Tom Ward was a great speaker that I found engaging. I think I could immediately relate to him because he was of similar age, is a math teacher (I'm getting certified in both chemistry and math), and he is a MAC graduate! This set up the tone for the rest of the presentation.
Tom presented a lot of creative ideas of how to use technology. All the tools he mentioned like blogs, twitter, vine, videos etc were all familiar to me. However the innovation was in the way he used them. I have never really considered having my students create a video. I didn't think there was much room for that type of creativity in a chemistry class. But now I see that video can be a change in the monotony of usual assignments. For example, instead of having students present a project, they can create a video. Another idea is students collecting videos of their experiments as part of gathering data. Many students probably already use twitter, so tweeting questions to their teacher might also be easier than sending in an email, especially if it just a quick question.
I usually just do a search on google when I need something, or I'm looking for an interesting classroom activity. But knowing that there are certain education bloggers out there who have activities of good quality, and are update their blogs consistently encourage me to follow blogs rather than doing sporadic searches. A tool that I do think I'll start using is an RSS reader like the one Tom mentioned is useful in keeping the blogs organized and keep me updated. I think this is an essential strategy for a starting teacher because I don't want to invent the wheel. By following blogs, I can start accumulating a bank of activities that I can use as needed. Seeing Tom using this, and speaking about the community of teachers who want to share their activities is really what is pushing me to do this.
In summary, Tom gave a great talk, and was very friendly, approachable and practical. He gave us a lot of realistic advice, especially from the perspective of a new teacher. For example, he told how in his first year teaching he was barely able to keep up, and definitely couldn't incorporate too many activities. However, as he got more experience he is now able to incorporate an interesting activity at least once a week. It is reassuring to know that it is normal if I don't manage to do too many activities in my first year. I think starting to compile interesting activities starting now will make me well equipped for when I am ready to do classroom activities.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Padlet
I had the wonderful opportunity to watch some of my colleagues give a presentation on Padlet. The execution of the presentation was great. It was informative, engaging, and gave me the opportunity to try the tool and see what I can do.
Padlet is a relatively simple tool, which they illustrated beautifully in their use of a quick video to show the basics. After that they gave us all a chance to quickly dive in and get creative. I felt engaged and got excited in customizing my Padlet wall with chemistry related pictures and videos. What seemed to be a wall for sticky notes quickly transformed into so much more. I think the group did a great job in showing the range of uses of Padlet when they each created their own Padlet site, and shared it with us. I think that was the most powerful part of the presentation because they showed a variety of different ways a teacher can use it in different content areas.
In my chemistry classroom, I can imagine having a Padlet instead of a traditional website for my class. I could have a Padlet with information about myself, with a note linking to a new wall for each of the classes I teach. Withing each class "wall" I might have a note for homework, one for video resources, one for bell work. In an effort to streamline all the classroom technology resources into one place, bell work could be collected using another tool like Socrative, but other things like posting resources and homework is not something that Socrative would be useful for. A possible way to combine these too is to have a wall for assessment and bell work that link to Socrative.
As of now, I'm not 100% sure how well it would work in a classroom, however I am definitely willing to try and use it instead of a traditional teacher website since I think it's more interesting and versatile. It is also something that students would modify parts of and add to, which is empowering and hopefully would encourage them actually referring to the website and using it.
Padlet is a relatively simple tool, which they illustrated beautifully in their use of a quick video to show the basics. After that they gave us all a chance to quickly dive in and get creative. I felt engaged and got excited in customizing my Padlet wall with chemistry related pictures and videos. What seemed to be a wall for sticky notes quickly transformed into so much more. I think the group did a great job in showing the range of uses of Padlet when they each created their own Padlet site, and shared it with us. I think that was the most powerful part of the presentation because they showed a variety of different ways a teacher can use it in different content areas.
