Steph Does Tech

The second EEND676 artifact I want to review is the writing and assessing a collaborative task assignment. Overall, I thought this assignment carried the most practical application in this course, which is why I chose to utilize it for this reflection. I enjoyed thinking of an assignment that I wrote start to finish with collaboration in mind. Generally, in the past, I have used collaboration as an add on. This time around, the assignment was generated to assess student’s collaboration in addition to their content knowledge. The challenge to creating this assignment was how to do three things effectively and authentically: assess students use of technology, their collaboration skills, and their content knowledge for unit 1 (reading and writing standards). Using these three areas and thinking about how I could assess them, really lended itself to me being able to create an assessment that is meaningful. Another challenge I found was once I developed what I wanted to students to do to a...

The first artifact from EEND676 that I chose to reflect on was the collaborative web tools rubric assignment. I don’t have much experience making rubrics, so this assignment challenged me. Rubrics I have worked with in the past are generally created by district curriculum teams, not rubrics I generate myself. I enjoyed the challenge and this assignment actually forced me to get used to using rubric generators online. This was a secondary benefit of the overall assignment objective: learning how to evaluate collaborative tools. The rubric I created to score collaborative tools is below: Domain Developing (1) Approaching (3) Effective (5) User Friendliness Students need step by step directions from their teacher to use the tool. Students are not able to work at their own pace due to the necessity of the group staying together. Students are able to work at their own paces; however each step must be explained by the teacher. There may be down time for students if they ...

The educational technology trend that I chose to explore this week is blended learning. In essence, blended learning involves in class learning time for students, but also an outside of class, technology enabled learning environment for students. In our district, we have many blended learning class options, such as consumer economics and American Government. Students spend 2-3 days in the classroom and on the other days students are able to use the learning commons or study hall space to complete assignments for their class. Students are guided through modules on Canvas or Google Sites and learn and explore at their own pace. According to Blended Learning Universe, blended learning is a formal education that involves a component online, a component away from home, and involves a learning path that students follow. The same source describes there are seven different models of blended learning that schools can utilize depending on their students’ needs. This type of learning involves...