CEDO 550 Entry Four

Blogging is a formative assessment tool that could be valuable in online learning. It is a way for students to quickly demonstrate understanding of a learning objective while also providing easy monitoring and feedback for the teacher. It allows students to create a personalized learning experience and better connect to their learning which are fringe benefits to the formative assessment experience.

• Student Responds: Student posts answering a question or reflecting on a topic taught during a lesson or activity.
• Monitor the Response: Using an RSS Reader teacher will be able to efficiently monitor student blog entries.
• Diagnose the Response: Teacher will informally determine student understanding in relation to the specific learning targets in order to decide what action should be taken.
• Share Feedback Based on the Diagnosis: Teacher will provide comments on student blogs relating their response to the learning target. Feedback will fill gaps in student understanding and if necessary will provide links or ways for student to receive additional instruction or intervention. Teacher may need to intervene more intensively if student shows minimal understanding of objectives.
• Student Uses Feedback to Learn: The feedback, additional instruction, and/or intervention should help fill in gaps in learning allowing the student to perform better on the summative assessment.
• Report Growth and Celebrate: Teacher and student will be rewarded with high achievement on summative assessment.