Blogging as an exam - I deem it successful.

Each year, our Year 12 Health Education course completes a blog as an exam. The process is;

1. I provide a stimulus statement.
2. They respond to the statement.
3. They read each other's posts and challenge the arguments of their peers.
4. They choose one challenge on their post, and respond to that challenge.

Each year I am astounded by the work that they produce, and the engagement they show with the assessment process. Initially the public presentation of an assessment response causes some hesitation (and extra care) in their writing. However once we move to the phase where they can read each other's work and challenge their peers, the intellect really comes to the fore. The requirement to understand the argument of a peer and then challenge them on that argument can only occur through extensive knowledge of the concepts represented in the stimulus statement and the health theories studied throughout the course.

The stimulus statement: The development of independent thinking skills for impaired students in a supported learning environment is significantly more important than the development of self efficacy.

An excerpt of a student response (below) contains reference to a number of health theories as well as the two concepts represented in the stimulus statement.

Independent thinking skills teaches intellectually impaired students how to think rather than what to think (Institute of Education Sciences, 2014). Independent thinking skills help students create meaning, gain an understanding, and therefore enables them to make judgements, good decisions and choices about a task or an issue. Additionally in consequence it is more likely that they would be able to effectively complete the task or solve the issue. The lack of critical thinking skills utilized within the classroom greatly diminishes the students’ chance for success (Irfaner, 2006). Independent thinking skills are one of the hardest things to teach intellectually impaired students as they have deficits in learning, communication, deduction and reasoning skills, decision making and information retrieval. However the development of these independent thinking skills is important as it enables the students to apply their individual knowledge and skills to a new or old task, and therefore to progress to the next level and reach their full potential. This is important as it will enable them to think for themselves and not heavily rely on their support networks for every aspect in their lives.

And a challenge posed to this student was;

You mention that independent thinking skills are needed in order for the students to overcome possible barriers to our failures of tasks but having high self-efficacy assists in overcoming barriers. isn't it more likely that developing self-efficacy is more important than independent thinking skills initially as without it the students could view the challenge as difficulties and change their attitudes towards the task when considering their outcome expectation?

I truly believe the students could not have demonstrated this level of cognition or understanding of theory in a standard exam (single response to a stimulus). And by assessing the quality of the challenges they post as well as the response to the stimulus, then quality challenges result.

Have you tried, or would you be willing, to try a blog as an exam?

Inspired by the innovation of a teacher and some students.

Throughout this last couple of weeks I have witnessed effective use of ICTs to enable teaching and learning, and the practices utilised have immediately made their way into my own workflow.

In a recent Professional Development session, I was shown by one of our Education Access teachers how she was using the iOS app Inspiration Maps to plan and deliver outlines for student work. For each learning or assessment task, she has built a mind map that visually shows the required sections and their content. With the tap of a button, the app then produces a sequenced listing of the sections and their content which can be delivered as a PDF to all student devices. I immediately developed an outline for the research report that my year 10 Health class is undertaking and produced the PDF. I use the visual view to present the task and explain the sections. The outline view is used for their reference.

Something to be aware of - check the ordering and numbering within the outline view before producing the PDF. Changing this will not change the visual layout of the mindmap, but I noticed that in the couple I have completed the outline view is not numbered how I would like it. Changing is as simple as click and drag.

From this, some of my year 10s amazed me with how they used the outline. Up until this year, all my students have had the provided outline open in one window, their working document in another. I have always exported my outlines in PDF so that they can be viewed on any device and did not think this was a limitation in the student use of them. But two student practices this year have opened my eyes to a more effective approach.

Two students took my PDF outline and imported it into their software of choice to allow them to use it directly. One student, using an iPad, imported the outline into Pages. Another, using a school laptop (Windows) used Adobe Acrobat to import the outline into MicroSoft Word. Within two days of these students doing this, almost all other students had repeated the process.

I get inspired when I see others working in a more effective way than I have previously. I love it when students teach each other.

Kids teaching kids

A quick post to reflect on some success today.

In my classes, many of the resources are built "on the fly." This occurs because I like to get the students involved and have them up on whiteboards or using computers connected to the projector. Its my attempt to have them involved in the construction of new knowledge, but also serves to share their knowledge creation and break down fear of being incorrect.

This year in my 10 Health class, I have an exchange student from Japan who speaks very little English. This type of learning hs not been effective for him. Some of the resources built in class I have modified for his benefit, but up until today I was aware I was doing an inadequate job.

So to get around it, the class figured out if one of them used my laptop and Google translate, they could create resources for the Japanese student on the fly also. The smile on his face told us all this was a winner. And in one action, they had addressed a disadvantage. The smile on my face is still here hours later.

Well done class.