Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Objective: Clarify the purposes for different types of assessments and how those assessments support learning in technology-rich environments. The reason I chose this objective is because of the importance of using different methods of assessing since different students excel at different aspects. As long as the student understands and successfully finishes the problem (s)he should be allotted a good grade.

My question for the chapter is...how are we as teachers supposed to judge whether a student is learning the proper method or cheating the system? As I thought more about this question since I was one of those students, at least in math class, I have thought of some answers. For the student you think may be cheating the system you can ask them to explain it to you personally so you do not embarrass them in-front of the entire class. Although this leaves the problem that you can't do this for each individual so hopefully we won't be put in that position.

The connection to my teaching...well my objective was to learn how to assess differently and how they will accomplish supportive learning in a technology-rich environment. The example they use with Mrs. Blake's class is a great one for me personally since I am interested in teaching history. We see Mrs. Blake lead an extremely interactive discussion about inventions and then she finishes it up with having the students make a time-line of what they think were the most important inventions over the past 2000 years. On p.283 the author refers to students doing a presentation using powerpoint. As they say, you need to grade the student on how well the student uses the tool but what if the student is just nervous and fidgets and hits a button which changes the slide or closes the program? In my British Literature class we have been reading poems in-front of the class and it is easy to tell who is comfortable and who is not. In situations like this I feel it is important for us as teachers to help the student because if we continue to give them poor grades because they forget a line and stumble here and there then we will continue to reinforce the student's negative thought of themselves and they will continue to do poorly. As I have learned over the years from giving recitations and taking a public speaking course; it is truly easier to speak in-front of a class if the more you do it. Instead of having students do just one presentation or recitation a semester we can have them do them more often.