Week 10: BABR 10/11, J 9, Castek

BABR 10 talks about the fact that different media (mediums?) are appropriate for different forms of feedback and assessment. For instance, some digital tools are most appropriate for students' self-assessment, and some are more suited for feedback from peers and teachers. What are some tools that you can think of that would be useful for each of these types of assessment? 
I love the idea of doing reader-based responses to provide feedback to and among students. I feel like this would be especially helpful in digital environments where writing incorporates text as well as other components like images, video, etc. that need to be integrated seamlessly. I also think that it's especially useful with digital writing because there are so many digital tools that allow for easily sharing these responses--one that I'm thinking of is VideoNo.tes, which would allow students to annotate their thinking with videos or with any sort of audio or written work that could be turned into a video. If you had students do peer review with reader-based responses, what guidelines would you give them, or how would you model it for them?

One of the teachers in the Castek article discussed the challenge of creating assessments for online comprehension and research that are "simultaneously authentic and motivating" (548). How do you think we can best accomplish this when we assess students with digital texts? 

What form of digital assessment do you think would best suit your current or future teaching situation, and what purpose would it serve for you? Consider whether it would be more suitable for you to provide static electronic feedback (intertextual vs. marginal/end commentary) or dynamic electronic feedback (asynchronous board discussions, recorded oral feedback, synchronous chats). If I had to pick one, I think that I would choose intertextual static electronic feedback. At the high school level, students would need to do fairly print-heavy writing quite often, even with multimodal texts. I feel like that type of feedback would be really useful for me, especially if I were taking a reader-based response approach, to tell them my thoughts at different points during my reading. I think that makes it easier for students to pinpoint specifically what they might need to work on, since they see where I had those thoughts, even if my comments remain fairly overarching.

BABR 11 discussed digital systems for automatically evaluating students' writing. I am really wary of them, especially considering the concerns listed in the chapter. Do you think these automatic evaluation tools could ever be viable methods of assessment? If so, how would you implement them in your teaching situation?

Have you ever used a program or service for maintaining records and data related to students' assessments over time, or an online service for building student portfolios? This year, my school implemented MasteryConnect. I really like it for its data analysis--it can let tie individual test questions to academic standards so you can see students' progress with each standard over time. The problem is that it only really allows for multiple choice assessments, and there isn't much of a way for me to enter scores related to other types of assessments. It's useful for rote knowledge related to language arts concepts, but I would ideally like something a bit more comprehensive and literacy-focused and less test-prep focused.

Looking through some of the rubrics in chapter 9 of Johnson, I can estimate about where my students would fall within the dispositions discussed in the chapter. I think that a lot of the types of assessments that the chapter discusses would be useful for helping students improve their new literacies skills through reflection, and the rubrics would be most useful for monitoring their progress. Which of these assessments do you think would be best for promoting growth and progress with students' new literacies dispositions? Personally, I like the idea of using checklists like the ones provided in the chapter. I feel like it creates a tangible tool for students to use to monitor their own behaviors, as well as showing them how they are doing.

Week 9

J7 talked about several different ways that students can collaborate and share writing. They include zines, blogs, wiki, vlogs, digital stories, digital anchor charts, and digital writing notebooks. What are some online writing that you have used in the past or are interested in using in the future?

One of the struggles I have in having students write is a lack of access to technology. What are the benefits of using online tools in the classroom for writing? What the potential challenges/disadvantages in the classroom for writing?

BABR 7 discussed collaborative writing and the challenge of engaging students in this process. What topics have you/would you have used to engage students in collaborative writing?

Week 8: BARB 5, IRA

BARB 5 describes several ways that students can take notes to deepen their comprehension of digital and traditional texts. I struggle with finding an appropriate way to take notes in kindergarten. I am also wonder if it is even a skill that I should be asking students to develop so early on. When do you think note-taking is beneficial to your students? How do you use note-taking in your class? 

