Thing 12: Assessment, Evaluation and Survey Tools

I created a survey of 5 questions that I sent to 10 students by email. 6 replied. Three of the questions could be answered with a choice of button and two were short answer. A flaw with the survey was that when I was asking about their classroom teacher's use of technology I did not mean any course they were taking online through Michigan Virtual.  Almost all of the kids I sent the survey to are taking one or more online classes along with seat-time classes in the building.  Regardless, they all find the composition and tools available in their online classes and, to some extent, the technology of their seat-time classes very valuable.

The rubric I created at Rubistar will be used for the final project of my History of Thought course.  It is a multimedia rubric form for assessing the Comic Life books to be created by each of my students in which they will use two of the philosophers we have studied discussing the key themes of the first film of the Matrix trilogy.  My screen could't hold the whole rubric, so the screen shot will be a partial.  The most important of the criteria to be assessed will be the content.  Using Comic Life is a way for them to have to have a "serious" conversation about the film from the perspective of two different philosophers with, hopefully, much of the padding and fluff removed. 

My district is in the midst of incorporating data-driven decision making, data warehousing, changing our student information system, trying to get more of our teachers to use course managements systems an online assessment tools.  When I was just a media specialist, I learned about these various tools without a vested interest in their daily use because I didn't teach class or have students reporting to me. This year, however, I have been teaching three different subjects and am beginning to wade deeply into each of the data the district uses or will change to next year.  I have to admit that in this first year returned to the classroom, I spend very little time during the school year thinking about or incorporating the data or the tools into my teaching.

I believe that Forest Hills is using whatever data warehousing and analysis system the state of Michigan is using.  I know that some of our teachers have piloted an effort to use the data on their students to refine their formative assessments.  Kelly Kermode at Eastern is taking the lead on assisting teachers in our building.  Two years ago, the district, in a pretty dramatic and arbitrary manner, switched teachers off of Edline to CIMS as our student information system.  It was a pretty painful transition and starting next school year I believe we will upgrade to Power School.  The district, for its part this time, has sought staff imput frequently to review the program and I think it is a "go" for next fall.  

The district itself does not support a particular a course management system.  We rely on the ISD's offering of Moodle and our Michigan Virtual online students use Blackboard.  School Center is used by many of our teachers as the host for their course or classroom web sites. Significant efforts have been made over the last 5 years not to print out surveys and questionnaires, but to use digital systems like Survey Monkey, Zoomerang and, now most prominently, Google Forms.  A few of our teachers have paid to use Quia for the creating and administration of assessments.  

I have to admit I think I have an intuitive sense of both formative and summative assessments, but I REALLY need to formalize my planning and alignment of what I teach to state and national standards.  I want to do it.  It takes time and real thinking beyond the subject content.  I also need to plan out my tests more carefully, especially in my AP World History course.