Kindergarten Digital Formative Assessment Tools

As the school year winds down I am assessing students in various parts of our curriculum and it’s a little overwhelming for both my students and myself.  Almost all of the “final” assessments for Reading, Writing, Math, Phonics, etc. are paper based in my school district.  We have students take the STAR Early Literacy test in the Fall, Winter and Spring on iPads as part of the K-6 testing schedule but otherwise most of my assessing is informal and I was happy to research some new formative assessment tools.  Since we only have 12 days left of school (but who is counting) I don’t have time to use new assessment tools with my students.   I’m looking forward to incorporating new formative assessments with my students for next year.

Kindergarten can be a tough age to give a lot of student directed tasks.  I always describe the beginning of year like herding cats, I’m trying to get the students used to being school and following routines and schedules and then on top of that I need to teach the curriculum.  September always seems to fly by I’m looking forward to using these tools in the upcoming school year.  That being said student directed learning is a key to educational change.  Because of that change I’m looking forward to seeing what formative assessments my IT&DML classmates will share.

Plickers is a quick and easy formative assessment tool that can be used with any age in various subject areas.   The description on iTunes says Plicker 'lets you poll your class for free without the need for individual student devices.'  First you need to register for free at Plickers.com, once you are registered you sign up your students and assign them a number. Once they are signed up you print their Plickers cards and give one to each student.  Then you ask students a question and students turn his or her card so that the correct answer choice (A, B, C, or D) is facing up.  The teacher then scans the class.  The Plickers application reads each card similar to a QR code.  The application then instantly turns the students answers into a graph or an individual student form, allowing the teacher to see which students are understanding a concept or which students might need more help.  It allows students who might be anxious about share their answers with their peer’s opportunity to show their understanding about a topic without the stigma of being right or wrong.

 

Students showing their Plicker cards

Plicker application showing students answers

Showbie is paperless way to collect student work making a virtual portfolio of some sort.  What is the great about this application besides being FREE is it is easy for Kindergartners to use!  Teachers create “assignments” as students complete the assignments they are filed into the student’s portfolio.  This helps teachers keep track of who has or hasn’t completed the assignment.  The teacher can then make notes to the assignment either as written or voice notes.  Showbie also allows the teacher to email parents assignments.  It’s great for providing students and parent’s updates on their student learning.  It also makes it much easier for report cards because all of the information is all in one place.  I am someone is always searching for new ways to best organize for my students and myself.  Showbie is a great tool to use a formative assessment because it can be both formal and informal and it involves feedback.  I also like how the students are the ones who are in charge of handing in their work, etc.  Teaching students responsibility is a life long skill.  Showbie is great tool to help them start to be responsible learners.

Easy registration process for teachers

Within the Showbie application students pick what assignment they need to complete

Book Creator is an application that allows the user to create a story and then publish and share with friends.  I have used Book Creator in the past to make class books and the kids love it.  Next year I would like to Book Creator as a math journal.  We began a new math curriculum last year and started using math journal this year as part of the roll out.  I have found a lot of success with math journals with my students and it allows the students to share their work easily with his or her teacher and his or her family.  Math journals are a quick and easy formative assessment that allows students to show their thinking with their work to help them with their learning.  Book Creator is a great application to try in conjunction with Math Journals.

An example of a math journal question using the Book Creator application

Formative assessments are important to teachers and students.  Using the applications such as Plicker, Showbie and Book Creator make it fun and less of an assessment.  Formative assessments help modify teaching and learning and these three applications certainly do that.   Using these digital FREE tools as part of formative assessments it helps everyone out including the school district.  Think of how much money could be saved with paper, copiers, ink, maintenance etc. if instead of hard copies of student work we had digital copies.  It would also allow students work to truly follow them as they continue to school.  I know my students are always surprised when they look back at their first day of school writing.  A lot of learning goes on in 180 days, making it a worthwhile learning experience is something that can continue on for years to come.

