teaching and technology through words and graphics that are author centered, but socially networked.  Although Voicethread provides its own tutorials, a blog on Voicethread offers an engaging mental model of what Voicethread is and can do. Publishing on the site is free and the process is guided by a gentle easy-going voice. It took me about ten minutes to set up my site and though I haven’t yet added audio, when I get it done, I’ll invite you to share in my photo album.

Voicethread can be a powerful etool to engage students in language and communication through its combined powers of pictures and instant communication. Not only can it be an expression of students’ personal lives, therein lies powerful opportunities for them to share experiences that connect to academic and life learning.