Week+5+Overview

Week 5 Overview

This is the final week of the course so there was a lot of wrapping up that had to be done. Our assignments consisted of lesson videos, reading from the textbooks with progress monitor, updating the wiki site and discussion board, a group reflection, completion of the scenario-based project, a final assessment of the course, and completing a survey.

During this final week of the course, we read about two important topics: student assessment and reinforcing effort. Soloman and Schrum discussed different ways of assessing what students learn in a unit besides your typical multiple choice/short essay, pencil and paper test. Assessments should be authentic and simultaneously for each student. If all students do not learn the same way, why should we test them the same way and expect all of them to be successful? Using Web 2.0 tools can make authentic testing possible with blogs, podcasts, wiki sites, and portfolios that can be kept all year long. Pitler's ideas of reinforcing effort were great. The book states that not all students realize the importance of putting in effort to get positive outcomes. It suggested that teachers should create a rubric about effort that the students fill out during the lesson to show the positive correlation students would have with effort and their grades. You could use ExCel for the rubric (whether it is a table or graph) or create a survey using a site like Survey Monkey. In the videos, different experts talk about the importance of games and digital tools versus drill and kill to keep the students interested and engaged in the lessons. He said that it would help make teaching look more like a "sexy job". The other two videos talked about the easy 24/7 access for the digital generation and how all of the new media is only going to make the 21st century learner far more advanced than ever before.