Voila!

Photo copyright A. Syn and permission provided under rights of Attribution from Creative Commons

No reflection this week, folks. All my effort and enthusiasm this week has gone into making a comprehensive culminating project for one and all. I took all these ideas that have been bouncing around and pulled it all together into one big, beautiful online resource. In fact, instead of just plugging in outside elements into my curriculum page (entitled EBooks & Education), I decided to make a brand new wiki just for the project idea and fit all the little puzzle pieces into it. So now, I'll step back and let it speak for itself.

Integrating eBooks into Education with a Book Pitch

I know an "A" when I see one...or do I?

Copyright Sage Ross (some rights reserved)

Assessment is easily one of the hardest parts of teaching. Sure, getting your lesson plans together can be pretty difficult, as is determining and collecting all your necessary resources. But, when it comes right down to it, truly understanding how well a student is or is not learning is pretty darn tough. Obviously, if your assessment method of choice is a quiz or multiple choice test, the numbers do the determining for you, but then you have to figure out what questions to include. However, in the world of language arts which I have taught, tests are rarely your main assessment tool. Usually, assignments like papers and projects are the norm, with very defined goals that help the teacher figure out a final score. These could include criteria like how many paragraphs/pages are there, is there a clear thesis statement, and was an argument persuasive enough. Overall, though, assessment is such a tricky word. Not only does it mean the manner in which a teacher grades a student, but also method and product that student creates. In other words, when a teacher gives a student a paper to write, it is the paper itself and the grading criteria that the teacher uses which that creates an assessment. So not only do teachers have to choose wisely on what kinds of assessments to give, but how to deal with them when they are turned in.

Putting My Prezi Where My Mouth Is...

My kind of sales pitch (Photo copyright of Romana Klee)

So far, I’ve explored the concept of digital storytelling, as well as how I could use it in a hypothetical classroom of advanced high school students. Now, the time is nigh to walk that talk of mine. In other words, I set out to make an example of the project I designed.  Before I do so, I feel it is a good idea to provide a refresher (both for myself and for my classmates) of what exactly I am doing.