In my chemistry classroom, I can imagine having a Padlet instead of a traditional website for my class. I could have a Padlet with information about myself, with a note linking to a new wall for each of the classes I teach. Withing each class "wall" I might have a note for homework, one for video resources, one for bell work. In an effort to streamline all the classroom technology resources into one place, bell work could be collected using another tool like Socrative, but other things like posting resources and homework is not something that Socrative would be useful for. A possible way to combine these too is to have a wall for assessment and bell work that link to Socrative.
As of now, I'm not 100% sure how well it would work in a classroom, however I am definitely willing to try and use it instead of a traditional teacher website since I think it's more interesting and versatile. It is also something that students would modify parts of and add to, which is empowering and hopefully would encourage them actually referring to the website and using it.
Tech in My Placement
While I knew that technology is an important resource to teachers, in the chaos of being a new student intern trying to get adjusted to a new environment, technology was one of the last things on my mind, The survey really pushed me to focus my observations and find out about what resources really are available to us. The school I am placed in is interesting because it is technically a school but shares a building, a main office and principal with another school. So it's an interesting place to work in, especially with regards to allocation of resources.
At the advent of my placement, one of the first complaints I heard the staff struggle with was technology. At the general staff meeting, I heard concerns that computers were not distributed effectively; some rooms had too many, and others had none. In addition, the technology issues were handled by the district as a whole, and our school was not provided with a technology office for the school. So any technology change requests, or even issues with login information had to be sent to the district via a "help ticket". It was very inefficient, and created a lot of unnecessary frustration and delays. In addition, the printers were not working, which means teachers cannot print out their assignments to make copies. Teachers who don't have access to a printer at home were struggling, and I witnessed some collaboration between teachers to help each other out. I am actually not even sure the issue is resolved till now.
The school does have several copy machines available, and although they keep jamming, they generally get the job done. It's a great resource, and there are a couple in our school, and another 3 upstairs in the main office. Other great resources are the computers in the classroom. In my classroom, the teacher has a computer at the front of the room, in addition to about 10 computers in the lab space in the back of the room. The students have the option of using the computer just for research, or using it during a lab experiment.The teacher also has access to a projector of great quality, as well as a sound system. The sound system is basic and includes a microphone the teacher can wear comfortably as a necklace, and speakers. This allows the teacher to be heard clearly by everyone in the room. There is a district wide technology officer, that I did not have the pleasure of meeting, but heard about from my mentor teacher. He is apparently very friendly, and knowledgeable and was able to set up my teacher's computer, and upgrade her mouse since the old one was had a chord that was too short, and even resolve issues in the students' computers.
Overall, I am pretty happy with the resources available to the students. I feel this much technology is a good start for someone like me who is just a starting teacher. I am not sure how much technology I would be able to incorporate at this stage of my career. I acknowledge that there are some issues with technology resources in the school, and I believe that will probably be true of most schools. So I think the trick is so learn how to be resourceful with what you do have, while also working with the system to acquire the other resources that are needed.
At the advent of my placement, one of the first complaints I heard the staff struggle with was technology. At the general staff meeting, I heard concerns that computers were not distributed effectively; some rooms had too many, and others had none. In addition, the technology issues were handled by the district as a whole, and our school was not provided with a technology office for the school. So any technology change requests, or even issues with login information had to be sent to the district via a "help ticket". It was very inefficient, and created a lot of unnecessary frustration and delays. In addition, the printers were not working, which means teachers cannot print out their assignments to make copies. Teachers who don't have access to a printer at home were struggling, and I witnessed some collaboration between teachers to help each other out. I am actually not even sure the issue is resolved till now.
The school does have several copy machines available, and although they keep jamming, they generally get the job done. It's a great resource, and there are a couple in our school, and another 3 upstairs in the main office. Other great resources are the computers in the classroom. In my classroom, the teacher has a computer at the front of the room, in addition to about 10 computers in the lab space in the back of the room. The students have the option of using the computer just for research, or using it during a lab experiment.The teacher also has access to a projector of great quality, as well as a sound system. The sound system is basic and includes a microphone the teacher can wear comfortably as a necklace, and speakers. This allows the teacher to be heard clearly by everyone in the room. There is a district wide technology officer, that I did not have the pleasure of meeting, but heard about from my mentor teacher. He is apparently very friendly, and knowledgeable and was able to set up my teacher's computer, and upgrade her mouse since the old one was had a chord that was too short, and even resolve issues in the students' computers.
