Authentic Assessment
‘Today’s digital kids think of information and communications technology (ICT) as something akin to oxygen: They expect it, it’s what they breathe, and it’s how they live; They use ICT to meet, play, date, and learn; It’s an integral part of their social life; It’s how they acknowledge each other and form their personal identities’ (John Seely-Brown, 2004).
Digital Storytelling
Everyone has a story to tell…
Using digital storytelling as a cross-curricular or multidisciplinary authentic assessment task could be a rich and engaging way to implement the conceptual model of programming. In producing digital stories, students from K-12 have access to a plethora of images, sounds and film clips to create rich stories or factual texts for any KLA.
The digital story should have a strict word limit such as 250 —300 words, a restricted number of images or photographs and can incorporate voiceover using an MP3 player with voice recording or a microphone, music, video clips and text. The students can create their digital stories in Power Point, Moviemaker, iMovie, Word, and Publisher and their stories could be: diary or journal entries, personal reflections, micro stories, sonnets, prose poetry, a short film, a documentary, a travel diary, a persuasive text, factual pieces, etc. The digital story can be used to present alternative endings, hybrid genres and faction. This can be achieved through hyper linking. In a factual piece, the students could include links to facts, statistics, images, documents, graphs, number lines, scientific facts, etc.
The project could be structured with an overarching concept such as ‘Narrative’ or ‘Identity’ or ‘Perspectives’ ‘Craft’ and then the content of each KLA could be represented through key concepts that reflect the overarching concept or selected KLAs could be focused on the same key concept such as:
a. ‘Perspectives’: In English – multicultural perspectives through texts; in LOTE - a travel diary or a cultural food fest story or a migrant’s perspective of Australia; in Science and Science & Technology - a scientist’s perspective of a new technology and the consequences for other countries; in Visual Arts – art from different cultures, etc.
b. ‘Narrative’: In HSIE students could interview an elder or a community member and scan their original photos to tell their story. They could create a diary entry by a soldier at Gallipoli and add footage from YouTube or Australian Screen such as an interview with Hazlitt as well as a song such as ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’; in English students could focus on the conventions and features of effective narratives and experience extracts from a range of biographies and auto-biographies; in Science or Science & Technology students could tell the personal story of a scientist or a famous designer – they could even download a podcast fromhttp://www.mos.org/educators/student_resources/podcasts that features weekly interviews with scientists and researchers and a collection of podcasts on the most current developments in science and technology; in Mathematics students could develop an imaginative piece based on probability, etc.
Steps
1. Students respond to the task and brainstorm possible approaches, and ensure that their digital story reflects the expectations of the task and the overarching concept.
2. Students create a storyboard or plan layout - Celtx, http://celtx.com/ - Easy download: Create and make storyboards, film and drama scripts, character profiles, budget for a film, etc – a brilliant site!
3. A bank of images, graphics, scanned photographs, podcasts, audio clips, music, video clips, etc are downloaded to a common folder.
4. Students use a program to create digital story.
Resources
§ http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/audiovideo/sites/about/pages/howto.shtml – an interesting site where students can view interesting digital stories and learn how to create them\
§ Digitales, http://www.digi-tales.org/ - more digital stories!
§ Digitales, http://www.ice.org.au/projects/digitales/ (Sydney – multicultural stories)
§ Changing Lives, http://www.changinglives.com.au/2008/04/abrar-autumn-and-i.html - digital stories by seven young Iraqi women living in Western Sydney
§ ACMI Digital Stories, http://www.acmi.net.au/digital_stories.htm
§ Photobus, http://www.photobus.co.uk/index.php?id=2&gallery=polyfoto.flv - some interesting digital tales and links to other good sites
§ The Elements of Digital Storytelling University of Minnesota, http://www.inms.umn.edu/elements/
§ The Educational Uses of Digital Storyboarding, http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/storyboarding.html
§ Art, Education, Storytelling and technology, http://www.jasonohler.com/storytelling/
Slow-motion
Slow-motion could be used for an integrated assessment task as it is a simple and easy way for students to write and create short films. The careful staging of each shot invites the student to consider composition, framing, lighting and content. Students use a digital camera to take a series of staged shots. Clay or plastic figures could be placed gradually in different poses and subtle changes made to the background as each shot is taken. The shots are then downloaded into a program such as Moviemaker 2 or iMovie and edited at a faster speed. Music, sounds and/or voiceover and text are added.
