Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

This winter I am working toward adding a new credential to my learning: Quality Matter's  Teaching Online Certificate . This well-established and highly respected organization has put together a series of workshops that focuses on best practices of online teaching. I plan to reflect on each workshop as I complete them as a way to model metacognition. This post is 5 of 8. This week the focus shifted to assessment. The first conversation revolved around academic honesty- a topic that has been discussed since assignments have been given! We talked about reasons why some students might cheat. One literature review on academic dishonesty cited poor time management, academic pressures, and low-stakes assignments as some of the reasons students go this route. Best practices seem to fall in three buckets: Inform & Educate Protect & Prevent Practice & Support I'm a firm believer in being honest and transparent with my graduate students in hope that they will be honest and t...

When students are released for summer break teachers may not come to work each day but it doesn't mean they aren't learning.  Each year thousands of teachers seek out opportunities to continue their professional growth.  This summer Coonley teachers had a chance to work at their own pace to learn about technology tools that could assist them with formative and summative assessments. I designed an online professional development website titled "Coonley Technology Road Trip" where teachers could learn the basics about these tools, create sample artifacts and then blog about their experience.  Blogging offered teachers a chance to hear from their peers how they thought the tools could be used in their learning situation.  It also allowed me as a technology coach to see how everyone was feeling about specific tools so I can reach out this school year to offer additional support. The tools featured aren't all exclusively made for assessment purposes but like any go...