BARB 5 also lists many social networking tools that teachers and students can use in the classroom. I think that using social media has many benefits, but right now I do not have access to enough technology to use it within my classroom. I also notice that kindergarten parents are very hesitant to have their students on even child-friendly social media sites. They were very nervous about kidblog when I sent my permission slip home! What are the potential benefits of using social media in your classroom? What are the potential challenges/disadvantages of using social media in your classroom?

IRA discusses how students can use critical literacy to explore questions/problems they find in the world around them. Students at different ages need different learning experiences and levels of scaffolding to engage in critical literacy. What do you think critical literacy in general looks like at your level? What activities do you/would you use to engage your students in critical literacy? What supports/extensions do they need?

We are supposed to divide up the following readings to summarize and connect:
Wood
Literacy Circles
Kingsley
Byrne

Week 7: J8, Leu, DeShyver, BABR 3/4

In the Johnson chapter this week she discussed inquiry in the classroom, specifically, as a way to influence every aspect of learning for students. Inquiry is a process to be carried out that begins with asking questions. Students are naturally curious in many ways and this chapter made great points about how to facilitate and "manage" questioning from students. For example, I really liked the FQR chart on page 135 and want to adapt it for my third grade class. Students can work together to synthesize an informational text you provide (or even read as a class), then ask a question they have regarding it, and make a connection to their findings by writing down a response. After that, students could carry out the inquiry process to research their question further. I think that the toughest parts in elementary classrooms will be to teach/model appropriate and effective search strategies and phrases, and also how to evaluate a source for reliability. How do we even model and practice this in an elementary setting? 

The articles were very insightful and reinforced the importance of inquiry as a process that needs to be modeled and practiced through classroom activities. Generative synthesis is different from synthesizing for meaning in that it involves inferring and using creativity to contribute something new or different to ideas already established. In this new information age, you can find almost anything on the interest if you use appropriate search phrases.  Generative synthesis takes the summarizing of information learned a step further by asking learners to creatively construct knowledge by repurposing and reinforcing existing ideas. By reinforcing, learners are able to background check their own ideas and locate sources that validate their thinking. By repurposing, learners are able to evaluate existing ideas and creatively think of new ways to integrate or modify them to fit their situation, while keeping one important aspect the same. Can you think of ways our students already use reinforcement and repurposing? How can we model, and have students practice generative synthesis through inquiry? 

These BABR chapters go into the inquiry process for us again, but Dr. Beach was not kidding about the resources! I have narrowed down a functioning list of elementary and secondary resources that I think we could try out and evaluate on here this week. Choose a few to try out and have at it!

Elementary:
-https://www.choosito.com/ This website filters searches for students and teachers BY READING LEVEL! (sorry, I got a tad excited there)
-http://sp.askkids.com/docs/askkids/ Ask.com for kids aged 6-12.
-symbaloo.com Students can search using only teacher-approved websites and social media.
-http://www.activelylearn.com/ MUCH better than AR!
-http://www.eduwidgets.org/#/
--https://www.proboards.com/
-https://www.mindmeister.com/ Similar to bubbl.us

Secondary:
-http://www.iseek.com/iseek/home.page This is a search engine for academic research.
-https://www.choosito.com This could be awesome for secondary as well!
-https://scholar.google.com/ This is a google search engine for academic research that helps create citations too!
-https://vimeo.com/12861706 This video explains (in a hilarious way) how to use phrases and terms when using search engines.
-http://www.noodletools.com/noodlequest/ This form helps researchers narrow down their search engines by pointing them in the right direction (super cool!)
-http://www.factcheck.org/ Gives them the real scoop on news and facts heard in the media.
-https://educlipper.net/about.html Very cool Pinterest-esque website for the classroom to share.
-http://www.teenreads.com/
-http://www.activelylearn.com/
-http://www.eduwidgets.org/#/
-https://www.proboards.com/ A chat specifically for your class to discuss in!
-https://www.mindmeister.com/ Similar to bubbl.us

That was a lot! Happy researching!