Assistive Technologies

These three screen shots are of different assistive technologies that are available through the control panel on my computer. The first screen shot is of the on-screen keyboard. This allows people that have motor skill problems and have problems with typing to type on the keyboard that appears on the screen. The second screen shot is of the Microsoft Narrator. The narrator is useful for students that are blind or just have trouble seeing the screen even with glasses or contacts. The narrator will read the text to them that is on the screen. The last screenshot is of the magnifier. This is helpful as well for students that have trouble seeing the computer screen even with glasses or contacts. It magnifies the
spot that they are typing at. If they are not typing, it magnifies the spot that the pointer is at. It makes it much easier to see what is on the screen since it is a close-up version of the screen. Microsoft Ease of Access is very helpful for students or individuals with special needs. There are even more features to help out more needs than just the three that I showed on this blog post. The features can prove to very beneficial for students with special needs to move at t he same pace as the students without special needs.

Summative Assessments

I also recently learned what a summative assessment is. A summative assessment is one that provides a review or assessment that provides a means toward a grade or judgement. This is very different from the formative assessments. Your job with this type of assessment is to be able to give a letter grade to the student by the end of the assessment. Types of things to help you with these assessments would be rubrics and answer keys. This one does help out the formative assessment though. The grades that are based off of a summative assessment allows for progress to be shown so that a formative assessment can even be made. Summative assessments are very important because it allows the students to know how well they are doing, what they need to work on, what they are retaining, and where they stand in the classes grading system. This also allows for a final grade or a completion at the end of term to be shown for the student with a means to support what is shown on their report card. Ways summative assessments can be shown is by using an Excel worksheet, Word Documents, or even Google Docs using their worksheets/spreadsheets in order to create a rubric for a project or large assignment that the students are supposed to complete. Another way is to use Microsoft Word or Google Docs to create an answer key for any tests, quizzes, or assignments. Also any one of these could be used as well to make a rubric or grading sheet for the student's participation in the class throughout the term. An important thing to remember is that you are trying to grade them and give them judgements on their completed work instead of just insight and feedback. You need to let them know exactly how well they did. As long as this is done courteously, professionally, and individually, this can be very beneficial for the students.

Formative Assessments

I recently learned what a formative assessment is. A formative assessment is to provide feedback for students on their progress without assessing a grade to it. It provides students feedback on their progress in their learning, understanding, skills, and attitudes. This assessment is not just for the students though. This is also a chance for the teacher to learn about how well their teaching methods are working. It helps the teacher look at what has been learned, how well it was learned, and if anything else needs to be retouched upon. There are many ways that this could be handled, but one important idea is that this is meant to provide feedback and guidance instead of judgement and grades. A formative assessment is beneficial in the fact that it allows students and teachers learn where progress has been made and what progress still needs to be made. Technology tools can be used to do complete this assessment. Email could be used to discuss the progress and assessment between teachers and students. Another way is to use Google Docs to create an anonymous survey so that students can fill it out about your teaching methods, and you could create a document or survey that allows you to tell each student individually about their progress and assessment. One last thought is to create an Excel worksheet that gives an encouragement in certain areas and have it filled out anonymously by each student for your assessment as a teacher and you fill one out for each student. The only problem is that the last one can be accidently seen as a grade like scale which is not the goal of the assessment. The most important thing to remember is this is about feedback instead of judgement and grades. As long as that is done in a professional manner, it can be very beneficial to the students, the teacher, and the class as a whole.