Monitoring my GAME Plan

As I began the stage of monitoring my progress towards reaching my goals of:
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
I am remind of the old phrase “begin as you mean to go”. This emphasizes for me the importance of knowing at the beginning what your designation will be and the avenues you intend to take. Dr. Ross says that assessment should be the first thing teachers consider when designing lessons (Laureate, 2009).

I mentioned in an early post that I was going to use digital story telling to spark my students’ natural curiosity and creativity through the use of iMovie and flip cameras. This week I met with another teacher in my school that routinely uses flip cameras in her classroom. She showed me previous footage her students had shot and edited. I was amazed at the amount of detail these second grade students had added to their feature films. One great suggestion she had was to let students watch the "making of the movie" feature on a educational DVD and the credits of the film. She also had a cameraman from a local television station come in as a guest speaker. I can now see the how the affect of integrating real life situations and context into lesson can have a powerful impact on students buy–in to the content areas.

Pressing forward with my quest to find authentic opportunities to assess my students’ achievements I encountered a nifty way to use PDAs.. “Whether based on formal or informal observations, many student information systems allow you to quickly add notes to students records that can be accessed and recorded on handheld and laptop computers, making students records dynamic” (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2009). One of the great struggles I have in regards to student performance-based assessments is the time consuming and laborious task of recording and transferring information. Handling student performance assessments in this manner would free up time and provide instantaneous feedback to customize future lessons.

My most pressing question so far is how I can use my own personal iPod Touch to make wireless performance assessment take place. It definitely not something I have come across in the iTunes (itunes.com) app store. Does anyone have any prior experience with this method of data collection? What program would you suggest? What is the cost factor involved?

References

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Program 7. Assessing Student Learning with Technology. [Educational video]. Baltimore: Author.