Thoughts/Concerns on Assessing Student Learning

As I prepare to lead students through a project based learning approach, the assessment of this unit is very important. It is usually easy to assess basic knowledge but since my learning goals are going to be more complex, different assessment methods must be used. As the students are working on their project, I would like to periodically assess their knowledge. For this I think I will require each team to meet with me twice during the lesson to explain the process of their project. As far as assessing the content knowledge and skills in the lesson, I think I am going to pair up each team and allow the teams to assess the other teams skills. Each team will produce a quiz over the content and give it to the other teams members. This will be an individual assignment, but the teams will score the quizzes and give each other feedback.

For the overall project assessment I will use a rubric, but I would like to use some different features of the rubric. I would like for my students to be able to apply the trigonometry content into real life situations. So, I would like for my rubric to have some sort of component where it would allow me to truly asses their ability to apply the content to other situations.

LoTi, My Project, and Me

After examining and discussing the LoTi framework, it raises some good questions concerning my own implementation of technology. Am I simply just utilizing technology for my own gains or to enhance student interaction and learning? What level is usually used in my classroom and am I enhancing my usage of technology. As I consider the instructional design of my 7500 project, I am drawn to look for ways that student centered interaction can merge with real world context to provide an effective learning environment and in turn raise the level of my technology implementation. I have been trying to provide a real world context for the lesson, but really had not thought about changing from a teacher centered to a student centered approach. I find it extremely difficult to facilitate learning in a mathematics classroom from a student centered approach. However, I do feel that with more learner input in the lessons, they will be more engaged and have more ownership in the learning process.

I have narrowed down my topics to either exponential functions or trigonometric functions and their applications. Either one of these topics has a great context for the learner to apply the knowledge, but I need to determine which one would benefit from an enhancement in the instruction. I think that the best way for me to design this lesson would be through a project based approach with the students choosing how they will apply the mathematical knowledge and skills into a chosen situation. While allowing the students to choose their context, situations, and how they would like to solve the problems, the student will be more engaged and hopefully more invested in the process. Examining my lessons in the context of how they match up to the LoTi framework is going to really enhance the implementation of technology into my project.

Project Ideas

For the main project in this course, it is our goal to create and implement a learning unit that incorporates high level technology tools, resources, and theory in order to enhance the learning of students. As a high school math teacher, I immediately begin to consider what units I have coming up in the near future, and am trying to decide which ones could be the most conducive to enhancing with technology.
I teach calculus, precalculus, and an algebra class, so I have numerous possibilities for this assignments. I immediately begin to think about Calculus class, because I spend the majority of my time trying to enhance this high level course. So, initially I am considering the overall units of differentiation, or one of its application such as related rates or optimization. I have also considered the precalculus topic of exponential and logarithmic functions. Over the next week, my focus will be on researching tools for both of these topics and determining which one would be better suited for this project.

Relection Posts

Welcome to my reflection blog for the EDIT 7500-Technology Enhanced Classroom Environments. This is a graduate course in the Instructional Design & Development Program at the University of Georgia. Check back weekly to see how the class is going, I will update the blog by Friday throughout the semester.