Standards 8 & 9

Uses educational technology to engage students in collaborative knowledge construction.

Uses educational technology to reveal and assess students’ thinking.

            I chose to use the website/application Kahoot to develop a formative assessment for my students.  I would like to teach at the elementary level and having the students engage in fun and sometimes competitive quizzes will be important to keep them a captive audience.  I have never used it in class as a teacher or as a participant.  My only knowledge was hearing about it from students when I substitute teach mostly at the high school level.  I found the website easy to use and the format was user friendly enough for upper elementary age students to engage in quizzes or to poll students of their understanding before or after a unit.  I made a simple nutritional quiz that the students could take after the unit was over and have points assigned to each question.  Kahoot offers the ability to play competitively with points assigned to quiz questions in the quiz mode or a jumble mode.  Jumble mode is similar to dragging different questions in correct order which would be helpful with timelines or life cycles.  In survey or discussion mode the intent is to gain feedback from the students without needing a correct answer.  This would be helpful when starting or stopping a unit to identify problem areas that need to be addressed more directly.  Kahoot could be used to put together a quick quiz or with some planning you can add pictures/videos and really make the quiz more appealing to the audience.  Each question can be allotted a different amount of time to answer as well so if you are playing in a group mode there can be discussion at the table before answering. 

The information polled from the students can be made into a report for future use or to share with other teachers.  It conveniently gives you the option to save directly to your Google drive as well.  The graphs could be used to assess student’s prior knowledge of the subject and then again to assess their understanding after the unit is over.  I think from metacognitive aspect it will be important for students to see their progress as a class as well as individually.  I think it would be great to develop over the unit and have other teachers add questions based on the feedback from their classes.  After each question a graph of what the students answered is displayed and gives the teacher and the class instant feedback on each question and can instantly show understanding.  This will help the collaborative effort of the teacher asking those students who identified the correct answer to share their thoughts or how they came to that particular outcome.  

Link to my Kahoot  


https://create.kahoot.it/share/nutrional-knowledge-quiz/1c476bff-c2bc-4390-ac35-806e7f19cabb

Standard 1 - Articulates a robust definition for technological literacy.

Technology can be defined as any tool, machine and/or program that is used to help solve problems or complete tasks in a more efficient manner.  This can be from changing or adapting our knowledge, skills, processes, techniques, tools and raw materials.  Technological Literacy is defined by the International Technology Education Association's (ITEA) as the ability to use, manage, evaluate, and understand technology.  Technological literacy is not just the ability to navigate the simple functions of a program or technology.  The ability to evaluate its usefulness and overall advantage over a more analog form is important.  Some undesired side effects can occur and it is important when being technologically literate to weigh the pros and cons of implementation.  Many believe that technology can be a quick fix to some of the world’s problems but the outcome isn’t always the desired one.  Melissa Bettie-Moss states "Despite our hopes and dreams, computers do not level the socioeconomic playing field or solve educational problems all on their own. In fact, illiteracy rates don't look all that different than they did before computers. In certain areas, computers aid productivity and enable new forms of work and play, but they can also create new problems and exacerbate old ones."  Technological literacy is the knowledge about the actions each new tech requires along with the consequences from a real-world perspective.