Chang's EDT 626 Reflective Blog

In the past two weeks, we explored the challenges learners with disabilities face, and discussed ways to accommodate those learners with the integration of assistive technology. Upon hearing this topic, the first thing came into my mind was the recent pass of Stephen Hawking. Suffered from that kind of serious disease, lost most of his normal physical functionalities, Hawking still created tons of stunning work that made him a giant. And that had a great contribution from his assistive technology- the wheelchair, the input device, the muscle movement sensor... The first week of this unit I was very intrigued to solve the the puzzle where multiple challenges a teacher faces in the classroom. There were students with vision impairment, hearing impairment, mobility impairment, language barriers and learning difficulties. That's what educators need to put into consideration when having students with special needs. I enjoyed exploring and brainstorming solutions for each learner...

In the past few weeks, we discussed the technology integration in classroom assessments. For me, the most important thing to apply technology in the classroom is how it supports learning effectiveness in the way that it increases student engagement, diversify hands-on activities, broadens the options for educational resources, time and space is no longer limited, and collects prompt data to assist teachers make guidance for their learners. Least time is spent to achieve the best learning outcome. I have always been a fan to explore technology tools and utilize them in designing instructions because it is unconventional, and a great way to engage students (also engage myself) and make the most use of different resources available for the content knowledge. If I want to show students what Chinese people do on Chinese holidays, instead of just lecture, I could also utilize technology to demonstrate online videos and other resource to make it real. Thanks to technology, they are also ...

In the past two weeks, we have explored a lot of new trend of assessments, personalized assessments, and how technology kicks in to assist with learning in order for students to achieve the best learning outcome. The changing of assessments is about changing our entire approach to information, about recognizing that having content knowledge is insufficient so we must understand how it is accessed, stored, managed, retrieved, and manipulated. The changing nature of educational goals; the relationship between assessment and teaching and learning, and the limitations of the current methods of recording performance and reporting credit are the three factors that demand the assessment reform. While we are used to backward design assessment, new trend of assessments enable students and teachers to use assessment for learning. Authentic assessment, real-time assessment, peer assessment, as well as self assessment come in different forms to support learning from different perspectives. W...

In the past two weeks, I have learned about different perspectives and models of assessment that helps me shape my view on how to best use different kinds of assessment to facilitate better learning outcome. As Dr. William mentioned, most important instructional decisions in classrooms are not taken by teachers, but taken by students. We should put learners at the heart of the process. Formative assessment is not a process that's done by teachers to students, but it's led by teachers and done with students to engage students and their own learning. What I also find very inspiring is the comparison between traditional assessment and future assessment. Assessment is thought of as a separate event traditionally like the end of term grading, yet assessment is critical for our instruction in search of improving teaching and student learning. So the current features of assessment are more embedded, on-going, personalized, and student-centered over the course of their learning. ...

In this Unit, the exploration activity, together with the learning of two scholarly articles gave me a great overview of the definition of educational assessment , the purposes of assessment, as well as the role of assessment in the education culture. It is important to know that assessments provide educators with both objective and subjective data in order to determine student progress and skill competence.  The information collected from assessments not only help educators plan the next step instructions, but also help other stakeholders such as districts to determine where to distribute money or policy makers in terms of the efficacy of education. A very interesting idea I have learned from the exploration activity is when Dr. William indicates that in effective assessments, the retrieval practice together with the hypercorrection effect is very beneficial for long-term learning. This is very true when it comes with the law of learning. When we first learn about...