This week, our primary topics were using technology for assessment and for personal productivity and organization. Our activities for this week included interacting with our PLNs, completing the assigned readings about assessment and professional productivity, creating a quiz using Google Forms, beginning to develop our class ePortfolios, exploring technological tools for administration and productivity, and participating in the class discussion board.
With my PLN, I found several resources that were very useful for classroom organization. One of them was a "mega-binder," which contained all of the worksheets and lesson plans for a unit organized together in a binder. To incorporate this with technology, I can either use software that will make the worksheets an original copy which I print and keep in the binder, or I can simply organize the entire "binder" as a digital file in it's own folder. I have a portion of my hard drive with a folder devoted to music curriculum. It would be great to organize that folder into more folders with specific unit titles and all of the worksheets and other paperwork that I'd need for the unit. I find myself singing West Side Story's "Somewhere" as I dream of a perfectly organized music curriculum.
There were many great ideas for incorporating technology into music assessment in the readings for this week. I already use a lot of technology for assessments. This particular applies to live assessments. I have been using an app on my iPad that allows me to draw on pictures. I make the rubric into a jpg file, open it in my drawing app, and I write the child's name at the top of the page. Then, I circle the child's score according to the rubric, save it as the child's name and the name of the assessment, then open a new one for the next student. It is very quick and saves a lot of paper.
Another major part of the readings was related to apps that can help organize the classroom. This is an area where I dream of having things completely together, but I have simply never found the time to do so. The textbook referenced the app called "Evernote," which has been downloaded to my iPad since I first got it, but I have never used. I intend to further explore the app in the near future to see how it can help with organization. I already use a cloud-synced calendar to keep track of my lesson plans, extra activities, and other important events and requirements on my iPad and iPhone.
The mini-projects this week were quite fun and useful. I have used many different types of documents before, being both a Mac and PC user, but I haven't spent lots of time on google docs. We are highly encouraged to use them in our classroom, and now I see why. It would be very simple for me to require my students to create word documents and presentations and share them with me. I could easily create quizzes and other simple assessments that my students could quickly complete on their 1:1 laptops during class using google docs. I intend to follow through and actually create assignments this way. Another thing I was thinking that would work well is to create a google form that is the worksheet we are filling out (this is particularly useful for in-class assignments where the students are graded on participation only), and use the Flubaroo to grade whether they completed the answers or not without actually having to make paper copies. I am sure my school district would appreciate me making less copies since I make at least 100 for each grade level when I do written work.
In the discussion board this week, we talked about different ways that we currently use and could use technology in our assessments and in our professional productivity. I found that there are a lot of great ways to use online storage systems like dropbox for storing my documents related to my classroom. I have a dropbox account, but it is too full of personal items to use for school, so I think I'm going to make a second dropbox account through my school email as a school account where I keep all of my information. This will greatly help, I think, with keeping my school work organized. I really enjoyed some of the ideas related to assessment, particularly those where we can use technology to actually grade the assessments, which is one of my biggest concerns with time management as a teacher.
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