Overall, I am pretty happy with the resources available to the students. I feel this much technology is a good start for someone like me who is just a starting teacher. I am not sure how much technology I would be able to incorporate at this stage of my career. I acknowledge that there are some issues with technology resources in the school, and I believe that will probably be true of most schools. So I think the trick is so learn how to be resourceful with what you do have, while also working with the system to acquire the other resources that are needed.
Monday, September 1, 2014
Reaction: Connections Across Disciplines
I had the opportunity to look over a lesson plan created by three of my colleagues: Jimmy Johnson, Carl Dixon and Paul Sandy. They created a lesson plan about activism in the 1960's and how today's technology could have been used, and how can technology be used for activism today.
I really enjoyed the lesson plan, and would actually love to see the results from the students if any of them have the chance of executing it. The lesson plan is clear and very well written, which made it really easy for me (a math and chemistry teacher) quickly understand what the lesson is about. As an introduction to the 1960's, my fellow educators provide a 15 minute video as a crash course to the 1960's. The video is just the right length, and is engaging. I think this is a brilliant way of a quick introduction to all the main events in the decade, and allows the students some choice in the topic within this time period. Giving students choice is likely to increase their interest in the assignment and motivation.
The lesson plan touches on a relevant topic for students as we see today how facebook and twitter are regularly being used for activism. #Ferguson and #IfTheyGunnedMeDown was most recently used by social activists in response to the murder of an unarmed, African-American teenager in Ferguson, MO. Since social media and technology is so ubiquitous today, it would be interesting to imagine about how the activism in the 1960's might have been different if they had the same tools we have today. The lesson also goes on further to have students critique today's methods of activism to historical types of activism. This is really powerful as it challenges students to think critically about the pros and cons of the methods of activism today, determine what combination of methods work best, and empower them to become more active in their local communities.
In addition, I love that while they topic itself explores the role and use of technology in activism in the 1960's and today, it also seamlessly integrates the use of technology into the lesson itself as well. The lesson asks each student to watch the video by individually, giving them autonomy to pause, replay etc. In addition, it asks them to do research on the topic of their choice online, and cite 3 sources. Finding information from credible sources is an important skill to master, and it's great to see the students getting practice doing this early on.
I know their lesson plan assumes that they are implementing the BYOD program, however my only concern would be the huge variety of devices. What happens if students don't have a device to bring to school, how would they watch the video? Or, what if they only device they have is their smart phone (student doesn't have a computer at home), how would the student do the research? Especially since doing research on the phone can prove to be difficult on the phone. These are some of my concerns with the lesson plan, although my concern really is about the BYOD program and not the lesson plan itself. Hopefully, these teachers would have already established the BYOD program in their classroom, and know what their students' access to technology is, and so would be able to implement this lesson plan successfully.
I really enjoyed the lesson plan, and would actually love to see the results from the students if any of them have the chance of executing it. The lesson plan is clear and very well written, which made it really easy for me (a math and chemistry teacher) quickly understand what the lesson is about. As an introduction to the 1960's, my fellow educators provide a 15 minute video as a crash course to the 1960's. The video is just the right length, and is engaging. I think this is a brilliant way of a quick introduction to all the main events in the decade, and allows the students some choice in the topic within this time period. Giving students choice is likely to increase their interest in the assignment and motivation.
The lesson plan touches on a relevant topic for students as we see today how facebook and twitter are regularly being used for activism. #Ferguson and #IfTheyGunnedMeDown was most recently used by social activists in response to the murder of an unarmed, African-American teenager in Ferguson, MO. Since social media and technology is so ubiquitous today, it would be interesting to imagine about how the activism in the 1960's might have been different if they had the same tools we have today. The lesson also goes on further to have students critique today's methods of activism to historical types of activism. This is really powerful as it challenges students to think critically about the pros and cons of the methods of activism today, determine what combination of methods work best, and empower them to become more active in their local communities.
