Bringing Technology to the World of Formative Assessment

The other day, I had the pleasure of observing our high school orchestra. I spoke with the teacher about his use of SmartMusic with students. It was really amazing. I had heard quite a bit about it before, but to see how he used it in class and then seamlessly assigned the music to students so students could practice their part at home with accompaniment and record their practice session, get instant feedback, create a portfolio, and create a circle of communication between student, teacher and parent was unbelievable.

I also saw a PE class in which the students used exercise equipment to track their health. They exercised at their target heart rate for a period of time and then recorded their pulse, calories burned, etc...

It got me thinking, "How do we do this in other subjects?" Imagine students reading pieces of text into a microphone and getting instant feedback on their fluency and decoding! Then being assigned "just right" books based on the results and emailing the results to parents automatically. Imagine taking a math test online and then using the results to determine what lesson or unit that student should take next. Why can we do it in music and PE, but not in other areas?

Comments

Metamorphosis revisited

I posted before about metamorphosing in an evolving world. I want to revisit this idea. It has been bothering me that change seems to come so slow. There are many reasons for this, including leadership, state testing, resistance to change, resources, etc... But despite all of these factors, I truly believe that we can bring about more significant change. I'm not talking about technology, so much as I am talking about rethinking what we teach. While I see many teachers evolving (including myself), I think we are too painfully slow for the kinds of changes that need to take place. Photo by Morti Riuuallon http://www.flickr.com/photos/ultimorollo/2520525316/ The best way for us to metamorphose is to follow the example of the butterfly. The caterpillar starts by eating constantly. We, as teachers, need to consume information as if our future depended upon it. It does. We are becoming obsolete and our only chance of remaining relevant into the future is to understand it and adapt to i

Teaching for Tomorrow Part 1

A group of teachers are reading Teaching for Tomorrow by Ted McCain as a summer book group. As we read we will be sharing (I hope!) our ideas about the book. If you are not part of our summer book group, feel free to join in the discussion. All ideas are welcome! If you have any thoughts about Section 1: What Skills Will Students Need for the 21st Century?, please leave a comment on this post. Hopefully this will lead to a discussion on this topic. I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

The Wonderful World of Updates

As a SmartBoard district, we have many teachers using SmartBoards, Airliners, and, of course, Notebook software. So as a Notebook user, I am very excited about the new version 10 that has recently been released. It has many great new features which I will be sharing in later posts. However, as the primary trainer for users of Notebook software, this transition raises many questions about the value of updates. Many of our users are new to Smart Notebook software. I have trained about 100 people this year alone. Now I need to go back to them and tell them that this great tool I showed them is about to look quite different. To a third of them, this will be welcome news. They want the updates. They want the new features. They will pick it up quickly. To a second third, this will raise trepidation. Just when they are getting the hang of it, they go and change it. They will require a fair amount of support to bring them up to the same level of comfort with the new version. That leaves the re

Digital Eyes

Search This Blog