This week’s presentation by Christina, Janelle, Laurie and Ramona on assessment technologies provided a well-rounded look at assessment tools. The group highlighted the foundations of assessment and informed me of some tools I had not heard of before, including Class Dojo. I won’t get into Class Dojo, but I will say “Yikes!” As I reflect on the assessment technologies I have used in the past, and ones I currently use, I typically ask myself two things. The first is how does the tool support student learning? And two, how does it help students show me evidence of their learning? If it misses the mark on these two questions, I steer clear.
Applying Assessment Technologies
In my classroom teaching, I use assessment technologies to assess my students formatively. This week’s article “7 Smart, Fast Ways to do Formative Assessment” by Thomas, highlighted several effective ways to do formative assessments. I agree with Thomas, in that teachers need a variety of low-stakes, quick and easy formative assessment tools to gauge student understanding. Some of the go-to’s in my toolbox are low-stakes quizzes and polls like Kahoot, Quizlet, Socrative and Plickers.
I also use Seesaw as a tool to demonstrate and share student learning throughout the learning process. I like the versatility and user-friendly nature of Seesaw. My students are able to show learning through text, videos, recordings, drawings and photos while incorporating differentiation and accommodating different learning styles. Seesaw does a great job engaging students, showing evidence of learning and encouraging self-reflection. I give feedback directly to students through the app and can share this evidence with family members. All of this is stored as a portfolio so all stakeholders can see student growth throughout the year.
After seeing first hand through this course, how beneficial blogging has become in my learning, I decided I would like to incorporate blogging with my students this year. I did a bit of online searching and found that Seesaw has a blog feature that allows students to connect globally with others to showcase their learning. I’m not going to lie, I am super excited about this!! Side note: This year will be the first year that I start teaching a class at the beginning of the school year. My previous teaching assignments had me starting mid-year, so being able to plan for the duration of the school year has me pumped. It will take a bit of time to get my Grade 2/3 students set up and moving forward with this (parental permissions, connecting with the other educator(s), and determining what we will post, etc.), but I am excited to see where the connected blog will take us.
A few things that have me excited about Seesaw Connected Blogs are:
- Students will have an authentic audience.
- Students will be encouraged to do their best work knowing that it will be “published.”
- Students will get real feedback from other students and parents.
According to Seesaw, posting to the blog is simple and seamless. The video above shows how you can get started and answered a few of my questions. The blog can be password protected so only those authorized will have access (the other class/educator and parents). All posts are moderated by the teacher before they get published. Last names of students are private. And comments require teacher approval before going live. Through Seesaw Connected Blogs students will develop 21st Century skills and have an opportunity to connect locally or globally. Have you or anyone you know tried Seesaw Blogs? I would love to hear your feedback.
In addition to trying Seesaw Connected Blogs, I am hoping to improve my assessments by utilizing digitized verbal feedback on Seesaw. In the past, I only gave text feedback on student digital work, but after reading the article, “The Importance of Using Digitized Feedback” this week, I see how beneficial voice feedback could be. I’m really shocked that I hadn’t thought about this before! I like to think that I am open-minded and willing to try out new things, but this just proves that I can get complacent in the way I do things. Not only would this be quick and easy for me to do as a teacher, but it would definitely add that “human” element to feedback that Chohan wrote about.
“Digitised verbal feedback allows for the teacher/student emotions to be conveyed through voice. This is extremely powerful and often a major motivating factor for students.”Chohan (2021)
I know my students would benefit from hearing me give them feedback and it would be so nice for them (and parents) to hear my excitement and encouragement about their work!