In addition, I love that while they topic itself explores the role and use of technology in activism in the 1960's and today, it also seamlessly integrates the use of technology into the lesson itself as well. The lesson asks each student to watch the video by individually, giving them autonomy to pause, replay etc. In addition, it asks them to do research on the topic of their choice online, and cite 3 sources. Finding information from credible sources is an important skill to master, and it's great to see the students getting practice doing this early on.
I know their lesson plan assumes that they are implementing the BYOD program, however my only concern would be the huge variety of devices. What happens if students don't have a device to bring to school, how would they watch the video? Or, what if they only device they have is their smart phone (student doesn't have a computer at home), how would the student do the research? Especially since doing research on the phone can prove to be difficult on the phone. These are some of my concerns with the lesson plan, although my concern really is about the BYOD program and not the lesson plan itself. Hopefully, these teachers would have already established the BYOD program in their classroom, and know what their students' access to technology is, and so would be able to implement this lesson plan successfully.
Saturday, July 26, 2014
BlendSpace
BlendSpace is an online tool for teachers I was fortunate on stumbling upon. With many teachers today trying to integrate technology into the classroom, and make their lessons engaging, this tool could not exist at a better time.
This is an online tool that leverages the huge amount of educational content available online and makes it easy for teachers to create lessons. I especially liked the bar on the right side, where teachers can choose to search for something in a variety of different search engines including YouTube, Google, and Flickr. This makes it so easy for a teacher to find exactly what they need all in one window, without navigating through a myriad of tabs. Blendspace also introduced me to some search engines I was not even aware of, like Guroo. This tool is also perfect for a teacher to see what lessons other teachers have developed for that specific topic, making BlendSpace collaborative. In fact, the account can be upgraded to allow actual teacher collaboration in creating lesson plans, enhancing its versatility further.
Privacy is always something of an issue when minors are involved. However, BlendSpace allows teachers to keep their lessons private, and provide their students with a class code that allows them to add the specific class. This keeps any comments students make on the lessons private, and maintains a safe space for this lesson (similar to a real classroom), away from the cyberbullies.
Overall, BlendSpace is another tool that expands what a teacher can do. Best of all, BlendSpace makes it easy, so give it a shot! What have you got to lose?
This is an online tool that leverages the huge amount of educational content available online and makes it easy for teachers to create lessons. I especially liked the bar on the right side, where teachers can choose to search for something in a variety of different search engines including YouTube, Google, and Flickr. This makes it so easy for a teacher to find exactly what they need all in one window, without navigating through a myriad of tabs. Blendspace also introduced me to some search engines I was not even aware of, like Guroo. This tool is also perfect for a teacher to see what lessons other teachers have developed for that specific topic, making BlendSpace collaborative. In fact, the account can be upgraded to allow actual teacher collaboration in creating lesson plans, enhancing its versatility further.
Privacy is always something of an issue when minors are involved. However, BlendSpace allows teachers to keep their lessons private, and provide their students with a class code that allows them to add the specific class. This keeps any comments students make on the lessons private, and maintains a safe space for this lesson (similar to a real classroom), away from the cyberbullies.
Overall, BlendSpace is another tool that expands what a teacher can do. Best of all, BlendSpace makes it easy, so give it a shot! What have you got to lose?
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Lure of The Labyrinth Math Game
Games in education are all the new fad. Everyone is talking about how games are a new revolutionary way of teaching students in engaging, self-paced learning. However, are games really all that they are hyped up to be? Do all educational games provide an engaging way to learn? James Paul Gee discusses the characteristics of a good game in his article "Good Video Games and Good Learning". Gee studied several games and came to the conclusion that good games incorporate good gaming principles. I found the article intriguing and used it to explore Lure of The Labyrinth, an online math educational game to see how many good game qualities it has.
