Standards-Based Teaching and Learning Practices

  Digital storytelling is a robust way for the assessment of student learning. It can also be an engaging and fun way for learners to synthesize and articulate their learning through a variety of modes. It can be used in most, if not all, content areas or learning environments because it allows flexibility in the demonstration of the learning. Digital storytelling as an assessment is also a natural differentiated tool because students can use platforms and demonstrate learning how, when, and where they are comfortable through auditory and visual means. Our school provides laptops to all teachers, so there is not a need for them to bring or use their own devices, although many of them keep their phones on them in the classroom. Our students have one-to-one iPads in grades kindergarten through fourth grade. Our fifth grade to twelfth grade students have one-to-one laptops. This makes technology integration much easier, but it does require a large amount of money both for initial pu...

Research shows that performance-based assessment more accurately reflects a student’s ability to apply knowledge learned (Potter et al., 2017). Formative forms of assessment create opportunities to promote the development of a student’s explaining, interpreting, and reasoning skills (Spector et al., 2016). The purpose of this essay is to outline an eportfolio for a technology driven curriculum class with artifacts that were created for a blended course for professional educators on the topic of standards-based grading and learning practices. The eportfolio should demonstrate how historical and technological trends have influenced curriculum and design and how they can be used. Technology integration is an inescapable part of being an educator in the 21 st century. It can be overwhelming to competently use technological tools and integrate it effectively into instruction. The daily tasks of being a teacher are already infinite, so it can be difficult to add anything to that already i...

  Building this blended course was easier than I expected it to be. Because I had a strong grasp on the content of the course, it was easier to focus on the technological side of things when building the course. There were some challenges faced as I built the course. I have not actually used this course with real learners, so I am unable to see how much of the content actually translates to real learners. This made it difficult to know if the content was engaging and accessible. Another challenge was having to navigate digital tools without paying for their full array of features. There were many pop-ups and roadblocks as many resources used wanted payment for more robust features. My blended course was targeted toward teachers who are beginning a new system of grading at a new school. This means that my teaching audience had an array of grade levels and an array of previous teaching experiences. If I had used this course content for teachers in their initial stages of training...

My name is Jessica Manchester. The purpose of this blog is to outline the development of a blended course on standards-based teaching and learning practices for educators. Teaching is my dream job. Ever since I was a kid, I have dreamed of being a teacher. When I was 14-years old I visited the Dominican Republic. The organization that I partnered with was bringing a basic education to undocumented Haitian immigrants who were isolated in society. This basic education transformed their lives and allowed them to escape poverty for the first time in generations. I became passionate about not taking education for granted as I saw how it could literally change some people’s world. After college, I immediately moved to Guatemala to teach third grade at an American, English-immersion school. After two years, I moved to Washington where I have been in private schools for 12 years. I have taught kindergarten, fourth and sixth grade, and junior high math. Now I serve as the Curriculum & ...