Digital Assessments: More than an online quiz

There is a sea of assessment tools out there in the EdTech world: Kahoot, Google Forms, GoFormative, Nearpod, Socrative... the list goes on and on. All of these types of tools are good. They can give students instantaneous feedback, and can become more engaging. The but the question is, how are these tools more than just a digital worksheet?

There are many reasons that districts jump on the 1:1 digital bandwagon. The biggest arguably being that technology allows for great support of Personalized Learning. So is taking a quiz and putting it in Google Forms personalized learning?

EdTech gives us the opportunity to add Voice & Choice to how the students want to be assessed. We now have audio, video, graphic design, and many other tools at our students fingertips!

Thinking "Outside the box" on Assessments

1. Graphic Design Displays - Designing posters and infographics no longer takes hours of time with scissors, construction paper, and poster board. Students can use tools like Canva, Adobe Spark, & Piktochart to easily create graphics to display and/or explain their learning. Wouldn't your students take more ownership in their learning if they were developing a social media graphic about the causes of the Civil War as opposed to filling out a google form?

2. Video & Multimedia - There are so many video and media tools available these days. Screencastify, Explain Everything, Educreations, SeeSaw, and FlipGrid are all simple tools for students to record with. With these tools, we can ask every student to explain how they solved a problem as they submit an answer. When the student reviews their video explanation before submitting, they are checking their metacognition! How often does a multiple choice test do that for us?

3. Global Publishing - This option comes with a disclaimer - students under the age of 13 are not legally permitted to use social media accounts.
For our middle - high school students, we can allow them to share their learning through a blog, mini blog (twitter), or other social media outlet. This allows them to ask for feedback from others. Think about the effect of meaningful conversations with others, including experts, would have on the learning of a topic.

Making Students Aware of the 4Cs

This post is week 3 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators from hotlunchtray.com. Find out more by clicking here.

I am constantly thinking about the "4Cs of the 21st Centruy" when I work with students or coach teachers. The 4C skills are: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking. 

According to many, like P21.org, these are the skills that our students need to be successful in the current workplace, as well as the workplace they will walk into. Until recently, I hadn't put too much thought in making the students fully aware of how classroom activities are developing these skill sets for them. Yes, I've shared with students before how their time at school should and will be spent developing these skills along with learning content, but I don't promote them on a daily basis with students. I plan on making this change for my learners in the coming school year.

It is common practice to display the student learning objectives for the students in every lesson. Along with those objectives, I'm going to begin displaying a 21st Century Skill objective for them as well. The idea being that by the second semester of the school year, students themselves will be able to identify which skill they are developing. To me this doesn't have to be a major shift in anything my colleagues and I are currently doing. Some examples of this could look like:

These are two pretty basic statements that I can post for students, but they could make them aware of the fact that we are working on these skills. 

Professional Learning: Keeping A Balance

This post is week 1 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators from hotlunchtray.com - Find out more about the challenge by clicking here. 

I know that I'm in the right profession, because when I learn I get excited. I share what I learn to twitter, voxer, this blog, as well as other mediums. However, if I'm being honest with myself, I begin to admit that I don't keep a good balance of learning about all of the aspects of my profession.

I find myself quickly getting wrapped up in coding in the classroom, makerspaces, technology integration, and so on. As I reflect upon my professional learning I have to ask myself, "Do I really take a balanced approach to all of the professional learning topics that I need to stay on top of?" My self critical side says, "no, not really."

I'm going to take this prompt as a challenge to balance out my professional learning goals.

Content Curation: Google Keep or Padlet? 🤔
To do this, I plan on using either Padlet or Google Keep for content curation. I am going to set up a few different labels/pages: Educational Leadership, Pedagogy Practices, Curriculum Development, Technology Integration, 21st Century Skills. After I figure out which tool I'm going to use, I plan on setting a goal for at least one link per month shared to each category. As I check throughout the year, I can see how balanced I am with each category.

Keeping Students on Track with Google Tasks

Time management and prioritizing are two huge challenges for students (and some of us educators as well). Schools and teachers use agendas, messaging apps like Remind, Monday Folders; the list goes on and on. We know students need a variety of reminders to keep them on track, but what about tools that teach them these responsibilities for themselves. Is there a tool that already exists that teachers can show students how to become more responsible and learn how to prioritize? I believe there is: The Google Tasks Chrome Extension!

Google Tasks is a part of the Google Universe that is so simple, that it's often overlooked. With connections in Gmail and Google Calendar, Tasks offers a seamless use for your student's studying and workflow.

You may be thinking, "That's great, but my students aren't always in their calendar or checking their email when I need them to be keeping up with class assignments." That is why the Google Tasks Chrome Extension is the perfect solution.

With the Google Tasks Extension, your complete task-list is only a single click away. Like all Chrome Extensions, there is no need to switch tabs to open your calendar or mail to access your list. With easy accessibility, your students can now have a quick place to click and add to their to do list.

What about prioritizing?

Two excellent features about Google Tasks is that they allow your to rearrange your list by clicking and dragging items up and down the list. Tasks also allows you to place due dates that automatically sync to your calendar.

If your school district is a Google Apps for Education district, there isn't an easier way to teach your students (and teachers) task management and prioritizing skills than using the Google Tasks Extension.

Check it out here: Google Tasks Extension

Student Collaboration Tips for Docs & Slides

Google Apps for Education have allowed teachers to expand their classrooms in so many ways. My absolute favorite thing about Docs, Sheets, and Slides are the multiple opportunities that students have to work collaboratively within.

Here are a couple simple tips for organizing Docs and Slides for Collaboration.

  

Tracking Student Work in Google Docs

Many teachers are really enjoying the fact that Google Apps for Education allows their students to work collaboratively. One of the many concerns of students working together has always been, "How can I tell which student has done what work?" Well thanks to the revision history in Google Docs, it is easy to see who has done what work, and when they did that work. This is a great assessment tool and will keep students accountable during collaborative work.