Brad Gritters EDT 626 Blog

Introduction  As teachers, we are given the challenge to create a positive learning environment and experience for students. We need to create this experience for MANY students with DIFFERENT abilities EVERY SINGLE DAY. This is no easy task and nearly impossible for one person to do on their own. This is why assistive technology is an essential part of the educational field. When planning and administering assessments for students with diverse needs, assistive technology can play a pivotal role in improving the learning for ALL our students.  What is assistive technology?  Assistive technology are different tools that help people who have difficulty speaking, typing, writing, remembering, pointing, seeing, hearing, learning, walking, and many other things. Different disabilities require different assistive technologies. Assistive technology is a means to assist someone in accomplishing a task. In the field of education, assistive technology is used to help students in the...

A Pattern of Change The way we do assessments is changing. In the past, traditional paper assessments were the only way to determine whether or not students have achieved mastery of content, but in the past couple of year, many schools have been moving towards computer based assessments.  Currently, computer-based assessments are also evolving toward computer-adaptive testing, with the goal to better access/capture students' true ability. In summary, just like the educational field as a whole, assessments are always evolving. With this constant change, it is important that we address the positives and negatives that these changes bring to the educational field.  Negatives Computer based adaptive tests have many shortcomings that ought to be addressed as we continue to use them more and more. First, questions and items on CBA are usually only presented one time to the learner. This does NOT allow for the students to the opportunity to review and modify their test when they fini...

The purpose of assessments is to prepare students for their lives during the 21st century. Are we as teachers doing that as we create our assessments? At times teachers view assessments only as a tool to determine "have students learn what I have taught them?" or "Do they know the facts that I have presented to them?". Assessments are so much more than that. Assessments should support the learning of the students. In fact, "Assessments and instruction in the classroom should go hand in hand in service to promote student learning!" (BK) When we create assessments, the goal of the teacher ought to be that he creates a meaningful learning opportunity for their students to learn and grow. We are preparing students for their lives in the 21st century and we ought to be using assessments to help equip our students with the skills necessary for their future lives. What skills should assessments be preparing students with? Students should learn to be self reflecti...

  What Are Assessments? Assessments are a very important aspect of education within the classroom. Someone with little background knowledge on assessments might see it as an easy concept to understand. "It's just a test...isn't it?" But when you sit down and really dig deeper into what an assessment is, you will find it is much more complex than that, with many different interconnected parts. The Foundations of Education gives a clear definition of what an assessment is. They put it this way, " the term  assessment  refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students." My understanding of assessments has broadened as I have studied it. Specifically, the purpose of assessments has caught my attention. Originally, I viewed assessment as having one single purpose: to measure the educational needs of students. But this p...

 Goal #1 A goal that I had going into this school year is to make all of my work digital and have organized folders on my google drive for school. Organization is key to good teaching in my opinion and technology is a tool that we can use to stay organized with all of our work. An easy goal that I sometimes struggle with! Although it is a work in progress I have been working hard at organizing my drive. As well as digitizing my planner completely so that I do not hand write my weekly plans on a planner, I type them.  The positive of all of this is that it has cut my planning time nearly in half with the ease and quickness that technology brings! Also, I have been able to organize every lesson in order with how they appear in the curriculum. Making my work entirely digital has also allowed me to better collaborate with my colleagues as well.  Goal #2 Another goal for this school year, was that I was going to use blabberize as a method for my students to record and read a r...

One trend that I have heard more and more about lately is Micro learning. A micro learning lesson is a lesson that is short, flexible, interactive, and only focuses on one topic. With a new generation of children entering our education system microlearning is a trend that claims to be more beneficial to students with shorter attention spans. Technology is something that allows us to take advantage of the way that human attention span works. Microlearning allows teachers to catch the attention of the students and allow them to learn at their best.   Here are 4 key elements to Microlearning: Micro learning reshapes education for both the students and the teachers. Whereas in the past, students learned at the same exact pace as their classmates, with Microlearning, students can learn at their own pace. Students are given the power to choose at what pace they want to learn. Lexia's website says this about Microlearning, " Grading and going over material becomes easier when student...