Lights, Camera, Action!

Lights, Camera, Action- Creating Within a Video Tool

When you first hear "make a video", some may immediately think of a camera and needing to physically shoot some footage and/or have your face in front of a camera. Thankfully, the phrase "make a video" now a days does not require an actual video camera always. There are SO many easy video making resources out there that make it super easy to create meaningful videos with or without needing the use of a camera function.

To create my video for this week's assignment, I first did a little research. Honestly, not very much research at all though, I only looked into two tools before starting my video. I first did a little digging into the tool Screencast-O-Matic. It seemed pretty easy. However, I recalled back to our last class where our instructor demoed Adobe Spark for us. It seemed pretty easy and was pleasing to the eye. I recall him mentioning how it was very similar to a slides program like Power Point or Google Slides. There's something very familiar with slides programs like these, so I decided to give Adobe Spark a try. The reviews were all very helpful and painted this program as super easy to create within and super effective. The promo video, however, for Adobe Spark was not very helpful to me. It didn't give very much information on the program and was a bit "meh".

I jumped in to Adobe Spark, and was pleased at how easy it was. It was, in fact, very similar to creating within a Slides tool. Not only can you create videos within Spark, but you can also create web pages or graphics. I filtered my options by just videos, and jumped right into the first one at the top of the list, described as "popular" and labeled as "slideshow". I watched the quick video attached to it, and it seemed simple.

Creating within this tool was effortless. There was already background music attached to it. You can change the background music, but I was actually pretty happy with the music that was already on it. Adding images and text was no sweat. However, as far as text options went, there weren't a ton of customizable options as far as style, color, etc. Not a deal breaker though. Also, while you can change the positioning of the text on the screen, it doesn't always allow you to drag it exactly where you may want it, as it seems there may be some borders as to where the text is allowed to be dragged to. I also noticed that there are no drawing tools. Not a huge deal, but I would say out of all of the little "pitfalls" (text customization limitations, text positioning borders, and now no drawing tools), that the lack of drawing tools would be the biggest disappointment (although not a huge one). I appreciate how you can adjust the timing of each individual slide and how long they are presented. I could easily set slides with more text and content to be presented longer, and for those slides which may just have a simple image, I adjusted those to be presented much shorter. Slides could be rearranged and added between other slides with ease. I found myself rearranging/adding in often. While I did not end up recording any of my own audio for the final cut of my video, I did play around with it some, and and it was simple.

With it's ease of use and comforting familiarity of a slides program, I would probably rate the Adobe Spark tool a 9.5 out of 10! This is a great tool to use as a lesson, or in conjunction with a lesson. While I did not end up recording my own voice, I could see how this could be beneficial for when a teacher is not in. A substitute could play the video, and if the teacher's voice or video is attached, it could help the students in hearing that familiar voice when it is not present. My boyfriend, who is a photographer, has actually used Adobe Spark to create little promotional videos before!

So far in this class, I have stuck to a theme of my assignments and created lessons based around the water cycle. However, the instructor made it clear that we can literally make a video on anything we wanted to, just to get the hang of it. I decided to create a video about fun airplane facts and my love for airplanes. I hope you enjoy!

2nd Formative Assessment Tool

2nd Formative Assessment Tool- Google Forms

Last week for my formative assessment tool, I created within Quizizz. Since it was pretty straight forward and I ended on it feeling satisfied, I decided to try out another tool for this week's formative assessment: Google Forms. I have participated in Google forms before as a means for surveys and exit tickets, but never in the quiz arena. It was super straight forward. I almost felt guilty as to how easy and straight forward it was! I stuck with my theme of the water cycle, and even used the same questions I used for my Quizizz. I would use this as a pre and post assessment. I would have students complete it at the beginning of class to guide me to determine what direction to take my instruction in, based on the responses. I would have them take the same exact quiz again at the end of the lesson to assess their understanding and effectiveness of the lesson.

I again stuck with 10 questions. Initially while I was creating the questions, I was assigning point values and different points based on how easy/hard a question was. However, I decided that for the purpose of this being a pre/post assessment, that it was not necessary to have a point system, since this will be more for me to gauge their understanding and not give them a grade on it. For this same reason, I chose to not have a grade shown, nor have wrong/correct answers shown after a student submits the quiz. I do not want students to be fixated on a grade since this is a formative assessment for me and my instruction. 

