My first experience with this "thing" was making a rubric on Rubistar. I found a template amongst the many that were offered and I only had to make a few minor changes to it. Having tried to make rubrics in the past for curriculum work, I was never able to do one that looked professional. All that has changed now that I've learned about Rubistar. Here's a screenshot of my rubric:
It is a rubric to evaluate the independent reading behaviors of third grade students during the Daily Five. We had one in place already, but I like the looks and the function of this one far better. It evaluates the students' ability to choose "good fit" books, time on task during the reading choice time, evaluates understanding of characters, and the ability to retell. I will be adding this to our third grade assessments.
The next part of this "thing" was to create an online educational survey/quiz using Google forms.
I chose to use it as a formative assessment tool to determine what my students already know about pluralization. Here is a screenshot of the response in spreadsheet form. It also can be viewed in pie chart form.
I think this will be an invaluable tool for me to use in both summative and formative assessments. It can drive instruction as a pretest, act as guidelines for each student to determine what they still need to work on, and finally prove that the required learning has taken place. A great tool, no matter how I look at it!
Finally, the third part of this assignment asked us to think about the data tools available in our school districts and to reflect on the importance of FERPA/HIPAA. We have just received a very preliminary look at IGOR in my building and it seemed completely overwhelming to me at this point, as the presentation was quick, filled with way too much information and allowed us no real chance to get in there and play with it. It did, however look like a rich source of data compiled in a lot of different ways--from a lot of different sources. It looked like we can produce a report by student, class, school, or district. I think I can also sort by demographics too. I can do gap analysis on the MEAP questions and see what areas need to be covered more adequately in the curriculum. As in any form of assessment, the data we mine should drive our instruction or it is just an exercise in busy work. I am a little intimidated by all the data tools out there and am looking forward to increasing my comfort and knowledge of how to adequately use them. I know what to do with the data once I get it, but am not yet used to actually using the data tools out there. With the increased use of data mining, the need to understand and abide by the FERPA/HIPAA regulations becomes even more important to guard the privacy of each of our students. I took the pretest and was apalled at my lack of knowledge --I scored only 11/21! So, I went to the answers and reviewed all my incorrect answers. I don't recall ever having been given training in either FERPA or HIPAA. I wonder why that is? In the data mining age in which we live, I would think knowing the rules of privacy would be stressed a little harder.
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