What Value is there in Portfolio Assessment?

I think portfolio assessment is one of the most underused and valuable tools for assessment in education. Yes I agree that you must test students basic knowledge for various concepts and skills, but taking one test at one point in time does not measure the true ability of a student. Being a Special Education major, we talk about the use of portfolio assessment for students with disabilities. I think there is much more room for creativity when using portfolios and they can be valuable to assess the multiple and various skills that a student possesses; not just how well they can cram, memorize, and spew information back to you in question and answer form.

If you think about Bloom's taxonomy, the ability to create is one of the highest levels, falling in the synthesis category (2nd highest). What better way to assess what a student has learned than by asking them to create something. The biggest issue that I can see with portfolio assessment as a part of a graduation requirement is the ability to be consistent with evaluation techniques. There would need to be a very detailed and clear rubric created for the assessment along with strict guidelines that teachers/evaluation teams must adhere to.

What was it like to critique myself?

Critiquing oneself is always awkward. At first I focus on how my voice does not sound the same. I have watched myself on video before, but never with a critical eye. I think that it helps to improve our public speaking abilities when you take a critical look at yourself. It was helpful for myself to see that I may not project my voice as loud as it seems. Here is my official critique:

"Watching yourself in video is always interesting. For some people I know it can be difficult and awkward. It was not too awkward for me because I have done this many times throughout my career before coming back to school for education. After watching myself in the past I would always try to think about what I could have done or said better, but until now I have never really had the time to sit down and reflect on these things in writing.

As usual, I talk a lot with my hands. This has always been something that I do. I don’t feel it is a big distraction, but I was a little annoyed that I kept placing my hand on my belly. I guess as I have a nice shelf due to my status of being seven plus months pregnant, I do this more than not while talking. I was also a little disappointed in my posture. I think I need to improve upon that to have a more confident look in the classroom. It might actually make me look a little taller.

I think I have a pretty nice speaking voice and am pretty comfortable speaking in front of people. I did feel that I could have projected a little more throughout the room, as I tended to talk toward the screen throughout most of this lesson. This may not have allowed my voice to carry to my right, or the audience’s left. Next time I might try moving to the other side of the screen more frequently."

Video Editing

Video editing to me before taking this class was a very long, boring, and complicated project. I used to be in the business world and had an office next to two video editors. The language and "tech-speak" they used was very foreign to me. It seemed like a long process as they were always "rendering" which would take hours for them. Granted they were professionals who worked for companies like P&G and the like. After learning the software from class, it seemed like a not-so-daunting task. I think it's pretty cool that a 34-year-old grad student and working mother can even learn and enjoy video editing. Who care's what they say about old dogs and new tricks! If I can prove them wrong, anyone can.

How did I incorporate technology into my lesson?

In my lesson, I decided to use the old tried and true PowerPoint to present the content. While learning the other presentation software has been helpful and I really like them better, I needed to use PP because I am testing out a new technology with text messaging which required the PP program. The new technology is called polleverywhere.com. It is a cool tool and was very applicable to the subject of Math which I chose for my mini-lesson. More to come on polleverywhere.com during my lesson in class tonight...