Thing #12

Evaluation/Assessment and Survey Tools

Google Forms
Love it! I learned about these in a technology presentation from a colleague who was embedding these into his Moodle site and using them as "brainstorming" activities or "bell beater" activities. I've found a number of ways to use them including a little "quiz" students take about me at the beginning of the year, a way to collect e-mail addresses, a way to collect updated data information for my dissertation, etc... Overall, I love this application! I didn't the "summary response" tools existed. I will definitely be looking that those from here on out.

Rubistar
I created a rubric for the Spinach Leaves Lab that students complete during our unit on Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration. As a part of this activity, students place spinach leaves in a jar and connect an oxygen gas measuring probe and a carbon dioxide measuring probe to the jar. A computer program (Logger Pro--Vernier program) then caputures the data from the probles. Students experiment with different variables (light levels, light colors, temperature, etc...) and then watch what happens to the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the jar. They analyze the data and draw some conclusions regarding the rates of photosynthesis and cellular respiration under those experimental conditions. Currently, I have a form with questions for them to fill out. However, as a part of our NCA (AdvancEd now...or something like that) work, I need to have a rubric assignment where I can gague how well students do analysis. This seemed like a great assignment to "tweak" inorder to fit that goal.

Data Warehousing
I must admit that I am pretty unaware when it comes to knowing about anything related to data warehousing in my district. One of the tools mentioned was Moodle, and I am aware of that. I guess our grading program/student management system would be considered data warehousing. It is the Blackbaud system, and I am not a fan. The grading component of it is NetClassroom, and it is not user friendly for the teacher or the student/parent accessing the information. I think that student management systems like this and course management systems could be used to inform instruction in several ways. First, when I give a test, I would love to have a simple, easy way to analyze test questions to show me which ones students were missing with more frequency. I guess if I put all my tests on Moodle, I could get that information. But I don't have all my tests there, so now I just have to rely on a feeling that I get while correcting and noticing that more students seem to be getting particular questions wrong. I think it would be really interesting to see a data analysis of our students scores on a test like the ACT or MME to see what content areas students seem to be struggling with. Of course, FERPA/HIPAA is very important and student confidentiality and privacy need to be respected and protected.