Gee discusses many qualities of a good game. Some of the positive characteristics that Lure of the Labyrinth has is a strong identity the player embodies, it can be customized in some ways, is interactive, and encourages risk taking.. The protagonist is a young boy whose pet is taken by a monster. The young boy follows his pet's sounds and ends up in a secret factory full of monsters and mythical creatures. As you can imagine, a young boy who loves his pet is a protagonist that many young students can relate to. Many teenagers love their pets and will be hooked into this story line. In addition, the player chooses his pet (a cat, dog, turtle etc.) and can customize his own appearance and name to an extent. This gives players a little bit of autonomy and ownership over the game. The game is interactive in that the player can explore areas (within restrictions) of the game, and can interact with other characters in the game. The last thing that I really liked is that there are very low consequences of failures. The player can keep trying to replay the same level until he/she is done practicing and is satisfied with the result. The low consequence of failure encourages risk taking, and making many attempts to succeed at learning the math.
Unfortunately, Lure of the Labyrinth left something to be desired. The longer I played, the more bored and frustrated I found myself. I asked myself, what would have made it more interesting to me? I realized that although the story line grabbed my attention at first, it soon became too much. I thought to myself, "am I reading a comic or playing a game? Let's get to the game already!" To make matters worse, although there was a long back story, the goal of the game becomes lost. Here's how it goes: the young boy loses his pet, goes to find him, goes undercover and gets a job at the factory. Then he starts doing "assignments" while he's on the job.. But how do these assignments help him find his pet? I'm not sure. And at some point a fairy asks him to plant beans in every room along the way.. Wait, what? Eventually, I found the game to just be a collection of assignments with no real goal behind them. Additionally, while each assignment was a game that obviously included some mathematical concepts, it was hard to know what concepts they were using. There were absolutely no instructions for the games, so I was left guessing as to what I need to accomplish to even pass that level. I was able to figure it out the goal and rules of one game, but the other one is still a mystery. Since I couldn't figure out the goal of that level, I was basically stuck and no new level was available to me.
Overall, I think Lure of the Labyrinth is a great concept with potential, but needs some serious tweaking. Instructions for the games would go along way in keeping the player engaged, and not get frustrated. A more cohesive story line to keep the motivation going would be great. For example, if each level was unlocking a specific tool that helps retrieve the pet, then the reason behind these assignments would be obvious. I think educational games have great potential, but not any game that incorporates some educational concepts will be successful. It needs to be an interesting game, with the educational concepts integrated in an authentic way.
Gee discusses many qualities of a good game. Some of the positive characteristics that Lure of the Labyrinth has is a strong identity the player embodies, it can be customized in some ways, is interactive, and encourages risk taking.. The protagonist is a young boy whose pet is taken by a monster. The young boy follows his pet's sounds and ends up in a secret factory full of monsters and mythical creatures. As you can imagine, a young boy who loves his pet is a protagonist that many young students can relate to. Many teenagers love their pets and will be hooked into this story line. In addition, the player chooses his pet (a cat, dog, turtle etc.) and can customize his own appearance and name to an extent. This gives players a little bit of autonomy and ownership over the game. The game is interactive in that the player can explore areas (within restrictions) of the game, and can interact with other characters in the game. The last thing that I really liked is that there are very low consequences of failures. The player can keep trying to replay the same level until he/she is done practicing and is satisfied with the result. The low consequence of failure encourages risk taking, and making many attempts to succeed at learning the math.
