Digital Blog Post #I - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Designing Lessons and Developing Curriculum with Technology

Within Chapter 4 it emphasized the importance of creating lesson plans and using technology to our advantage as educators. This reminded me of growing up and how I had to do countless projects, presentation, and speeches, I know that if I plan ahead, rehearse and know my content fully I can present a well thought out presentation. I also know that if I "wing it" it's not always the case. In the first section of the chapter it had a little story of how a new teacher couldn't just "wing it" for her lessons, she needed a "concrete instructional plan and regular assessments of her students" (Maloy). Her mentor gave her some advice that you can use educational websites to help develop lesson plans. I am so thankful that I live in a world where we have the internet at our disposal. The possibilities are endless. As a future educator I have access to lesson plans, activities, blogs, and so much more. I can pull up youtube videos to show my students, or presentation apps. I can use interactive apps for my students to use, and learn. It's a very exciting time to be a teacher. What I also love is that as far as making lesson plans, the book talked about how just a few decades ago, teachers had to do so much to develop well thought out lesson plans, now I can just go online and quickly develop my own.

Prior to reading this chapter I didn't realize that the assessments were part of the actual lesson plan. It makes total sense, I just never put two and two together before. I also found it interesting the different ideas on assessment and how there are two main types of assessments; Norm-Reference test and Criterion-Reference test. As a student I never liked tests, I've always preferred doing projects to show I grasp the content, personally I believe that I learn best when I do projects, but this might also be because I'm a tactile learner. I understand though that we need both Norm-Reference test and Criterion-Reference tests. After reading about the assessments I realized that I can teach all I want, but I need to know my students are learning, and to do that I need to assess them. When I start teaching I want my students to learn, I don't want to just give them one type of assessment. This chapter has started turning the wheels in my head as I start to think about assessments. The classrooms that I was apart of throughout school worked the best when the teacher used multiple assessments to see where we stood in their classrooms. I believe that providing a combination of multiple choice test, written test, and projects might work out the best, I won't know for sure though until I start teaching.

The part of the chapter that struck me was when it talked about standardized tests. Growing up as a student in Florida I partook in the FCAT from 3rd to 10th or 11th grade. My thoughts on standardized test vary. I believe that we should have them, but I believe that they should be ran differently. Maybe the new tests are different, but in elementary school most of my learning was geared toward passing a test. I don't believe thats right. I think that we should educate our students to be learners not just test takers. I remember the teachers who would be so stressed out because they wanted their students to pass, because if the majority of their students passed they got a bonus. Also, a student should not have to be held back because of one test, I think thats ridiculous. If a child is having a bad day, or outside things are affecting them, then their test could be affected by that. One test grade cannot reflect who that student is. I also think that we should test our students differently by testing them on knowledge that every student should know across America on a whole, what they should know about their state as a whole, and academically what the average student of their grade should know. Whether those ideas should come through standardized tests or Core Curriculum I'm unsure of.

My last thoughts on assessment through lesson plans is that I will test my students on what we learn, I don't want to trick them, or confuse them, I want to be as straight forward with my assessments as I can be.

After listening to my Podcast I want to clarify that I am not against standardized test, I am against teaching to the test. I believe that we should inspire our students to be life long learners.


References:

Edward, A. (2015, November 5). Standardized Test Song. Retrieved November 5, 2015.

Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.