Rethinking assessment approaches and methods | The Manila Bulletin Newspaper Online

Rethinking assessment approaches and methods | The Manila Bulletin Newspaper Online
Reblogged from Manila Bulletin online - http://networkedblogs.com/sASh5

Rethinking assessment approaches and methods

Breakthrough Education

By HENRY S. TENEDERO

January 12, 2012, 3:49am

MANILA, Philippines — Assessment is the way we measure or test learning. It is here where our framework finds or must find effective integration into the classroom environment.

We must recognize and implement assessment not just as a tool to test learning, but also as a tool to reinforce it.

Assessment Paradigms

Old thinking #1: I teach, participants perform, I assess: This follows the Behaviorist theories that participants are subjects. Identify, demand and measure all the desired outcomes. Reward the desired and punish the undesired.

Wave of Change #1: I’m a catalyst for learning and self-assessment: This approach asks, “How does the human brain naturally, intrinsically, learn best and what can we do to encourage more of its best learning?”

Old Thinking #2: Some people make a difference, some don’t: Let’s invest more in those that matter.

Wave of Change #2: Either none of us make a difference or all of us make a difference. Therefore, I do make a difference.

Old Thinking #3: Laying blame: “I’m a victim of circumstances beyond my control.”

Wave of Change #3: I can’t control everything but I can control my responses to everything.

Old Thinking #4: Trainer presents his/her view of the training as the truth: Participants are expected to conform to their model.

Wave of Change #4: You ask them, “What is your model? How do you think… and why? I’ll enter your world so we can talk to each other.

Old Thinking #5: Avoid mistakes: They’re bad. Mark participants down for failure.

Wave of Change #5: Mistakes are feedback and an opportunity to grow… We can use them positively and learn from them.

Old Thinking #6: Some are going to fail no matter what is done. It’s just the way it is.

Wave of Change #6: Instill success attitudes. Increase your own flexibility and your success rate will soar.

Old Thinking #7: Let’s test participants to find out if they are gifted or not.

Wave of Change #7: Let’s bring out the giftedness in every learner we can.

Old Thinking #8: Label students based on classroom performances.

Wave of Change #8: Treat negative class behaviors as temporary and every participant as unlimited.

Old Thinking #9: The trainer as “the boss, the star, the autocrat of the training room.”

Wave of Change #9: Your participants as proactive, responsible, starts in the training.

Old Thinking #10: Fill up the participants with knowledge like a container.

Training is a safe, easy, low risk secure profession.

Wave of Change #10: Be a catalyst so learners can learn how to gain skills and knowledge.

Successful training requires constant personal growth and professional risk-taking. Happy new year to all our readers!

Developing collaborative skills among students today

There are many internet tools and technologies that can support collaboration among young people nowadays. But in a developing country like the Philippines, the use of these internet (or web tools) is still a big challenge especially in the countryside. Access to the web oftentimes is limited to the laboratories of the schools or colleges. To require students to perform online activities or interaction to enhance engagement skills is costly. To see our students become strong team players and learn to collaborate is the desire of the thriving and dedicated teachers. So what can our teachers do? How can they prepare our students, with limited ICT resources, limited internet access employ and perform strategies to enable our students become globally ready?

Here are some "collaborative" exercises and activities that can be horizontally integrated between the technology class and the major subjects.

1. A class video. In a session, ask the students to write on a bond paper an adjective or phrase that would describe their town or their school or their country. The teacher can set up the digital video camera on a tripod. Then the students will show their papers one by one, including a short opinion of what they wrote.

2. Interview of a tourist. Pair students or form small groups. Ask them to find a tourist and get their opinion of the town and the impression about the people and their ways. Use a template of questions for uniformity. Then the students can ask if they can have a photo with the tourist using the phone camera. This is the proof they have conducted an interview. Instruct students to extend courtesy and thank the tourist as well.

3. Here's another example of a fun collaboration, the frozen mob. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo The students can do a simulation of this activity in the plaza or townhall.

4. Storytelling in a blog or comics form. Form small groups. Each group can have a theme for their stories-- tragic, tales or legends, horror, mystery etc. Each one writes a story and the group decides to link each story. It can become a hyopernarrative, a series of stories with no beginning or end. It can be expressed in text or drawing form. Permit the students to create their stories using the local dialect.


Photo from some students doing an outreach teaching activity in a mission school.

5. A wiki portfolio of reflections. Upon reading a story or a novel, or upon watching a film, ask the students to create a wikipage and put their reflections. Here are some nice examples, reactions after an outbound trip.
a. http://isoyou.wikispaces.com/
b. http://siberiantigers.wikispaces.com/FIELD+TRIP+REFLECTION



It's kind of interesting to learn student reactions especially on collaborative activities. It's quite different from the individual work. Students become more conscious of the quality of their work, more interested to know the contribution of their classmate or teammate and the energy becomes very high among all the groups.