Unfortunately, Lure of the Labyrinth left something to be desired. The longer I played, the more bored and frustrated I found myself. I asked myself, what would have made it more interesting to me? I realized that although the story line grabbed my attention at first, it soon became too much. I thought to myself, "am I reading a comic or playing a game? Let's get to the game already!" To make matters worse, although there was a long back story, the goal of the game becomes lost. Here's how it goes: the young boy loses his pet, goes to find him, goes undercover and gets a job at the factory. Then he starts doing "assignments" while he's on the job.. But how do these assignments help him find his pet? I'm not sure. And at some point a fairy asks him to plant beans in every room along the way.. Wait, what? Eventually, I found the game to just be a collection of assignments with no real goal behind them. Additionally, while each assignment was a game that obviously included some mathematical concepts, it was hard to know what concepts they were using. There were absolutely no instructions for the games, so I was left guessing as to what I need to accomplish to even pass that level. I was able to figure it out the goal and rules of one game, but the other one is still a mystery. Since I couldn't figure out the goal of that level, I was basically stuck and no new level was available to me.
Overall, I think Lure of the Labyrinth is a great concept with potential, but needs some serious tweaking. Instructions for the games would go along way in keeping the player engaged, and not get frustrated. A more cohesive story line to keep the motivation going would be great. For example, if each level was unlocking a specific tool that helps retrieve the pet, then the reason behind these assignments would be obvious. I think educational games have great potential, but not any game that incorporates some educational concepts will be successful. It needs to be an interesting game, with the educational concepts integrated in an authentic way.
Online Assessment: Smarter Balance
Online assessments are becoming the norm. There are online
assessments for most tests including the Graduate Record Examinations
(GRE) and the Michigan Test for Teacher Certification (MTTC).
Personally, I've found most of the computer based assessments I've
encountered to be be reasonable. Unfortunately, the Smarter Balanced
online assessment that Michigan has adopted to administer K-12
standardized assessments is far from that.
I had the opportunity to browse through the some of the tests offered by Smarter Balanced, which covered both the Math and English topics and spanned across K-12 grades. Although I am an avid technology user, I personally found the online test to be cumbersome and difficult to use. It made me imagine how much more difficult using this assessment might be for students who may not be as tech savvy.
The overall structure of the online test is not bad, but several things are formatted in ways that makes the user interface unfriendly. For example, the question information, and the question itself were placed in 2 panels side to side. The left panel would include the necessary background information to answer the question, and the right panel would contain the actual questions. The problem arises when the background information is a long piece of text or includes some tables and graphs, and the student has to scroll up and down, and even worse, scroll sideways just to see the information. The student can expand the width of the panel to see the information better, however it then covers up the question. This type of structure makes is difficult to navigate because a student has to keep switching back and forth between panels and has to keep scrolling to see various parts of the information.
I also found it frustrating that the test wouldn't let me move around between questions. Even though I could flag a question I wasn't sure about, I couldn't skip it and come back to it later. I had to provide some sort of answer to be able to move on. This is unlike the GRE; I clearly remember being able to move back and forth between questions in each section, making it easier for me to answer the questions I felt ready for. Also, every time I would do something not allowed by the system (such as skip a question), I got a scary looking error message, with extraneous information! I don't think that the student needs to know that this error is "[Message Code 12784]". Why is that even there? I found it to be really distracting, and a bit distressing to see this message every time.
On the math tests, the calculator is pretty bulky, and a bit hard to use. I kept trying to press "Ans" to get the answer but it wouldn't work, until I realized there is a small button with the = sign that I'm supposed to be pressing. Some questions asked the students show their work, but the answer space looked like it was to provide a paragraph of text. It would be really difficult showing work that would ideally need a diagram, involves division and other operations by just typing it in like regular text. It would make it very difficult to read, and I'm sure would lead to higher rate of mistakes. Also, specifically in the G7 Math Performance Task, it says that the test has questions 1-5 at the top, but then there are only 4 questions. I had to spend some times trying to figure out if I had missed any of the questions.
On the English Language Art tests, some of the words were underlined lightly, and wasn't clear why that was until I realized that if I clicked on those words, a small box appeared with its definition. This is actually useful, but I wish was presented in a different way as I found this hard distracting. Also, some of questions were in multiple choice format, and asked the student to pick one correct answer. Although the students should only pick one answer, sometimes the system would only allow students to pick one answer, whereas other times it allows them to pick more than one. I think this just increases confusion and difficulty because of the inconsistency presented in multiple choice answers.
