Group items tagged

The greatest challenge is moving beyond the glitz and pizzazz of the flashy technology to teach true literacy in this new milieu. Using the same skills used for centuries-analysis, synthesis, and evaluation-we must look at digital literacy as another realm within which to apply elements of critical thinking... Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media (text, sound, images), to reproduce data and images through digital manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments. According to Gilster,5 the most critical of these is the ability to make educated judgments about what we find online.

Evaluation study of the use of iPads with 8th grade students in Mills, MA.

"Our PYP evaluation went really well and it was gratifying to hear the evaluators' positive observations of our school. They talked about our dynamic learning spaces, the energy of our teachers and learners and the respect that is evident between staff and students. They were impressed by how articulate our students are and the openness of our teachers. It was clear to them that the entire school community has a deep understanding of the PYP philosophy and that we have a strong culture of learning. Almost all their recommendations are things on which we are either working already or have identified for action through the self study. There's only one thing I found jarring in their feedback and it relates to my beliefs about inquiry learning. They noted that neither students nor teachers seem able to identify what particular inquiry cycles we follow. They said the children to whom they spoke didn't seem to be aware of the specific 'stages' of inquiry and that most teachers couldn't articulate how an inquiry cycle directs our planning. To be honest, I'm glad."

"I just discovered Orange Slice, a Google Add-on that offers both teacher and student rubrics.  A handy productivity tool, Orange Slice plays nice with Google Classroom and makes it super easy to evaluate student work in Docs. The Orange Slide Teacher Rubric allows teachers to add rubrics to students' assignments for grading.  The Orange Slide Student Rubric is designed for group collaborations or peer reviewing.  Students could add the Orange Slide Student rubric to their own accounts to evaluate their classmates' work, once the teacher or librarian sets up the Teacher Rubric."

"AS A PHYSICS professor, I have two jobs. The first, obviously, is to help students understand physics. That makes me something of a coach. But I want to talk about my second job: evaluating what students understand about physics. You might call this grading them. Evaluating a student's understanding of a topic is like taking a measurement. However, it requires measuring something that is difficult to see. It's not like I can stick a ruler into a student's brain to determine the size of their physics stuff. Now, most teachers use indirect means, usually a multiple-choice test or an exam in which students work through a problem. These are poor measures of student understanding. Someone could simply guess, or flub the answer through a silly mistake. So how can I accurately assess a student's understanding of physics? Until someone invents a way of reading a student's mind, I must do something else. I use a combination of written tests and video assessments."

"Harry Walker is the principal of Sandy Plains Elementary School in Baltimore County, Maryland. Fourth and fifth graders at the school are piloting one-to-one computing with iPod touches. In addition, Harry is a doctoral student at John Hopkins University. He's investigating the impact of iPod touch on student achievement."

"Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano writes a most fascinating blog at Langwitches. We have mentioned her before on this blog and she continues to construct and then share great resources. One of her great talents is her ability to create simple and effective workflows. She does this in such a graphic way that for 'visual learners' like me they are instantly appealing. "

"A topic that promotes in-depth discussion."