Integrating formative assessment in classroom Pt.1

Seamless Integration of Formative Assessment

During our Professional Learning Community meetings I was struck with a question:

How could I embed formative assessment into good practice? Would there be a tech tool; and app?

For the past year I have been testing, trying, failing, frustrating, agonizing, smiling, nodding, and most importantly assigning formative assessment tasks on various platforms, tools, setups, and systems. I want to share with you a solution that works for me, your comments and suggestions will be well received, as we are on this journey together.

Before getting too excited , I want to share a few definitions and share my understandings of the terminology that I am using. It is very important to use a common framework and understanding while developing new pedagogical models, because if we want to be able to share and hopefully offer an insight into best practices, we need to have a shared vision of what we are working on. In my daily use I have these to models:

SAMR is a model designed to help educators infuse technology into teaching and learning. Popularized by Dr. Ruben Puentedura, the model supports and enables teachers to design, develop, and infuse digital learning experiences that utilize technology. – SAMR – Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything

Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) is a framework to understand and describe the kinds of knowledge needed by a teacher for effective pedagogical practice in a technology enhanced learning environment. – Technological pedagogical content knowledge

I constantly reflect and adjust my SMART Goals according to TPACK Framework

SMART goals

Integrating instruction and formative assessment effectively

I was looking specifically solutions that would be easy to integrate with google apps for education. My goal was to use Google Classroom as a central point for students to create collect, and connect their feedback, learning, and assessments. I had already tried couple of apps and websites that were promising, after a careful review I chose two different platforms to try with students:

Goformative

Socrative

After we initials experience we then chose to use goformative.com as our main platform for integrated formative assessment platform. Main reasons for this were:

• ease of integration with Google Classroom
• ease of customizing ready-made material
• integration of all platforms we use
• live feedback
• community
• student feedback
• teacher feedback

Goformative has a fairly low learning curve, allowing teachers and students to have success moments from early on. In other words, the Tech doesn’t get in the way of assessment.