Eclectic Technology

Mind/Shift has run a series on digital games and learning and has not put together a guide that provides the highlights of this series. Why? To quote from the post... "to create a dynamic, in-depth guide that answers many of the most pressing questions that educators, parents, and life-long learners have raised around using digital games for learning."

A few of the topics covered are:

* What Research Says About Gaming and Screen Time

* How to Start Using Games for Digital Learning

* Overcoming Obstacles for Using Digital Games in the Classroom

The post provides a more in-depth overview.

As teachers today we are told that we must teach our students and help them construct "enduring understanding", providing them with the ability to transfer knowledge from one subject area to another subject area. We are also told that we should personalize education, requiring us to know the strengths and weaknesses and incorporate this into our lessons. And let's not forget that we must also assess our students. How can we make our assessments help students with content retention? This post focuses on this question, and provides five suggestions on ways to do this.

The first three suggestions are:

• Tests Where Notes or Textbooks are Permitted
• Take-Home Tests
• Student-Made Tests

These types of tests may take more time to create but they have the ability to be written so that students have to do more than memorize information. There is more information on this in the post.

The next suggestion is:

• Projects Pre-Approved by the Teacher

This requires that students demonstrate mastery of the subject. This will require the student to create (a 21st century goal) and additional information is in the post, including a discussion of what this might look like.

The final suggestion is:

• Revisions and Retests to Build Skillsets

This section discusses what we may do to help out student build their skillsets through feedback and opportunities to construct accurate information.

As you read this post you may begin to consider alternative ways to assess your students that help them with content retention.

What types of assessments are best to use, that allow students to demonstrate what they know? Five suggestions are provided (and more depth may be found in the post).

* Option 1: Open-Book & Take-Home Tests - but this is not the type of open book test you might think of at first. You want your students to "synthesize disparate facts and perspectives to construct new knowledge."

* Option 2: Student-Made Tests -  have students submit questions and rewrite/rephrase to have students show higher order thinking skills. This suggestion also includes a section on How My Students Create And Study For Their Own Exams.

* Option 3: The Complexity & Diversity Of Project-Based Learning -Think about projects that will let students show mastery of new knowledge.

* Option 4: Written Response–Or Rather, The Pre-Writing -This may seem like an odd choice but read the description in the post to understand the reasoning.

* Option 5: Ask A Question - Not just any question but one that will require students to think beyond the book. This section moves you from a question that is topic based to one that will show understanding.

This post explores multiple choice questions, providing some background information that may help you design better questions for assessment. Did you know that (info below quoted from post):

* Questions in a multiple choice assessment are called the “Stem”.

* For each question, there is a key answer, and distractors.

* The distractors should be plausible answers, true statements (when possible) , and about the same length as the key.

Learn more by clicking through to the post!

This infographic looks at assessments, providing an overview of the educational asessment landscape. The sections cover:

* An overview of assessment

* Assessment measurement

* Assessment types

* Question types

* Delivery methods

* Scoring methods

* The evolution of assessment

Please note that this infographic was pubished by McGraw Hill Education/CTB.

What if instead of giving homework to our students we asked them to come up with ideas? This chart provides a variety of alternative ways to look at homework. The post describes this as "Rather than simply a list of alternatives to homework, it instead contextualizes the need for work at home (or, “homework”). It does this by taking typical classroom situations–the introduction of new material, demonstrating a procedure, etc.), and offering alternatives to traditional homework assignments."

Consider asking your students what they would suggest doing instead of homework. What might you be able to add to these suggestions?

This post from For the Teachers provides two great resources to help you look at differentiation in your classroom. The first is a detailed visual  (Differentiation Planning Diagram) that looks at three areas of planning necessary for differentiation.

* Concepts - The skills and concepts students will are expected to know or be able to do (at the end of a lesson or unit).

* Assesments - How the students will demonstrate what they have learned.

* Activities and Materials - The materials, activities and lessons that students will do or use to practice skills and gain information.

There is also a great visual that provides  101 Ways to Show What You Know (which may be downloaded as a pdf). This visual has four areas that students may show their knowledge/understanding:

* Visual

* Written

* Performance

* Spoken

You may find yourself printing out this visual and using it as a way to quickly consider a variety of ways students could demonstrate their knowledge.

The Differentiation Planning Diagram may also be downloaded. 

Check out these five tools that will help students present their knowledge using different forms of multimedia.

* Metta

* ImageQuiz

* eduCanon

* Kahoot

* Google Forms

For many students these tools will help them create a more authentic product. Click through to the post to learn more about each tool and find short videos to help you with ImageQuiz, Kahoot and eduCanon..

This post provides 25 teaching tools which are split into five categories:

* Organization

* Project Based Learning

* Classroom Management

* Presentations

* Assessments

This wide assortment of tools may include a few that are new to you. Each is described in the post.

Additional categories include:

* Curriculum Mapping

* Lesson Planning

* Learner Choice

* Student Support

* Classroom Management

Each category has four tips. Four tips (each from a different category) are below. To see the full infographic click  through to the post.

* Technology is a means, not an end

* Bloom’s Taxonomy (or related learning taxonomies) is/are used to move students from basic to complex thinking daily

* Rigor is omnipresent, from bell ringers and quizzes to accountable talk and assessments

* There are exemplar models immediately accessible to students of all important work and activities

A look at how "21st century learning vernacular" has created some oxymorons such as:

* Scripted Curriculum Maps

* Student-Centered Classroom

* Partial Understanding

Each of the oxymorons has a short description. What are your thoughts on this? Do you believe that these are oxymorons? Can you think of  other 21st century vernacular that describe education that are oxymorons?

A great find from Larry Ferlazzo but what are the other five? A bit of research led me to a presentation by Rick Wormeli "Fair isn't always Equal: Assessment and Grading an a Differentiated Classroom" and sure enough the other five were located in the presentation. The are listed below:

* Assessing students in ways that do not accurately indicate students’ mastery (student responses are hindered by the assessment format)

* Grading on a curve

* Allowing Extra Credit

* Defining supposedly criterion-based grades in terms of norm-referenced descriptions (“above average,” “average”, etc.)

* Recording zeroes on the 100.0 scale for work not done

To check out the full presentation (and it is a long URL):

http://www.vashonsd.org/mcmurray/science/justin/Resources/Wormeli/Annual_Wormeli_Fair%20Equal.pdf.