Engrade Makes Grading Easy

Today I signed up for Engrade, a program which allows teachers to post grades online for everyone, students and parents, to see.

So far, after playing around with the site, I like what I see.

Students can log on to see assignments, grades, attendance, upcoming events, and it also provides a convenient way for students and teachers to communicate.

It was very easy to set up a class (I just created a fake class). You add in the student's name and their ID number.

There were three options available for putting grades in. You could make each grade in 10 percent increments (ex. 100% = A, 90% = B, etc.), grades could be put in manually, or you could put in whatever percentage you wanted to correspond with a particular grade.

Attendance could easily be taken on here, and it allows you to export the data to Excel.

Assignments are also easily added. Just click on where it says "add new assignment" and you just type it in.

I was very pleased with Engrade, and I didn't find anything that I disliked about the site.

This software would definitely be useful to teachers in the classroom. Teachers can put in all of their information in no time at all.

It should also appeal to students and parents as well. Students will have yet another place to find out the night's assignment when they forget to write it down (the other places are homework hotline, calling a friend, and teacher's website).

Parents will be able to view their student's grades whenever they want to.

Here is a screen shot I took of my pretend class of five students, and their grades.

Make an E-Folio!

Many times, teachers use portfolios to assess student work. With all of the technology out there these days, portfolios can now be done online.

E-folios allow students to collect data and place in an archive, add hyperlinks, as well as provide peer feedback.

There are a number of Web 2.0 tools available for students to develop their own e-folio.

Some examples include Wiki, WordPress, and Protopage.

Have You Taken the Survey Today?

Polls, or surveys, help to determine what people are thinking. It is an especially useful tool in the classroom.

Polls can be used to determine students prior knowledge and also gauge whether of not students are understanding concepts.

One site which allows you to create polls and quizzes is MyStudiyo.

It was easy to use and allows you to add cool features other than just the question and responses.

I already have a poll on my blog so I didn't add the one I created on MyStudiyo, however, it is neat.

You can add videos to your questions, text, and images to your poll or quiz.

The best part about this site...it's free :)

Making Assessment Authentic

Assessments, as well as learning, mean more to students when both are done authentically.

It should be meaningful to students.

How is authentic assessment different from traditional assessment?

Traditional assessment is curriculum driven. It consists of multiple-choice, binary choice, and fill-in-the-blank exams in which students merely memorize information for the test.

Authentic assessment, assessment drives curriculum. Teachers must design an assessment tool defining what the students are to master. The curriculum is then based on that.

Traditional and authentic assessment are characterized as shown in the table below.

Traditional -------------------------------------- Authentic

Selecting a Response ----------------------------- Performing a Task

Contrived ---------------------------------------- Real-life

Recall/Recognition ------------------------------- Construction/Application

Teacher-structured ------------------------------- Student-structured

Indirect Evidence -------------------------------- Direct Evidence

Examples of authentic assessment include performance-based tasks and portfolios. Rubrics are generally used to determine how well a student performed.

For more, check out this video regarding authentic assessment in schools.

What's Acceptable and What's Not

Through my time as a substitute teacher, it seems as though most of the districts I am in have an acceptable use policy. Most of the schools have filters which protect students from finding inappropriate web sites.

Obviously you can't protect them from every web site. There are going to be times where a student might accidentally stumble upon a web site they are not supposed to be on.

It is up to the teachers to monitor their students while they are on the computer and it is also the responsibility of the students to respect the rules regarding computer use.

Pick a Family, Any Family

When it comes to teaching strategies, there are four separate families; social, information-processing, personal, and behavioral systems families.

The social family is an indirect strategy that includes cooperative learning, peer tutoring, project-based learning, and reciprocal teaching. This family requires students to interact with one another.

The information-processing family is another indirect strategy. This strategy includes concept formation, inquiry learning, and synectics.

The personal family is direct. It allows for personal, individualized instruction to take place.

Finally, there is the behavioral systems family. This is a direct strategy which requires direct instruction, mastery learning, and computer-assisted instruction.

Theories of Learning

There are three theories used in education today. These theories are behaviorist, humanistic, and cognitive.

Behaviorist theory is a scientific approach to learning.

Humanistic theory empowers and liberates the student.

Cognitive theory examines how well someone understands information.

First a Blog and Now a Web Site

I officially have my very own web site thanks to this class.

I created it through Weebly. This site allows you to design your own web sites for FREE.

My site is still a work in progress, but the fact that I was able to get it published online is a success in my book.

Check it out, tell me what you think, and I welcome any suggestions!

Constructivism and the 5E Model Lesson

This week our group had the task of completing a webquest.

For this webquest, we needed to design a power point presentation discussing Constructivism, as well as a graphic and a 5E lesson plan.

The group worked well together once again!

We divided up the topics to be covered in the presentation and met to put it all together. We began making our presentation on Google Docs, and then moved the final version of the presentation to Prezi.

My portion of the presentation consisted of the 5E model.

The five E's stand for engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluation.

In the beginning of a lesson, teachers need to engage their students in an exciting way that will grab their attention. If the students aren't interested in what you have to say, the lesson probably won't be a success. This stage also allows the teacher to access any prior knowledge the students may have on the topic.

After we have the students' interest, we need to allow them to explore. They need to make connections to past learning experiences.

Next up is explaining. Students must be able to communicate what they are learning in order for them to show that they truly understand concepts.

Elaboration allows for the students to participate in further inquiry.

Finally, there is evaluation. Evaluation is a must and it should take place throughout the entire lesson, not just at the end.

Evaluations can consist of observations, rubrics, checklists, peer feedback, quizzes, etc.

It's important to note that in constructivism, and with the 5E model, the teacher is the facilitator. They are there to provide materials and offer guidance to students.

For our group's 5E lesson, we decided to do one on clouds. For me, this was the most fun part of the assignment.

I wrote up the lesson plan, and with a few tweaks and suggestions from my group members, it turned out pretty well!

*Sorry, I'm not sure how to post the lesson on here yet.

Glogster is a ...

Real pain. At least for me.

Our individual assignment this week was to either create a poster for an event or a literacy worksheet. I chose to create a poster.

To do this I chose to use Glogster EDU.

Using Glogster EDU to create my poster online was extremely frustrating. At times, the sidebar where tools are offered would not load and I wasn't able to incorporate graphics or text.

I finally was able to create my poster, although it took a lot longer than I had anticipated.

If you don't click on the link, the poster is also on the side of my blog.