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| Learning Log # 1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Emerging Trends for Teachers | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal computers may change the roles of teachers and learners in that they provide a new tool for both. An immediate example of that can be seen right here at Augsburg, with the use of Blackboard technology. Blackboard allows students and teachers to communicate with each other. It provides a place where assignments and resources can be posted so "lost assignments" can no longer be given as a reason for not completing homework. We'll still have to address the issues of computer and internet glitches, but having an internet site where a student can find out what's due, and what resource tools may be available to do it, is an excellent idea. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| There are negatives, too. Sometimes using the internet is not the fastest or most efficient way to research a project, especially so if the classroom only has one or two of them for the students to share. Another way computers slow the student down is by creating a dependence upon them. It may be much quicker to simply look in a stack of books or encyclopedias in the library or classroom to do some quick research. The internet can be very distracting, with its diversions and information overload. In my view internet research can stifle creativity as well, a view I've come to after viewing a Science Fair at a local elementary school where a number of students simply slapped their displays together with printouts of text and graphics taken from the internet. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Even having a personal computer for everyone to use in class has its drawbacks. Computers aren't very mobile, not with the cable and wires they require in order to operate, so once placed on a desk, the desk is not likely to be moved again, locking the classroom into a static arrangement for furniture. This doesn't allow for new furniture and desk arrangements, like circles, semi-circles, or small clusters which would facilitate group work. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Controversial issues will certainly have an impact on emerging trends for teachers. They will likely be loudly discussed at school board meetings, parent-teacher meetings, such as PTAs or site councils, or in the media. Content issues such as contraception or safe-sex practices will have an impact, and it's surprising to some, at least, that the creationists have yet to go away, and are still demanding that their so-called science be taught alongside other theories of evolution. (If you detected a bias here it was intentional. But I digress.) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Indeed, teaching and teachers themselves have become a controversial issue. The profession and its practitioners have been bashed at political conventions and by pundits on talk radio and cable television. Somehow teachers are supposed to be able to fix all the problems that a student comes to school with, like poverty, poor attitudes, and parents who were likely underachievers themselves. If a child falls asleep at school because his baby brother, a crack baby, kept him up all night because he had to take care of him because his mother was passed out on the couch, the most compassionate thing to do would be to let that child sleep. But it isn't educating him. And teachers are an easy target. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Another controversial issue is national testing. As if students aren't subjected to enough standardized tests, one that will be used nationally may have a couple courses to run. One possible scenario is that because of the uneven nature of school funding across the nation, states with poorer funding will do poorly on these exams. Members of Congress from these states who exercise a great deal of influence won't be calling for new taxes to even out the disparity. Instead, they'll demand new tests, tests that have been "dumbed down" so that students from the impoverished districts that they represent will be able to pass. As means of assessment, these tests will become meaningless. There is a possibility, too, that teachers will teach strictly to the test, so that students may acquire a lot of data, but never develop the ability to do something with it. They will not learn how to think critically. It?s like being able to acquire a lot of vocabulary, but not being able to use it in a book. Or paragraph. Or even a sentence. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Life would be dull without these controversies. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A Summary of Chapter 1, Assessing Learning in the Classroom, With Key Terms | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| "The primary purpose of classroom assessment is to inform teaching and improve learning, not to sort and select students or to justify a grade." This statement appears in the opening paragraph, and the writers imbue it with such importance that it is also placed on the side of the text in a text box. It is a tool for both teacher and student. The teacher learns where he needs to focus his instruction, and the student learns, presumably, by preparing for the assessment. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The chapter explains that instruction begins by introducing or reviewing key vocabulary. For the study of classroom assessment that vocabulary includes-- | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The authors make important distinctions among assessment, testing, and evaluation, which may at first glance appear to be the same thing. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Assessment is a broad term referring to a process of gathering and synthesizing information to better understand and describe characteristics of people. This is a restatement of an earlier assertion, but it is an important assertion to make again in view of the comparison and contrast with both testing and evaluation. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ;Testing is one type of assessment. Tests have time restrictions, and there is limited access to resources and a very limited range of acceptable responses | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Evaluation refers to making a judgment about quality, value, or worth, based upon established work, and it's what we use when we score essays or provide report card grades. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| These distinctions are important to make. Without them, it would be too easy to see a test as exercise unto itself. By that I mean that they remind us of the reason we do these assessments. They are not mere exercises in cruelty. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The authors provide three other definitions to us, which further define the practice of assessment. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Summative Assessments would be those that provide a summary report on student achievement and include such things as final exams, senior exhibitions, or dissertations. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Formative Assessments are ongoing diagnostic assessments that help teachers adjust their instruction and improve student performance. Quizzes and classroom instruction practices such as calling on students for an answer during a lecture are tools for these sorts of assessments. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alternative Assessments are controversial. There is no universally acceptable definition for alternative assessment, but generally the term refers more to what it is not: not multiple choice, not timed, and not "one-shot." The authors advise against using the term, but not the tool, at least in this chapter. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| So, in this chapter, we learn what assessment means, what it's about, and some of the tools we use to make them. I've always considered them not an end, but a part of the process which teach in their own right. We don't just learn for tests. Ideally we learn from them as well. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||