New Courses I Plan to Design

With the De La Salle University celebrating its centennial year, it is very timely that I want to create these new courses to be offered to our college students. This is the century of technology and social systems convergence, the rise of the superusers and the milleneal learners. So there is the great need to prepare our students. But of course it also meant preparing our teachers and facilitators of the courses as well as strong focus on the throughput of the course design.

Here are my initial thoughts and I hope to get some feedback as well.

DIGITAL CULTURES IN DIGITAL SETTINGS (free elective)

In the advent of massive creation of content, socialization of spaces, drive for high interoperable information and communication and the readwrite web, many transformations are also happening in our everyday practices of technologies. The web that we had been accustomed have also created a metamorphosis of subcultures we have not imagined like the subcultures of speed, subcultures of conversations, subcultures of screens, subcultures of non-privacy or even subcultures of copyleft.

The course in Digital Cultures is very fresh, an offshoot of the strong immersion of people in the use of the web technology and the demands of urban setting lifestyle. The course explores the new ecosystem of digital cultures, the various facets, the roots and impact of these subcultures to our everyday lives.

methodologies: collaborative web-based project, blogging, online engagements

NETWORK SOCIETY, ICT AND THE NEW MEDIA (professional elective)

The course views the present societies evolving in an era of networks, technologies and many dependencies on each other. There is also a great demand for the generation of information and knowledge that may leverage the power level in societies.

In an era when the ‘internet access’ becomes a human right, technologies play a key role for societies to be able to govern, participate, mediate or even deliver goods and services to its constituents. Technologies are also seen to provide capacities to societies to synergize in the global networked environment.

The course also includes the role of the new media as a technology in empowering citizens to participate responsibly or irresponsibly.

methodologies: seminars, joint paper research and writing (and maybe a field trip to Shanghai, Seoul or Taipei--these cities are highly connected cities)

INTERCULTURALISM & SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (free elective)

This course provides a long strand of global perspectives on interculturalism. It intends to broaden the view of Filipino university students on the many benefits that can be gained on the cross-exchange of knowledge and practices brought about by interculturalism. It also entails uncovering the many barriers and issues in carrying out these ideas.

The course also explores the power of technology to mediate, enhance, empower or even engage small and big communities from different geographical locations to grow and learn from one another.

methodologies: field trip with ‘play’ workshop, online interactions, some plenary lectures, may also have a visiting lecturer

*The course is an adaptation of Ase Bjurstrom’s course in Sweden.

ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT (professional elective)

The course provides exposure on the non-mainstream use of social media with emphasis on the area of emergency management. It looks into various types and categories of emergencies, how social media and other related ICT tools can support the prevention, monitoring, reporting, escalating and mapping of the different emergency incidents.

The course also looks into existing case studies and the students are encouraged to create their own model of emergency reporting with the use of social media and web tools.

methodologies: study of past emergency cases, creation of emergency reporting model and mashed-up of web tools

Details will soon to follow.

What is TWITTER for me

Selected Poems from Mervyn Peake

It was last year when a colleague shared with me the poems of Mervyn Peake. I'm no poet and understands little of the richness of this marvelous letters. But I had the opportunity to be fascinated by two poems written by this great man. The poems have not only touched my soul but has mimic my spirit.


TO LIVE IS MIRACLE ENOUGH

To live at all is miracle enough.
The doom of nations is another thing.
Here in my hammering blood-pulse is my proof.

Let every painter paint and poet sing
And all the sons of music ply their trade;
Machines are weaker than a beetle’s wing.

Swung out of sunlight into cosmic shade,
Come what come may the imagination’s heart
Is constellation high and can’t be weighed.

Nor greed nor fear can tear our faith apart
When every heart-beat hammers out the proof
That life itself is miracle enough.


OUT OF THE CHAOS OF MY DOUBT

Out of the chaos of my doubt
And the chaos of my art
I turn to you inevitably
As the needle to the pole
Turns . . . as the cold brain to the soul
Turns in its uncertainty;



So I turn and long for you;
So I long for you, and turn
To the love that through my chaos
Burns a truth,
And lights my path.

RPG METANOIA by Luis Suarez-- A Review

MY PERSONAL REVIEW

The story moved smoothly in a very creative, realistic, localized Filipino-inspired life. The boy Nico, spending his summer, finds the computer and the Metanoia game as his comfort zone typical of most kids nowadays. His dad works in Dubai, and constantly communicates with them online with a webcam, likewise a typical scenario in most Pinoy households. His mom trains him of household chores and eagerly pushes him to experience a good summer playing apart from his computer.

The story successfully sent a subliminal message of the joy of playing games outside the house with good friends or in our local dialect we call it "barkada". It is a very positive message to parents now. Children should be able to realize that there is good life other than the comforts of the computer or the tech gadgets they always hold on, the PSP, the DS lite or the iPhone. Being hurt is part of the learning process.

RPG Metanoia beautifully showed the traditional games, most of us Pinoy adults now, had enjoyed in our younger days building strong, very positive memories--the "patintero", the "taguan", the "piko", the "tumbang preso", the "sipa", and the "chatu". While all these games are new to the boy Nico, Nico would process the game mechanics in his mind like a "computer game", which is in fact how young boys would imagine it.