Week 7- Assessing with Technology

After reviewing other’s postings along with your, elaborate on what teachers need to know about assessing with technology and/or assessment of digital literacy: summarize main ideas, describe strategies/resources, draw conclusions, make recommendations, etc. Take an informative and persuasive stance.

Last week I attended a rally at the State Capitol with other teachers rallying against too much testing for our students.  This week I looked a little bit deeper into assessment with technology along with assessment of digital literacy.  Assessing is part of our jobs as educators, we teach and we want to see what the students learn.  Lately there has been a lot of emphasis on mandated testing fortunately as I looked at assessing with technology I saw the benefits of the some of the resources that were shared.

Jody shared the “Fab Five Tools for Formative Assessment”, what I liked about what she shared is that the assessments were listed is they took away the fear of students being wrong.  All of the assessments gave the teacher feedback on what students had learned and also let students maintain their privacy which is really important because who really wants to be the one who got it wrong?

Josh shared what he took away from the “Assessing Student Online Learning”.  Assessing can be harder than the traditional face to face assignments.  The assessments can be be quantitative, where students can show what they know and qualitative, where students can demonstrate a deeper learning of the topic.

Cari looked at technology from the classroom to large scale learning targets.  She shared that digital assessment can develop formative and summative assessments.  Assessments also need to be VALUABLE, technology can engage students and help them actively learn.

As I continued to read what the rest of my classmates shared from their readings etc. I was able to see that because of technology assessments are constantly changing.  Both formal longer assessments and quick assessments can benefit students.  We as teachers need to make sure that we are giving the assessments to benefit our students and ourselves as teachers.  Technology is providing us as educator instant feedback, we need to use this feedback to drive our instruction.  We also need to remember we don’t always have to assess to assess instead we need to keep the student in mind.  Our students are lucky enough to be surrounded by technology.  We need to use this technology to help them become better learners and then that allows us to become better teachers.

Final Infographic

Disclaimer: I'm having difficulty uploading my Infographic using Piktochart so I'm including the link that is less blurry.

For my infographic, I focused on what is the future of technology-based learning.  Specifically I looked at where technology is going in the future with education.  I also focused on what kind of technology might be used moving forward.  Based on my previous two focuses I discovered what the impact of technology might look like moving forward with education.

An "info-what" was my original thought when I began this project a few short weeks ago. Now I am beginning to think how I can use this AMAZING tool in the future! I have found myself looking at the news in a different way...I always thought that those charts they use are so informative and it must take forever to make. Yes, they are informative and yes they do take awhile to make but not impossible!

I wanted to show what the future of technology-based learning might look like. I first used a road like chart to show how technology in education works. I tried to break it down into parts to make easier for someone to follow and understand. Then I highlighted various ways technology can be used in the classroom; I thought it would be good to give a brief synopsis of each technology that is in the foreseeable future. Finally I thought creating a timeline would also show what might happen in the next fifteen years in technology-based learning would be a powerful way to show the endless possibilities of technology in education. I created the timeline using Google. I wasn't able to find a timeline part in Piktochart, maybe next time.

What I discovered was it wasn't the hardest thing in the world to make an Infographic. My classmates were able to provide encouragement and feedback to help put the finishing touches on the infographic. Their feedback included minor changes that made my work look professional(if you ask me). My professor also gave me a great website that helped me find even more details about what technology might look like in the future with education. Without their help I wouldn't have created this infographic. I hope that some of my feedback helped them create a better infographic. As always my classmates continue to amaze me with everything they produce! All of the infographics were great and all of the programs they used helped to show the information they found on their particular topic.

I think an infographic might be good as part of my Kindergarten Open House slideshow for next year. I could break part of the year into pieces using the graphics, I could also breakdown parts of the curriculum into easy to follow infographics. My recommendations for others who want to create an infographic is think of what you want to highlight and start small. It's not always going to be easy but the end result will look professional thanks to tools like Piktochart. I think that when it comes to assessing infographics it's all a learning process so as long as their is a final product produced that's a success to me.