As with digital storytelling an overarching concept such as ‘Sustainability’, ‘Relationships’, ‘Identity’, ‘Perspectives’ or ‘Persuasion’ could be the driver.
Audio Tales: Recordings – MP3, Pod Casts, Mobile Phones…
An audio tale is another effective authentic assessment that can be used to reflect an overarching concept with students using an MP3 or a mobile phone or a recording straight to the computer. The concepts could be:
1. Innovation: Students could record their response to a famous event as if they are a reporter present at the time. E.g. The splitting of the atom, the invention of the telephone, man walking on the moon, etc.
2. Others’ Perspectives: Students can employ different voices and/or sound effects to add flavour and colour to the tale or represent different perspectives of an event or situation such as global warming.
Audacity or Garage Band (Mac) – a free download - can be used to construct an audio tale.
Resource:
§ http://radio.about.com/od/podcastin1/a/aa030805a.htm - Step by step guide to creating a podcast
Inquiry-based Research
Of we want our students to use higher-order thinking skills, learn to synthesise information and access problematic knowledge then they could be involved in inquiry-based or problem-solving research tasks that is guided by an overarching concept. The students pose a research question shaped by the concept and then find the answer through their own research and what they learn in class.
The research question should not be straightforward; rather it should be open-ended and contentious so that it invites debate and argument. It should encourage lively inquiry and research and uncover the subject’s controversies, puzzles and different perspectives. Students should avoid the "What is" questions such as "What is biodiversity." While these are important questions, they encourage students to copy and paste from the net instead of questioning ideas or formulating a plan of action.
Resources:
§ Inquiry-based learning, http://www.youthlearn.org/learning/approach/inquiry.asp
§ Problem based learning resources, http://www.techforlearning.org./PBLresources.html
§ Inquiry Activities, http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/activities/index.html
§ Using the Internet to promote Inquiry based learning, http://www.biopoint.com/inquiry/ibr.html
Project-based Learning
A systematic teaching method that engages students in learning essential knowledge and life-enhancing skills through an extended, student-influenced inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks. Students investigate a problem and apply it to a real-life situation using technology. They pose challenging questions or problems. The students engage in design, problem solving, decision making, and investigative activities. It allows students to work in groups or by themselves and allows them to come up with ideas and realistic solutions or presentations.
Project-based learning (PBL) provides complex tasks based on challenging questions or problems that involve the students' problem solving, decision making, investigative skills, and reflection that include teacher facilitation, but not direction. PBL is focused on questions that drive students to encounter the central concepts and principles of a subject hands-on.
With PBL students learn from these experiences and take them into account and apply them to their lives in the real world. The students have to think in original ways to come up with the solutions to these real world problems. It helps with their creative thinking skills by showing that there are many ways to solve a problem.
If the project does not remain on task and content driven the student will not be successful in learning the material.
Teachers must create a classroom environment which stresses learning and exploration over correct answers, grades, and competition with others.
Features
§ A well-designed project provokes students to encounter (and struggle with) the central concepts and principles of a discipline.
§ Emphasises learning activities that are long-term (3 weeks or more), interdisciplinary and student-centered.
§ Allows in-depth investigation fostering deep knowledge and understanding.
§ Students collaborate, working together to make sense of what is going on and taking responsibility for their own learning.
§ The student’s role is to ask questions, build knowledge, and determine a real-world solution to the issue/question presented.
