Teaching+with+Technology+Week+5+Update

The overall theme for this week is effort. Without it, success will always be a struggle to achieve. As stated in //Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works,// "The instructional strategy of reinforcing effort enhances students' understanding of the relationship between effort and achievement by addressing their attitudes and beliefs about learning." Technology can be an asset here by creating a rubric for class effort and then a spreadsheet to chow the relationship between effort and academic success. Consistently building this bridge helps students grasp the effect effort has on learning. The book //Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools// provided information and examples of ways to authentically assess students with different Web 2.0 resources. My favorites included having students listen to a podcast and write about a topic from the poscast (great for ELA standards), recording the clothes people wear around the world with a webcam and analyzing the country's culture with a graph of the clothing (great for Math and Social Studies standards), and having students add to a class wiki about streamlife where the teacher can assess contributions (great for Science standards). The possibilities are endless! I also believe that the inclusion of this type of assessment would boost the effort put in by students because they can contribute with their own strengths. The result can be win-win for teachers and students. The interviews included this week from [|www.edutopia.org] also related to the importance of effort by showing that technology tools like video games are merely problem solving tests where failure at a game task motivates the player to try to again be successful. The information needed to complete each task is provided in a "just in time" format rather than a "just in case" approach we often use in school. As beneficial as this tool can be, it is not likely that we will be playing video games in school any time soon. However, this concept of an activity/assessment where the student is not afraid to take risks in completing tasks/tests needs to be looked into and developed so our students can be successful and then motivated to work harder for the next task to complete.

Attitude + Effort = Success