Assessments can be a tremendous indication of how well students grasped information that was presented to them. Assessments are a crucial part of teaching because teachers are now being assessed on their student’s performance. There are many types of assessment available and teachers should use a variety of assessments when measuring their student’s knowledge. There are formative and summative assessments that teachers can use. Timed testing has been proven to cause anxiety within students and is an ineffective way to test student’s knowledge. This can affect student’s performance and teachers should ensure and instill confidence in their students. If assessments are measuring student’s performance to be low, teachers should be able to develop new instructional strategies and make adjustments. The attachments within this section connect with ACEI Standard 4.

Excel is a program that can be very easy to use and is highly beneficial to use within a classroom setting. I have not used excel before but I feel much more educated on how to use them after class and watching tutorials. I really think that Excel will be beneficial for me to use in my future with creating class rosters, making bar and pie graphs and making demonstrations.  The links were very helpful tutorials for using Excel. The video that helped me the most was video about making averages. I can use this in my classroom to create class averages on tests to see how the majority of my students preformed and can assess myself as an educator. The autosum tool can also be used to compute grades for my students. As a teacher, time management is very crucial, having technological tools like excel can make grading easier and can make less work for a teacher.

I really love the idea of clicker technologies. They are great because they give educators immediate feedback of how students are doing and what they are retaining. The clickers are all anonymous so students will not feel as pressured when using this form of assessment. I remember using these in High School before a review day and our teachers would take the data from the clicker test and make reviews to re-teach students information that many students got wrong.

There are both positive and negative aspects of using clickers in the classroom.  “What works with the clickers, according to Dubson and other professors, are questions that spark discussion and get students to explain concepts to each other” (Pierce, 2010). Students are not just sitting through lectures anymore; they are forced to pay attention in a way because they have to answer questions throughout the lesson using this assessment. Pierce states that negative aspects of using clickers are that some students become resentful of them because they can cause anxiety and resentment when they are used as a pop quiz or when they are used to take attendance (Pierce, 2010, p.1).

Using manipulative are a great way for students to get engaged and students see clickers as a fun way of learning. A way to implement them in the middle of class is to reward students for their attentiveness and attendance. These clickers allow for communication between peers so they can discuss and help each other if a person got an answer wrong. Clickers also allow for a lot of teachable moments because teachers can immediately discuss incorrect answers. These allow for students to all voice their opinion and not feel afraid to do so because of their anonymity. Teachers can also track cumulative changes in student’s answers and see their progress.

I think that clickers could be implemented in the elementary school. Teachers often do not know if all of their students understand the information. This tool allows teachers to receive instant feedback and they can then change how they explained a concept. Teachers can use this tool for all subjects and can be used at any point during a lesson to check for understanding and can be used for students to indicate when they are completed with a topic. The teacher can interpret data and see if students are understanding and can modify for students who do not consistently understand the data. Ultimately, I think clicker technology is highly beneficial because there are not a lot of easy and immediate ways of checking for a whole group understanding and this is a quick, easy and anonymous way to do this. (James, 2009, p.1).

References

James, R. (2009). Using clickers in the classroom. Retrieved from   http://www.slideshare.net/rnja8c/using-clickers-in-the-classroom-posted

Pierce, D. (2010, March 9). Is better learning a click away? eCampus News.  Retrieved from http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/is-better-learning-a-click-away/