Guided Response: Respond to at least two classmates’ posts. Compare your impressions of TEDEd and the “Be Sure To” strategy. How did your perceptions differ? What new ideas might you have got

 Guided Response: Respond to at least two classmates’ posts. Compare your impressions of TEDEd and the “Be Sure To” strategy. How did your perceptions differ? What new ideas might you have gotten from their analysis of each? Provide specific feedback regarding their assessment of the “Be Sure To” strategy. 

Cara Stanley

The TedEd lessons promote student engagement because they are interesting, short, and engaging.  They ask for students to participate and think outside of yes/no questions and paper assignments.  Although these lessons are not directly linked to the standards I typically teach, it is easy to connect them and get the students thinking critically about how one thing lead to another or how the events connect to standards.  Like in the TedEd lesson I explored, “The History of Video Games.”  I thought this would get my boys really engaged in the lesson right out the gate.  For my Critical Thinking class, I teach lessons on globalization and how we are becoming more connected.  I would show the TedEd video to the students as a warmup and ask them how video games are a common world language.  We could then go into the larger lesson of global citizenship.  For my class, I would have this video link in a task page on Its Learning, our online learning platform.  This lesson would be an example of ISTE standard 2b, learning to make safe online connections. 

What I learned from “The History of Video Games,” is that they were originally created for the military.  I thought that was interesting and I felt that many of our students would also think that was interesting.  The evolution of video games went from military, to science lab, to arcade, and then home.  This shows students that just because something is created for one reason, it may have a larger purpose.  I thought this lesson had many broader themes. 

I think lessons like this are important when paired with a rubric because the rubric allows students to see what they are supposed to learn from something, instead of having to assume or guess (Brookhart, 2013).  By doing this, the students are able to guide their own learning, and the teacher will be able to assess for learning.  If a rubric is designed with the ending in mind, the student may have confusion of what should go into the assignment or not understand how much or the depth of knowledge they should take from each piece of information.  Designing a rubric for learning will allow the student to guide themselves into turning in a product that the teacher can grade based on what is understood, and in that case, she can go back and fill in the missing pieces with the student and know if she should remediate, reteach, or move forward. 

Side note:  I just created a rubric TODAY with this whole lesson in mind and I am quite impressed with myself.

Brookhart, S. M. (2013). How to create and use rubrics for formative assessment and grading. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com

Kaitlin McCarthy 

Part 1

The lessons in TEDEd promote student engagement when you go onto their website, you can watch videos. If you give your students the website link, this gives them the options to find things that they are interested in researching such as science, math, art, language, and more. Each subject area has many videos to scroll through and they all vary.

TEDEd has four options accompanying the video. The options are watching, think, dig deeper, and discuss. Watch is simply watching the video. Think is answering multiple choice questions. Dig deeper gives more information beyond the video and even some information that can relate to you personally. Finally, discuss is for the teacher to use and students to post. It’s a guided discussion, which can be the assignment (TEDEd Lessons Worth Sharing, n.d.).

When you use the ‘think’ option that relates to the video, you find the correct answers after selecting the multiple choice. This allows the students and the teacher to assess the answers. The discussion option which is the guided discussion allows the teacher to assess the student and how they are attaining the information.

The first way you can incorporate a TEDEd lesson into a typical class period is by offering your students time on the computer. Then, you can give them directions to find the video you are intended to be your focus of the lesson. After that, you add your questions, discussion prompts and additional resources. Another way you can incorporate a TEDEd lesson into a typical class period is by taking a lesson off of TEDEd and then customizing it yourself, an option found on the TEDEd lessons website. According to NETS-S, the third standard is “Technology Productivity Tools Students: a. use technology tools to enhance learning, increase productivity, and promote creativity. b. use productivity tools to collaborate in constructing technology-enhanced models, preparing publications, and producing other creative works” (ISTE National Educational Technology Standards adopted by the Oklahoma State Department of Education, n.d., Technology Productivity Tools). This standard aligns with the assignment as it uses technology to promote learning and productivity.

            I explored the lesson titled, “Why We Say “OK”. It was a very simple lesson that taught me about the history of the English Language and how acronyms were started and later turned into other words. The acronym “OK” actually started out as Oll Korrect, meaning all correct (n.d.). “OK” has changed over the years from meaning all correct to meaning that you’re doing fine if someone asks you, “How are you?” and your reply is, “OK”.

Part 2

Brookhart suggests using student self-graded rubrics as a way of students determining what they need to do in order to do well on the assignment. Brookhart suggests asking students to ask clarifying questions about the rubric, ask the students to restate the rubric in their own words, ready-steady-pair-share, student co-constructed rubrics, and ask students to match samples of work to rubrics (Brookhart, 2013). Julie Manley, an 8th grade ELA teacher, uses the “be sure to” method as the last step in an assignment. The “be sure to” is a goal statement (Teaching Channel, 2013). Both of these strategies support the integration of multiple levels of thinking for students and the teacher’s ability to assess for learning. All of Brookhart suggestions support multiple levels of learning as there are so many different options ranging from working on your own to working with others to matching items and more. The teacher can assess learning when asking the students to restate the rubric in their own words if they can understand the rubric or not. The teacher has an idea of what they are looking for and it’s the student’s responsibility to find that answer. The “be sure to” statement supports multiple levels of learning because it is individualized for each student. Not all students will have the same answer because it is personalized for something the student wants to achieve. The teacher can then assess for learning because they are finding more personal information about the student and how they learn.

References

Brookhart, S. M. (2013). How to create and use rubrics for formative assessment and grading. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com

ISTE National Educational Technology Standards adopted by the Oklahoma State Department of Education. (n.d.). National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S) [PDF].

Teaching Channel. (2013). “Be sure to": A powerful reflection strategy. Retrieved from https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/student-goal-setting

TEDEd Lessons Worth Sharing. (n.d.). Create lessons worth sharing around YouTube videos. Retrieved from http://ed.ted.com/series

(n.d.). Retrieved January 13, 2019, from https://ed.ted.com/featured/Js68j4Os#watch