§ May include jigsaw learning. Learners working in groups are given a specific piece of a problem to work on. They become experts in that part of the problem. Other groups are working on other parts of the puzzle and becoming experts themselves. Finally groups collaborate to provide a 'total view and solution'.
§ The teacher must regulate student success with intermittent, transitional goals to ensure student projects remain focused and students have a deep understanding of the concepts being investigated. It is important for teachers not to provide the students with any answers because it defeats the learning and investigating process.
§ An atmosphere of shared responsibility with the teacher as facilitator is essential.
§ A probing open-ended question or issue that is rich, real and relevant to the students’ lives is the first step. Students have to find answers to questions and combine them using critically thinking skills to come up with answers.
§ Real world use of technology - students is expected to use technology in meaningful ways to help them investigate, collaborate, analyze, synthesise and present their learning.
§ Student voice must be heard!
§ Multi-disciplinary
§ Outcomes-based, with an artifact, presentation, or action as a result of the inquiry.
§ Constructive feedback by teacher and peers.
Questions
1. Significance: Why is it important?
2. Perspective: What is the point of view?
3. Evidence: How do you know?
4. Connection: How does it apply?
5. Supposition: What if it were different?
Steps
1. Define: Projects start with sound instructional goals, a specific timeline, an audience identified and the formulation of an engaging question or problem
2. Plan: project broken down into meaningful chunks and stages.
3. Do: Investigate, test, design and produce. More questions are introduced to guide the investigation. Students reexamine the problem (collectively) in light of what they have discovered during their research. During this discussion, students supply information for the following categories:
a. Data: students write down what they already know about the problem
b. Ideas: students list possible solutions to the problem
c. Learning Issues: students examine what deficiencies they have in their learning (what do they know? what do they still need to find out?)
4. Action: students make suggestions as to how they might proceed.
5. Review: The project ends with evaluation, reflection and supposition.
6. Abstraction: Students regroup to place the problem within the context of similar problems that they have encountered in the course of their study. Students attempt to link the problem with similar ones, attempting to find similarities, differences, and ways that knowledge of the old problem might help to solve the new one.
Technology
"Technology can extend and enhance what students are able to produce, whether the task at hand is writing a report or graphing dates. The selection and manipulation of appropriate tools for such purposes also appears to stimulate problem solving, and other thinking skills" (Means and Ohlsen, 1994).
· Enhances student interest by exposing students to sources of information that they deem as more "authentic"
· Opens the classroom up to previously unreachable types of up-to-date information
· Allows students to present their findings in a number of different ways
· Provides fast and effective ways of diagnosing and correcting errors
· Helps to manage the production of complex projects and artifacts.
Advantages
§ Encourages students to become independent workers, creative and critical thinkers, and lifelong learners.
§ Facilitates social responsibility.
§ Students participate in activities that force them to learn relevant concepts and ideas in a meaningful manner.
§ It is cumulative - all new skills, information, and concepts build upon the foundation of what the student already knows.
§ It is goal-oriented - students are generally more successful when they are cognizant of the goal towards which they are working.
§ It is diagnostic - students further the learning process by engaging in frequent self-evaluation and self-monitoring; such practices aid the students' comprehension and help to ensure that they are continue actively to pursue their goals.
§ It is reflective.
Links
http://www.genyes.org/ - a highly successful PBL program
http://www.projectfoundry.org/pblHQ.html
http://www.thinkquest.org/en/projects/index.html
http://www.edutopia.org/tech-integration
http://pbl-online.org/
http://www.novelapproachpbl.com/21stCenturySkills.htm
http://www.2learn.ca/Projects/Together/KWORDS/projecta.html
http://www.bobpearlman.org/BestPractices/ProjectWorkSingapore.htm
http://pblmm.k12.ca.us/
Google Docs, https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&nui=1&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F&followup=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F<mpl=homepage&rm=false – share ideas and documents
Karen Yager – Knox Grammar School