Jim's USF Tech Cert Blog

For my second artifact I decided to pick the formative assessments I made for module 3, but also would work for Gamification in module 8.  I chose to make a quizlet for an important objective in our curriculum that I wanted students to Master.    Objective: Understand the basic anatomy and physiology of gas exchange in the mammalian respiratory system. Since I am about to test on the Respiratory system, I decided to make two formative assessments to assess if my students were ready to take their upcoming summative assessment on the anatomy and physiology of the respiratory system.   Using the material I am required to make for my graduate courses in my classroom is really what has made this experience at St. Francis so valuable for me!   I could see this strategy becoming beneficial in the future for my Anatomy classes.    I am envisioning in a 1 month unit for one of the body systems, once a week checking for understanding with an ...

One of my favorite formative assessment tools we learned about in this class was the digital badges.    I have a little experience with this as my son’s cub scout troop uses a type of digital badge to assess the lessons formatively as they go through scouts.    I like the idea in my classroom as well.    If I could come up with digital assessments, that in turn they would get a digital print out showing mastery or completion, it might be a unique formative assessment of how they are progressing with the material.    I also love how the one teacher uses google to make a badge table!    I really want to use that in the future!    I am going to plan a unit “flipping” the classroom where students will have the opportunity to earn badges for tasks on their own time that accompany work we are doing in class. Here is the digital badge table that I created for this project: And here is one of the digital badges that students...

EEND679Z3 - Assess & Imp Stud Ach w/Tech Course Reflection:  Hello Class,  Another semester flew by and I cannot believe I am already writing the course reflection for 679!  I have to be honest, I really did not expect to enjoy this class when I first signed up because of the title.  I am not big on summative assessments and really need to grow a bit using technology to administer them.  I find assessment construction boring, and would much rather spend my time with formative assessment than summative.  To my surprise, this class really focused on formative assessment and how to use technology to aid in administering and making it more authentic to your audience.  I learned a lot over the 8 weeks, and will apply way more in this class to my everyday teaching, and even my life moving forward.  I decided to focus on 3 modules we talked about this year, discussed with each other, and implemented in my classroom for this reflection piec...

Hello class, For this discussion we are supposed to comment on how we utilize data to improve our instruction.   Specifically, how can we use the data to personalize instruction.   Luckily, this has actually been the goal of our PLC (professional learning community) for Biology over the past 2 years.   We make common questions for our assessments, analyze data, and discuss what improvements need to be made as far as instruction is concerned.   Our PLC uses a program called Mastery Manager to collect our data.   This program has been really helpful in allowing us to set what questions we want to collect data and has made it easy to compare among classrooms.   You can easily separate out specific questions, align questions to standards, run data analysis for sub groups, or really any other data piece I can think of…. Specifically, we analyze 10 common questions that we all put on our summative assessments for each unit.   We then discuss wh...

Hello Class, For this module we are to discuss our experiences with portfolios.  After going through the resources and looking back at my time being a student, I really have great respect for portfolio work in education.  It can be an amazing tool to show growth, and showcase a students talent.  Not just in the typical classes you would think of like Language and Writing or Art Classes.   I really do think I could add a portfolio as part of a unit or maybe a semester.  Looking back at my time being a student, I remember doing a portfolio for the first time in my graduate education classes.  It was a great way to showcase all of my work in one binder.  Now thinking of what a portfolio is, and being a parent now, I realize I was doing portfolios way back in elementary school.  In fact, I am lucky to still have that work in a chest and often go back to admire/laugh at all my art and writing in 1st-5th grade.   I am able to do the s...

Hello Class, I have to say that this assignment this week was one of my favorite that I have done over my cousework at USF.  The idea of the Genius hour is.... well genius!!  I love it as a personal activity as well as its application in the classroom.  Getting students excited about what they are learning is sometimes difficult.  But what if we put the ownership on them?  What if they get to pick the topics to get to an end goal that we decide?  Definitely, and interesting idea to explore form both a personal and educational angle. For my genius hour, I used this opportunity to explore a topic that I have been thinking about for awhile now.  Two years ago I watched the documentary, COWSPIRACY, with my wife at home.  I was already making changes in my life to become more environmentally friendly but was looking to do more.  I have to say, this documentary and the research that came afterwards have really changed my life.  I have now ...

EEND 679 Module 4 Discussion Jim Nielsen The idea of personalized learning has been around for a long time.   I mean, it sounds like an amazing idea!   Cater all learning to the individual that is doing the learning- makes sense!   The problem is how do we do that in a class of 30 students?   Or an entire course load of 150 students over the course of the day.   Where do we focus our personalized learning goals?   Is it to struggling students, social economic disadvantaged students, students from different races, students that are advanced and need to be pushed?   I have heard all of these groups singled out at different times in my career for personalized learning.   As an educator, how can we streamline this process, and how does technology aid us in this borderline impossible task? I teach co-taught biology and have taught this class for 10 years now.   I feel comfortable saying that I have one of the most diverse classes in the ...