Overall, I think online assessment tools can be a useful thing. It saves paper, and could allow for immediate results. However, with an online assessment tool such as the Smarter Balance, the test starts to test how well the student can overcome some of the user interface challenges, rather than the material itself. This is especially true if we consider that students can easily get nervous about tests and the technological difficulties might hinder their performance. Another scenario is that the students realize this test doesn't affect their life directly, and so when they see that the test is difficult to use and navigate, they give up easily. So what exactly is this tool measuring? Is it really measuring student performance, or is the student performance becoming overshadowed by the tool itself? How fair is it to base teacher evaluation on "student performance" when it is gathered by online assessment tools such as this one?
I had the opportunity to browse through the some of the tests offered by Smarter Balanced, which covered both the Math and English topics and spanned across K-12 grades. Although I am an avid technology user, I personally found the online test to be cumbersome and difficult to use. It made me imagine how much more difficult using this assessment might be for students who may not be as tech savvy.
The overall structure of the online test is not bad, but several things are formatted in ways that makes the user interface unfriendly. For example, the question information, and the question itself were placed in 2 panels side to side. The left panel would include the necessary background information to answer the question, and the right panel would contain the actual questions. The problem arises when the background information is a long piece of text or includes some tables and graphs, and the student has to scroll up and down, and even worse, scroll sideways just to see the information. The student can expand the width of the panel to see the information better, however it then covers up the question. This type of structure makes is difficult to navigate because a student has to keep switching back and forth between panels and has to keep scrolling to see various parts of the information.
I also found it frustrating that the test wouldn't let me move around between questions. Even though I could flag a question I wasn't sure about, I couldn't skip it and come back to it later. I had to provide some sort of answer to be able to move on. This is unlike the GRE; I clearly remember being able to move back and forth between questions in each section, making it easier for me to answer the questions I felt ready for. Also, every time I would do something not allowed by the system (such as skip a question), I got a scary looking error message, with extraneous information! I don't think that the student needs to know that this error is "[Message Code 12784]". Why is that even there? I found it to be really distracting, and a bit distressing to see this message every time.
On the math tests, the calculator is pretty bulky, and a bit hard to use. I kept trying to press "Ans" to get the answer but it wouldn't work, until I realized there is a small button with the = sign that I'm supposed to be pressing. Some questions asked the students show their work, but the answer space looked like it was to provide a paragraph of text. It would be really difficult showing work that would ideally need a diagram, involves division and other operations by just typing it in like regular text. It would make it very difficult to read, and I'm sure would lead to higher rate of mistakes. Also, specifically in the G7 Math Performance Task, it says that the test has questions 1-5 at the top, but then there are only 4 questions. I had to spend some times trying to figure out if I had missed any of the questions.
On the English Language Art tests, some of the words were underlined lightly, and wasn't clear why that was until I realized that if I clicked on those words, a small box appeared with its definition. This is actually useful, but I wish was presented in a different way as I found this hard distracting. Also, some of questions were in multiple choice format, and asked the student to pick one correct answer. Although the students should only pick one answer, sometimes the system would only allow students to pick one answer, whereas other times it allows them to pick more than one. I think this just increases confusion and difficulty because of the inconsistency presented in multiple choice answers.
Overall, I think online assessment tools can be a useful thing. It saves paper, and could allow for immediate results. However, with an online assessment tool such as the Smarter Balance, the test starts to test how well the student can overcome some of the user interface challenges, rather than the material itself. This is especially true if we consider that students can easily get nervous about tests and the technological difficulties might hinder their performance. Another scenario is that the students realize this test doesn't affect their life directly, and so when they see that the test is difficult to use and navigate, they give up easily. So what exactly is this tool measuring? Is it really measuring student performance, or is the student performance becoming overshadowed by the tool itself? How fair is it to base teacher evaluation on "student performance" when it is gathered by online assessment tools such as this one?
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