What is the point of an formative assessment?

When I was in high school, I remember always dreading any kind of test. I had fears I was going to fail it. I also was afraid of forgetting the information. I always saw tests as a grade that gets put into the grade book. As I got older, I understood the point of a formative assessment. In the video Formative assessments: Using Feedback to Guide Instruction, Randy Clyde describes formative assessment as a test that helps the teacher to change their lesson. It is a way to show the teacher what their student does know and what the students do need to work on. Clyde's first step is having his students take a pre-assessment. He uses this information to help plan for his lessons. He then sees if the students do know how to look at a graph. Clyde then gives his students an assessment to see if they are able to construct their own graph. After seeing these results, he plans for the lab. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecp5tFwXA_M

Tech Tips for Teachers: Formative Assessment apps talks about apps you can use for assessment. Emily believes in technology because she is able to communicate with her co-workers about what she is doing in the classroom and how her students are doing. She then talks about formative assessment being important because it helps her plan her lessons and sees if her students are understanding. The most important point for an app for a teacher is it needs to be manageable and be able to put in, have a great reporting system, and also creates discussion. The apps that are discussed are Socrative, Exit Ticket, and Verso. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf6e9TkN3e8

Edpuzzle is also very good. You can create videos and see how your student is doing. You can see who has watched the video, their progress, and assign videos.
Edpuzzle link:  https://support.edpuzzle.com/hc/en-us/categories/360000701132-For-Teachers

How to write multiple choice questions

Whenever I took multiple-choice tests, sometimes I thought they were easy. Sometimes, did feel like the teacher was trying to trick you. An example, my history teacher who wrote answers that were very close to the correct one.  There was once I had to write the test, and it was difficult to come up with sensible questions and answers. So, how can you write a good one? In 10 Rules for writing multiple-choice questions, Connie Malamed talks about multiple-choice questions. She first starts with how the test should not be about recall, and how the student should understand the question. You should make sure that all of the words you are using are in the question stem. She also wants you to make sure the distractors are reasonable. Connie also says you should write the answers the same length. There should not be double negatives, and the correct answers are not the same choice. Connie also wants you to not try to trick the students taken the test. Lastly, use none of the above or all of the above be careful. In Writing Multiple-choice test items, the author starts off by talking about how the teacher freaks out about writing the test. Jerard Kehoe also explains stems. Kehoe talks about how the stems should be clear and should not have the students doubt themselves. You should start planning. Jerard suggests at the end of each class to write what the important concept was that day. The stem of the question should not show more than one problem. Write the steam like an incomplete question. Then the author goes on talking about how you should write the options of the test. Be proud of the options, make great distractors, avoid all of the above, make answers random, and lastly have a co-worker look at it. For Connie's Malamed article click here:
http://theelearningcoach.com/elearning_design/rules-for-multiple-choice-questions/.  For Jerard Kehoe's click here: https://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=4&n=9.

Twitter PLN

During the last three weeks, I have been looking at twitter or have been posting to twitter. I do see the benefits of using twitter as a PLN. People tweet about their experiences in the classroom. What has their students been up to, or what have their students said in class. I also have seen people asking for advice, whether it is something happening with a student or seeing what has worked with them in the classroom when it comes to technology. I never thought of using iMovie before, and I now know a lot more about Flipgrad. Some teachers have been talking to other classes in different states or countries. Following Catlin Tucker, I have learned a lot more about twitter. Also, because of her, I have learned to create a project Choice Board. There are times where someone would retweet or tweet with some encouragement to their followers. There are times where a tweet is about politics or a random video pops up about dogs, but for the most part, everything has been education-related. People will also post about resources anybody could use. They believe this could help someone. I know there was a day where a found an article about educational technology interesting, so I tweeted that out.  There are times where I see someone has participated in a twitter chat, and I do get some ideas from seeing those tweets. I do not just follow people. I also follow Edpuzzle and NAFME and they also come up with some helpful resources. I have learned that twitter is so much more than just a place where people complain or share what is happening in their life. Twitter is more than just a social media site. This is where people could go to get help and advice. Teachers can connect with other teachers. 

What about Google Classroom should you know.

Google classroom is very much a helpful tool. We had an old fashion paper and a pencil. One of the articles I read this week, it talked about how Google classrooms help teachers teach more. This article is called Google Classroom: Exploring the Benefits for Teachers by Meghan Bogardus Cortez. She mentions how Google Classroom helps teachers to get back to the one thing they should be doing, which is teaching. I do see this at my high school I currently work at. Teachers are using the printers a less, and are using Google Classroom more. They use this for homework assignments and class discussions. They stopped worrying about not having enough papers for everybody. In Google Classroom, teachers can create worksheets to share with their students. She also talks about how you can share documents with your peers, which can be edited. During my college years, we only ever used Google drive to help us be able to work on projects. With the teachers at my school, they do use this tool all the time. I remember the days where I would see an assignment had been graded on Friday, but I had to wait for Monday to see why I got that grade. In Cortez's article, she also talked about how teachers can give more timely feedback. Your students will not have to wait ever again for an assignment to be given back. They could just look at Google Classroom for it. If you need help with Google Classroom, Alice Keeler has videos to help you. Just go to this link: https://alicekeeler.com/2018/02/22/google-classroom-video-guide-alice-keeler/. Here is also the link to Google classroom teacher center:https://teachercenter.withgoogle.com/first-day-trainings/welcome-to-classroom. There are helpful videos, as well as, where you go to set up your classroom. If you would like to look at Meghan Bogardus Cortez article here is the link: https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2017/06/google-classroom-exploring-benefits-teachers?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral

The Google Extensions for your special education classroom

Currently, I work with students with special needs. Most of my students connote talk and some have a reading level as low as kindergarten. During his blog post, Eric Curtis talked about 30 extensions which are about text to speech, readability, reading compression, focus, and navigation. For text to speech extensions, he talks about read and write, read aloud, voice instead, and announcify. What I like about the read aloud function is for the fact it will read to someone either by highlighting or read the whole passage. For some of my kids, they would need to have the whole passage read to them for the fact their reading level is not high, and some do not know how to read. One of the reasons I do not like the voice instead is you have to highlight the passage. Some of my students do not know how to do this. The Announcify would help my students to not get distracted because there are times where they will hit random advertisements. For speech to text extensions, Eric only has one listed. VoiceIN Voice typing is basically you record what you want to be typed out. For the students who do not know how to spell, this could be a useful tool. They could be able to type out an answer to a question or be able to respond to a worksheet. Readability functions include mercury reader, OpenDyslexic, MagicScroll Web Reader, and many more. The good thing about Magicscroll is for the fact of it makes the webpage look like they are reading a book. Some of my students would love this. Reading Comprehension extensions involve SMMRY, TLDR: Summarize Anything, and Auto Highlight. Some focus extensions include uBlock Origin, Move It, and many more. Move it is great for the students who need a break from work. Almost all of my students do need a break from work at times. For more information about the extensions, visit the like to Eric Curtis blog: https://www.controlaltachieve.com/2016/10/special-needs-extensions.html

About Twitter

Twitter as a PLN is a great resource to get connected with other teachers. There are Twitter chats which happen at different times. You have to look up the schedule. You can also use hashtag to found the different chats.