Reflections on Educational Technology

I got a bit of a head start on the assignment this week and then had an issue with my phone, which is also my only internet, so then I got behind. Such is life. My head start came from the fact that 1) this is not the first Google classroom that I have had to create and 2) I had already made this specific one to share the assignment from last week (PlayPosit) because Google classroom is required for assigning the bulb (the video that you create with embedded classroom) which was a major downside of using that resource (unless your teaching and assignments are all already on Google classroom, then it's no difference). To me, Google classrooms is incredibly user friendly to set up a very basic classroom and make assignments. I just googled "Google classroom" and clicked on it and then clicked on the plus sign in the upper right corner and selected create class. I then named it "Life Science" because that was the subject I decided to focus on for this practice ...

I chose to use PlayPosit to create a formative assessment that goes along with a video which, hypothetically, would give me feedback to see if students were understanding the big information and ideas from an assigned video.  I chose this format because I tend to find videos when I need to review something or learn a microtopic quickly. My favorites are Crash Course and the Amoeba Sisters.  Building the video was very easy and there was a great number of examples of previously done "bulbs" (videos with playposit questions added) so it was easy to see how it can be used. At the end of creating the video, I did find that actually assigning the video was less user friendly. I ended up creating a Google classroom to attempt to assign the video through there. It took multiple attempts and reading through their help guide a few times to even get to the point of assigning the video.  Writing this before anyone has taken the assignment, though, does not give me much to wo...

When I went into the Common Sense website , the list of tools was completely overwhelming. To prevent myself from really going down the rabbit hole, I went to the listed recommended formative assessment tools. I was actually familiar with quite a few of them, so I decided to select one that I had never heard of before. Of the listed tools, I narrowed it down to two that I was interested in: PlayPosit and Formative. After taking a quick look at both, I liked them both, but I decided to look more into PlayPosit for the purposes of this assignment. Now, I'm not saying that I chose this tool because of the logo, but I'm also not saying that I didn't PlayPosit is a tool that allows the user to create and publish "bulbs" in which different types of questions (only multiple choice, if using the free version) are added into a video. Users are able to create their own bulbs or use previously created ones. While researching this tool, I watched and answered a cou...

This assignment actually came at a perfect time in relation with one of my other classes. My assessment class actually just began to go over formative assessments and my big takeaway from that lecture if that formative assessment are "for learning" while summative assessments are "of learning". What that really means is that formative assessments inform instruction and are given before or during a unit to evaluate where students are at and what they know or may have missed during previous instruction and adapt the planning and instruction to reflect that. I chose to create an pre-test type of formative assessment that would evaluate where the students are at on their knowledge of the topic. I also decided to include an affective assessment portion on the last page to see how confidently students answered the questions and to try to gauge possible interests that I could exploit during the unit to better engage them. I also asked for student feedback in order to eva...

This week, I hated the assignment. I have no idea what the reason was, but having to create a VIDEO just gave me complete anxiety and resulted in me procrastinating on getting started as long as possible. Which, is ironic because I had just listened to an episode focused on procrastination on the podcast, Ologies, and recognized it was probably my most self destructive behavior and resolved to try to do better. That was not successful. I am not really sure what my aversion to making a video was really about, but it was powerful. I actually started 5 different videos with 3 different concepts before my final video, but could not get past the 1st or 2nd slide before deleting everything and starting over. I had wanted to do something about taxonomy because I am actually focusing on that for a unit project that I am creating in another class right now, so any tools that I can come up with to tie into that is very helpful. Then, I thought, what images do I have that can help me actual...