Adding images was quite easy. However, there was one question where I wanted to add two photos, but it would only allow me to add one. I peaked in the theme options and slightly changed the theme colors. I did not want to go too crazy with colors or fonts since this is to be used as a very simple formative assessment. It certainly is not as "frilly" as my quiz in quizizz, and that is quite alright. There is a time and place for "frilly" quizzes, and this is not one! I would use this more basic format of Google forms as a pre/post quiz within the same lesson, then I would perhaps use the more exciting version of this same quiz from quizizz the following day at the start of the lesson for a little fun boost at the start of the lesson! 

The summary of responses tells me exactly what I need for this purpose. I can see a quick snapshot right at the top of frequently missed questions, and I can use this information to guide my lesson!

Click here for my Google forms quiz!

Formative Assessment Tool

Formative Assessment Tool: Quizizz

So far, I absolutely love this tool. I chose to use Quizizz to create my formative assessment because out of all of the tools that were featured in class last week, this one was the most fun. While it was being presented, I recall feeling excited and actually sitting at the edge of my seat while I was going through the quiz questions. The way that the questions are formatted is very pleasing to the eye and intriguing. The fun memes in between each question are a perfect touch. After answering each question, you could see how you ranked in real-time with other participants. All of the graphics, sounds, and even fonts are all really pleasing. 

Quizizz is a super effective tool for how I would like to deliver formative assessments. Not only can the content be delivered via a quiz, but the tool can also seamlessly take the quiz questions that were created and turn them into flash cards. To create a quiz, you can either construct your own questions/answers, or you can search for other quizzes and "teleport" any question(s) you want from quizzes that were created by others. Both methods are extremely easy. Creating within this tool is just as easy from an iPad as it is from a laptop. When I began this assignment, I started building my Quizizz assessment at home from my laptop. I did not finish it before I went to visit family for the weekend. I brought along my iPad with me so I could work on it while I was away. I was initially a little worried that it would not be as easy to create within the tool from my iPad as it was from my laptop, as sometimes things just aren't as easy from an iPad/tablet. I have run into that before, where I have started working within a tool from a laptop or computer, then went on travel and had to try to work on it from a tablet or iPad, and it wasn't as easy. With Quizizz, I found it was just as easy. I deem this as an extremely important quality, since teachers are such busy people, and always seem to be working and creating from home or on the fly. Tools need to be just as easily accessible from various types of technology!

I would absolutely rate this tool a 10/10! Creating a meaningful formative assessment was extremely easy. This actually surprised me some, as when we got to try it out in class, it seemed of such high quality and I initially thought it must have taken so much time, thought, and planning to create. It truly was so easy! You can create your own questions, or pick from so many other current and relevant quizzes to use questions from. The memes in between each question are such a fun touch, very attention-keeping! Students can use the flash card function to assess their own understanding. Students of most ages can easily use this independently, which is another plus!

Click here for the link for my Quizizz assessment!!!

Formative Assessment

Formative Assessment

My Own Recollection

Whenever I am asked to think back or compare something to when I was back in school, I always kind of sigh and think to myself "ugh, do I have to???". I'm not sure if it is just me, but I often feel like it has been centuries since I have been in school as a child. I graduated in 2001, which truly isn't that long ago, but I always feel like it was ages ago when I am asked to think back to when I was in school as a child. I mean, I can recall things such as the friends I made, when Joshua jumped off the swing in 2nd grade and broke his arm, sneaking into the middle school girls' locker room after hours and TPing it, and my Earth Science teacher who always seemed to have those gross lip crusties in the corners of his mouth. But, I always feel like I struggle with being asked to reflect back to when I was in school on things such as my personal learning strategies, teachers approaches to teaching, testing aspects that I may have found hard or easy, etc. 

I was trying to rack my brain and recall any types of formative assessment practices any of my teachers may have used, but found I was mainly coming up with nothing (maybe my retrieval skills should have been more of a focus when I was younger!). The only thing that I could find in the back of my memory that may qualify as past formative assessment for myself when I was a youngster were times where a teacher would individually conference with students. It was typically done when there wasn't much going on in the classroom, usually some assigned silent reading from the text book. The teacher would call us to her desk one at a time to ask us different questions based on the unit we were currently working on. Our answers were never graded, and I honestly do not recall any explicit follow up to these sessions. I do recall always feeling nervous and uncomfortable during these little sessions. I felt as if I was being interviewed as the teacher would write as I spoke. Never cared for these sessions. Other than that, I was still trying to dig deeper in my memory for any other hints of formative assessment. Then it dawned on me that perhaps any other forms of formative assessment I probably was involved in as a young student were built into the teaching my teachers were conducting, as to not make it feel too "official" or test-like. Formative assessment is not like summative assessment, where it is crystal clear that an assessment is occurring. Formative assessment is to be interwoven throughout entire lessons. Just like when my teachers would "interview" me and at the time I felt that was it, they probably somehow in their magical teacher ways, used my responses to tailor other instruction for me, and I didn't even realize it! So either my past teachers were reeeally good at incorporating and flowing formative assessment into my learning, or they didn't do it at all, ha!