RPG Metanoia exhibited an animated version of a Pinoy-inspired game environment, an example of which is the concept of the pueblo or the town during Spanish time in the Phils. Better, the mix interplay of contemporary game environments of different cultures; the use of gamers' lingo; and the fusion of the game theory and the metaphors that go along with the game proved that RPG Metanoia has been well planned, went deep thought, and a result of a consolidated creative effort. Best, it carries an authentic, positive Filipino branding!


There is a big difference when you talk about a movie and a film. A movie is there to entertain through a story and make the time pass away. A film is different. A film does not just tell a story, it sends a strong message. A film is a mirror of a nation or some people in that nation. A film is also a representation of what is happening in the country. And RPG Metanoia is telling us "we are here now", "we are capable to do this", and "this is our message to our people". RPG Metanoia showed we can now do not just movies but animated films!

I have been waiting for a long time for a Filipino cartoon film like this. It is about time that we have a full-length computer graphics animated film.
Kudos to Director Luis Suarez and the whole production team!!

RPG Metanoia 3D Movie Plot Summary/Synopsis
*Reposted from : http://www.movienews.me/2010/07/rpg-metanoia-3d-movie-trailer-plot.html

The RPG Metanoia 3D movie story revolves around an avid online game named Nico who as an eleven year old boy lives a normal child's life. But when he is playing the MMORPG (Massively Multi-players Online Role Playing Game) called Metanoia, he is an unpredictable vagabond armed with a magic yoyo and with uncanny speed and agility in his skill set.

Nico got low self-esteem and is only getting his guts from playing Metanoia. That is why when he and his friends where faced with an adversity from the local boys, he felt his world shattered. But they found a saving grace from a new friend which inspired them to continue their online endeavor.

However, the Metanoia network was infected with a virus affecting the whole internet, most computers and the minds of gamers all over the world. It's up to Nico, his friends and the other remaining Metanoia players to stop the virus from taking control of the online and offline world. But to do that, Nico must muster his courage, and discover the true hero he really is.

Movie Information - http://www.movienews.me/2010/07/rpg-metanoia-3d-movie-trailer-plot.html posted by Richie

Travelling and Learning

I had a fast two long days with my high school friends. This is our third day in Bangkok. It is also the first time for our two companions to go out of the country. We already had a lot of sightseeing and some shopping, and a close encounter with some authentic street food, chili food, very nice hot noodles with basil and others.

Each of my opportunity to travel is a blessing for me. It meant a lot in many ways. It is a personal time as well. Best of all, it is a learning time.

I believe travelling should also be part of teacher training development. It should be part of the government agenda to enhance our teachers. Travelling has so many lessons to teach that you don't learn inside the confines of the campus. The greatest thing, for me, about travelling is not to see other places but to get to know other people, through their dishes, through their practices and traditions, partly through the changes in their lives exhibited by the infrastructure and developments, and of course interacting with them. Here are some things that are so real, it is experience that can only teach these things.

Knowing the people through the cuisine. By tasting, enjoying the local dishes, you get to understand many things--how they prepare or cook the food, what spices and local greens and meat are preferred, types of fruits present in the place, what time they usually eat and how they eat and what desserts interest them.

Historical and modern infrastructure. While some of these could be read in books or magazines, visiting historical palaces, temples or even the modern museums tell much of how a nation value its long history and how they impart these to the new generation.

Respect for others' culture and traditions. It is also important that more than the chance to shop and get souvenirs, any opportunity to observe and immerse with a cultural tradition should be embraced (even in the short time of stay). One example yesterday, I had the beautiful chance of observing local folks making offering to the monks in a very big plaza. The people offered small pockets of rice, noodles, flowers and other stuff. As the monks moved around, the people also extended great reverence to them. It was a beautiful sight. The people are giving something, supporting the monks with great faith, and are also in communion, in prayer with them. I actually joined the offering. I respectfully asked a Thai woman if I could also give my donation. She acknowledged it and was grateful. She also handed to me more pockets of rice to give to the monks. I was glad to be part of it. It also gave me a chance to pray and be thankful of this chance.

Interaction with the local folks. Having a good chat with the local folks may be of limited occasion for the travelling teacher. But the teacher should take initiative to converse and know the people, not by name, but by what they are. Talk to the taxi driver, the hotel receptionist, the concierge, the cashier in the local store, the policeman, the tour guide, or even to a student. These are brief moments. But if you sum up these brief moments, these also tell about the people in the local neighborhood. These are things you don't just readily pick up from the book.

The local Thais commonly speak their local language, very spiritual and will always try to help and give directions to a lost tourist.

And so I reiterate, that travelling should be part of the teacher training program of our government. It opens up the horizon of how we view things. And the items I mentioned are just on the soft skills. The training on planning and organization are separate items to be discusses as results too, of travelling.