Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Section 1 of 21 Things Assessment , Evaluation and Survey Tools
The first of the 21 Things involves Assessment, Evaluation and Surveys. Assessment and evaluation involves the use of rubrics and surveys establishes a quick and concise way of publishing and collecting data for a survey.
The rubrics are very helpful organizational tools as well as assessment and evaluation tools. Consider any lesson that you might be planning. If you go through setting up your learning goals in rubric form, you can leave columns for how you will teach the idea, what you expect the student to learn from it, how you will assess that learning as well as the evaluation of the assessment. Setting the plan up in this format allows the teacher to see the most important concepts and how they will be presented. Evaluation of learning becomes a well defined process that makes it more valid. It is much easier to recognize whether or not the standards of the educational administration have been met or not, because they can and should be included within the rubric. Though some might argue that they should have a different tool for the planning of the class, if it is all kept as a single unit, from inception to planning to presentation to assessment to evaluation, it creates what would in other disciplines be referred to as a paper trail and increases the validity of the entire process.
My survey was created using Survey Monkey and links directly to it from the blog. The GUI for creating the survey is very user friendly as is the page for retrieving the data. Whether it was my personal reading skills or the presentation format, I can not say, but connecting the link to the blog was time consuming. My feeling is that I was trying to make it harder than it actually is, and once I determined how it worked, there were no further problems. In defense of Survey Monkey, I do preach regularly that if you run into issues with a program you should use the embedded help within the program; in this case I did not use it.
Just as a matter of my own curiosity, if you have the time please click on the previous posting and take the survey. I hope to use this or a similar one to set up classes to assist those who are having problems with some of the listed programs. Since I work in the computer lab on campus, these classes could include students, faculty and staff.
Working frantically on section 2 which includes a lovely bunch of keyboard shortcuts that I am making into an old fashioned cheat sheet like we used on our keyboards before GUIs.
Ann
The rubrics are very helpful organizational tools as well as assessment and evaluation tools. Consider any lesson that you might be planning. If you go through setting up your learning goals in rubric form, you can leave columns for how you will teach the idea, what you expect the student to learn from it, how you will assess that learning as well as the evaluation of the assessment. Setting the plan up in this format allows the teacher to see the most important concepts and how they will be presented. Evaluation of learning becomes a well defined process that makes it more valid. It is much easier to recognize whether or not the standards of the educational administration have been met or not, because they can and should be included within the rubric. Though some might argue that they should have a different tool for the planning of the class, if it is all kept as a single unit, from inception to planning to presentation to assessment to evaluation, it creates what would in other disciplines be referred to as a paper trail and increases the validity of the entire process.
My survey was created using Survey Monkey and links directly to it from the blog. The GUI for creating the survey is very user friendly as is the page for retrieving the data. Whether it was my personal reading skills or the presentation format, I can not say, but connecting the link to the blog was time consuming. My feeling is that I was trying to make it harder than it actually is, and once I determined how it worked, there were no further problems. In defense of Survey Monkey, I do preach regularly that if you run into issues with a program you should use the embedded help within the program; in this case I did not use it.
Just as a matter of my own curiosity, if you have the time please click on the previous posting and take the survey. I hope to use this or a similar one to set up classes to assist those who are having problems with some of the listed programs. Since I work in the computer lab on campus, these classes could include students, faculty and staff.
Working frantically on section 2 which includes a lovely bunch of keyboard shortcuts that I am making into an old fashioned cheat sheet like we used on our keyboards before GUIs.
Ann
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Week 3
This has been a very interesting week. I have learned so very much and gotten so involved with the 21 things that I have failed to write about them. You will all be sorry next week as I start adding the information and you start reading. The information in the 21 things is put forth in such a straightforward manner and is so useful that I am amazed by how much I am learning. I thought I was fairly computer savvy, but there are always new tricks and I am all for making life easier.
The collaboration efforts went well. I hope that one of the 21 things that I have not yet done is about html formatting. I can see how it would be really helpful, especially when trying to format the text in the wiki. The GUI for the one we are using is not very flexible. Since I have not created a wiki before, this may be true of all of them, but having the ability to format with html would alleviate that issue.
The collaboration efforts went well. I hope that one of the 21 things that I have not yet done is about html formatting. I can see how it would be really helpful, especially when trying to format the text in the wiki. The GUI for the one we are using is not very flexible. Since I have not created a wiki before, this may be true of all of them, but having the ability to format with html would alleviate that issue.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Looking into Change
In doing research this week, I ran into the issue that much of the information I was finding was outdated. Dating from the late '90s and early 2000s, it was interesting to read what educators felt the future would look like and what tools we would be using. The scary part was that their vision was not wide enough. They limited their explorations to the web and what could be published there. They did not anticipate the amount of interaction that we are now seeing. Facebook was not even created until 2004.
The amazing progression (when I was in college, hand-held calculators did not exist, when my last child was born PCs were still only used widely in business, when I owned my business downloading a simple 100 meg program took overnight if you were lucky and did not lose connection) from the beginnings to what we now see as normal will only continue, since that is the only way for the computer industry to continue making money. Trying to imagine what will exist in the future is difficult. It is another good reason for us to become more proficient with our computer skills so that the next generation not only has the background knowledge, they have the attitude that change and progression is normal and to be expected.
The amazing progression (when I was in college, hand-held calculators did not exist, when my last child was born PCs were still only used widely in business, when I owned my business downloading a simple 100 meg program took overnight if you were lucky and did not lose connection) from the beginnings to what we now see as normal will only continue, since that is the only way for the computer industry to continue making money. Trying to imagine what will exist in the future is difficult. It is another good reason for us to become more proficient with our computer skills so that the next generation not only has the background knowledge, they have the attitude that change and progression is normal and to be expected.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Ann's Story
I have been in the education field for a long time, and for the most part I am self educated. I have a BA in Secondary Math Ed and taught in a local high school for about 6 months. Short story is I was too young and immature, much like my students.
I spent 10 years in retail, moving into accounting and management, married, had children, helped run the family business, created a couple of new businesses, the economy went bad, the businesses did not survive, more accounting work, came back to UCF to work first in Orientation and now in the Computer Labs on campus where I assist and train students, faculty and staff on a daily basis. Naturally, along the way I have learned a lot of new techniques, gee, when I went to college, we did not even have portable calculators! So, while I am learning all of the catchup stuff, technology keeps on moving. I need to know more.
Our department has received a portion of the technology fund fees and with that we will be expanding our programs. There are so many opportunities that many of the students are not aware of that will help them to achieve their degrees and be of benefit to them in their professional lives. Our goal is to share this information in mini classes that the students will be able to attend either in person or perhaps through websources. Everything is still in the planning stage, which makes this class of so much value to me. My only problem is deciding what route to take!
I spent 10 years in retail, moving into accounting and management, married, had children, helped run the family business, created a couple of new businesses, the economy went bad, the businesses did not survive, more accounting work, came back to UCF to work first in Orientation and now in the Computer Labs on campus where I assist and train students, faculty and staff on a daily basis. Naturally, along the way I have learned a lot of new techniques, gee, when I went to college, we did not even have portable calculators! So, while I am learning all of the catchup stuff, technology keeps on moving. I need to know more.
Our department has received a portion of the technology fund fees and with that we will be expanding our programs. There are so many opportunities that many of the students are not aware of that will help them to achieve their degrees and be of benefit to them in their professional lives. Our goal is to share this information in mini classes that the students will be able to attend either in person or perhaps through websources. Everything is still in the planning stage, which makes this class of so much value to me. My only problem is deciding what route to take!
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