Reflecting on this Week's Material on Formative Assessment

In the Teach Now Tuesdays article, one phrase that stuck out to me was "mastery learning". As a graduate student of elementary education, I have had other assignments, readings, tasks, etc. on formative assessment. However, this is the first time that I can recall of hearing this term, and having it really be a main point of formative assessment. What I gathered, is that the idea of mastery learning is to have a student be taught something until they have mastered, until they are actually ready to move on. This makes complete sense. I mean, we all know that formative assessment is an ongoing process during learning to make sure students are "getting it", and we know that we use formative assessment to determine if we need to reteach, tailor our teaching, spend more time on a topic, etc., but to what extent? That extent is mastery. Only once a student has mastered an area, THEN can we move them on to the next. Makes sense, as why would we move on to the next area if the previous one wasn't fully understood? It sounds ideal. However, to what extent do we want students to achieve mastery? AND, is it easy? Is it possible? Does it make sense as a whole class? I wonder if it is truly attainable. Ideally, I hope so, but what happens when a student or a few are taking way too long to master something, and all of the students are at various levels of mastery? Does it ever get to the point where many students are at various differentiated levels? How would the teacher teach that way? Maybe the students who are not reaching mastery are on/need to be on IEPs?

Another thing mentioned in this article was in relation to not giving out official gades during formative assessment. Once a "formal" grade is given on something, I feel like that's it. That's the end of that, no matter what the grade is, and it is time to move on. This article rather uses terms such as 'meeting', 'exceeding', or 'continuing toward meeting target'. I love that last term. Instead of using 'not meeting' or 'needs work', it is turned into a positive phrasing of those two.

In the Formative Assessment is Transformational article, they use the terms just-in-time learning, just-in-time data, and just-in-time feedback. I appreciate these terms, as they truly encompass what formative assessment is all about: catching problem areas just in time in order to address them to that mastery level!

In the Retrieval Practice podcast, before really reading into the transcripts of it, my mind automatically went to memorization. I do recall being in middle school, learning certain science terms. I would memorize the definitions so I was able to just mindlessly spit out the correct word. However, this podcast points out that retrieval is not automated memorization. Retrieval is to be used to recall or remember something as a learning strategy, not a a sort of measurement assessment. It is not meant to be time consuming. It can be used anytime in forms such as simple think-pair-shares, low stakes quizzes, brain dumps, or meaningful flash card usage. 

What I've Seen in Classrooms as far as Formative Assessment

This is my fifth year as an instructional assistant in elementary school. I have worked in every grade level, K-6, and have seen various types of formative assessment. One that I commonly see is exit tickets. One third grade teacher I worked with would consistently use exit ticket at the end of every lesson. Science, social studies, math, etc. These were just simple half-sheets of paper asking a few quick questions based on what was taught that day. She would go through each and every one of the responses. She would either decide if she needed to reteach something as a whole group, move on as a whole group, or have to work one-on-one or in small groups with some. It was certainly very effective. A fourth grade teacher who I worked with was always working in check lists. She had checklists for the class as a whole, as well as checklists for individual students. She was constantly using them through out her focus lessons, one-on-one work with students, while observing students as they worked independently, etc. I was always impressed at how she was able to quickly put various check marks on various students' lists while she was actively conducting lessons. These were usually very simple checklists, evaluating if students were getting main ideas or not. If they were and just needed more background information. She would even note whether a student seemed to be focused or not during the lesson without actually questioning them at the time, but would be sure to revisit with them later just to check in that they were paying attention. 

Technology and Formative Assessment

Technology is a great tool in the educational world, needless to say. In the area of formative assessment and technology, we want to ensure that students aren't just being quizzed, asked questions, being tested, etc. Students need to be formatively assessed all of the time, so that they are used to it, and/or do not even know they are being formatively assessed. Technology can make this fun, yet effective. With tech tools such as Kahoot, Pear Deck, Plickers, even Google surveys; teachers are able to seemlesly check in on students' understanding and get some really useful information on how to proceed next, individually and as a class whole.