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Assess student learning at a glance via a honeycomb-style, color-coded display featuring overall student understanding from the individual to district level. I found this very interesting not only due to the ease of use, but also the ease of which you can fluidly bounce between multiple different problem areas quickly and efficiently.

Brenda offers some great suggestions and ideas for using Voicethread in classes. Brenda suggests using Voicethread as an assessment tool for teachers but I am thinking it might be a great tool for students to assess/comment on each other as well.

Laurel, I agree that students could also use Voicethread in class as a tool for commenting on peers' work. I could see groups viewing each other's work and offering feedback, as well. I like that you can add images to this. Have you used Voicethread before? I will have to spend some time checking this out.

This is a great resource by ASCD to help teachers assess those higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, creation, logic, reasoning, judgment, problem solving, creativity, and creative thinking.

Exploring wikis has been an adventure. But before I embark on this journey for a classroom assignment, I just have to cover all the basics. Being able to objectively assess this environment is important. This resource has provided a decent, comprehensive rubric

Great find Kae! I sent it to Diigo! for future use!

The article suggests 3 approaches to develop multiple choice questions to assess higher-order thinking skills. Students can be asked to respond to real-world scenarios, analyze visuals such as diagrams and graphs, and synthesize explanations that support the answer. Included are samples of questions that measure these higher-order skills.

"Students were involved in creating their online textbook using a wiki that involved collaboration with students in 2 other schools where they peer reviewed the work posted by other students on the course". I think students would get a lot out of this!

This article examines why media/digital literacy must be added to the common core standards to better prepare students for life in the 21st century. "While they (young people) may be media-savvy, we maintain that they are not necessarily media- or digital-literate. In order to be successful in the 21st century, students need to be both Information and Media Literate. In order to encourage schools to implement Information and Media Literacy in the curriculum, media/digital literacy should be added to common core standards. Assessments should be devised in which students are assessed using digital formats.

Socrative is an awesome tool used in Education to gain a better understanding of what our students have learned or are learning during a lesson by getting. In this post about socrative we see how it can be used assess writing in the classroom.

University students generally enter opposed to group work. This video article explains how to be effective, facilitate and create transparent assessment for this real-life skill.

This site offers a tutorial/class on information literacy. This can be used with your students and the site states that it will take 2-9 hours to complete. It has a self-assessment at the beginning to test your knowledge.

QuizBean (formerly known as QuizPoo) is an online quiz creator for teachers and trainers to help them assess student learning

This article published in TES Magazine explores the idea of teaching thinking in the classroom. The author(s) ask "Is it possible to teach thinking skills?" They say that most experts agree that you can but Philip Adey of the Centre for Advancement of Thinking at King's College London, says that "thinking skills described in the national curriculum are not skills, they are mental processes. You can't teach them directly. But you can create a learning environment that will stimulate their development." I somewhat agree with this assessment however, a teacher can easily provide examples that the student(s) could apply to different scenarios. I'd call that teaching.

Use the initial checklists to easily create rubrics for student projects.

This article was very interesting. It indicated that grades meant different things to different people. If students received a C, some people would say that the teacher wasn't presenting the material correctly. Lessons should aim to motivate, and inspire students to learn. One professor began class by asking if all students would complete all assigned tasks. When they agreed, he told them they would all get As. He claimed that not one of his students fell back on their word and that work submitted was better than ever. They were more concentrated on learning and understanding rather than worrying about their grade. While this article does not directly relate to online communication, it does relate to how we communicate course expectatioins.

Some things to think about if you are considering using infographics.

This is a link to a video of a high school that uses only Project-Based learning PBL, a teaching/learning style where students create projects to demonstrate their learning of the objectives set out by the teacher. It goes through the process of how to set up PBL projects as teachers. It's a decent introduction to the process: something to pique one's interest. At the end there are links to other videos with more information about PBL.

Project-based learning has come to the forefront of education as it is being used to assess what the students know and how they can use the knowledge in the "real world" to problem solve. The approach by the school to implement PBL into their curriculum goes directly back to state standards. I thought the video was well informed and I was impressed with the 60-65 times the students speak in front of others (public speaking).

Go inside Manor New Technology High School, part of the New Tech Network of schools, where an unwavering commitment to an effective schoolwide PBL model keeps both students and teachers motivated and achieving their best. More to this story.

If you are outside of Massachusetts you may not be able to access this article. Trails (Tools for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) is a tool designed by Kent State University to measure the information literacy skills of high school students. It is designed as a classroom tool that enables a teacher or librarian to "obtain a snapshot of skill levels in order to better tailor instructional efforts."

61 slides with definition of portfolios, reasons to use them, google tools to use, and examples. "Portfolios are purposeful collection of work that exhibits efforts, progress, and achievements over time"

I enjoyed this scholarly article because it provided an explanation of the purpose of the threaded discussions, then provided some samples of discussions in a variety of classrooms, and then it provided a sample rubric. I was most impressed with the rubric because embedded in the rubric were samples of appropriate and inadequate responses. Finally, the article addressed some of the positive elements as well as drawbacks to this type of digital learning. The most important element or focus of this article, however, was demonstrating student learning using technology instead of using technology but not necessarily improving student learning.