Assessing student learning is a hugely important component of the instructional day. I have always been of the belief that it is essential that we utilize data to drive our instruction. One concept that I think is important to remember when we consider assessment is the variety of forms it can take. There is definitely a time and place for standardized tests, and such methods can provide invaluable data that gives educators insight into both individual student strengths and weaknesses, as well as trends across the class. As a classroom teacher, I was required to have monthly "Mock Tests" where I administered mock tests in all content areas, and analyzed the data using an Excel template in order to drive my instruction. While it was a very important tool that gave me a lot of information, I did see the added stress and constant pressure it put on my students by spending such a huge portion of each month on standardized tests.

I believe equally as important, educators need to explore the wide variety of assessment tools that are available to them that will give them deeper insight into their students' strengths and deficiencies, and will also allow students to be met with greater success by providing alternate means of assessment. For example, arts-infusion techniques are one way to integrate assessment alternatives that engage learners and allow students with a unique set of learning modalities to be successful. At the school I am currently leading, it is even in our mission that we are preparing our students for college through a "rigorous, arts-infused curriculum." While we still definitely need a great deal of growth in this area, it has been a positive experience to see students who might not normally fair as well with a traditional paper and pencil test to be met with success through engaging activities that include areas such as movement, drama, and song (while still covering content area and providing the teacher with meaningful data points).

I would be interesting in continuing to explore alternate ways of assessing students' mastery of standards that go above and beyond standardized tests.

I recently had the opportunity to complete the reading on Project-Based Learning (PBL) and learned a great deal, particularly since this is an area I have very little knowledge of/experience with.

Diane McGrath's article "Getting Started with Project-Based Learning" defines PBL as "teaching and learning around projects that are driven by an authentic question or problem that is central to the discipline/curriculum, involves the building of a community of learners, and culminates in the presentation of a student-constructed work" (p. 1).

One point that McGrath brought up was that students who engage in PBL perform as well as, or better than, students in traditional classrooms, on standardized tests. Although, as I mentioned above, I do not have a great deal of background in PBL, I would imagine this to be true. Unfortunately in the field of education, so much is driven by standardized tests and so much time is spent on "teaching to the test", we are doing our students a disservice by not engaging them in authentic experiences that promote creativity, higher-order thinking, collaboration, problem-solving skills, and more that will stay with them for a lifetime rather than instructing students on how to best perform on a multiple choice examination. I believe that PBL holds a great deal of potential for educators and students alike, and am interested in learning more about this concept and how to integrate into my own school.

Connecting this to my own experiences, I plan to speak to some of the teachers to my school to learn more about their skills and knowledge related to Project-Based learning, and consider how we might be able to roll out PBL within our school. I realize that something like this would probably have to start small (perhaps within one grade level in a subject area such as Math or Science which lends itself well to work such as this) and then could be incorporated on a broader, school-wide scale with the lessons we learn throughout the process.

September 9th's class was very valuable to me. There were several interesting and valuable components that I'd like to share:

1. Pasha and Anne's Cool Tool demos were great. The Adobe site Pasha shared and the Skype and Blabberize sites that Anne discussed were good resources that I look forward to using both on my own as well as sharing with my staff members. With their being so many excellent tools available to educators on the web, I think that the Cool Tools portion of our class will be an exciting way to talk about tools we use and enjoy as well as learn from our classmates.

2. Our discussion of the sites we have been exploring as part of our Individual Integration Project was helpful tonight. I enjoyed having the opportunity to talk about one of the sites I have been spending a lot of time on, BetterLesson.org. I was able to utilize the NETS standards for teachers which I have been familiarizing myself with in order to think about how this all relates to 21st century technology skills. Again, I also enjoyed hearing from my classmates about the different sites they have been exploring and relating to NETS standards and LoTi.

3. Finally I enjoyed the breakout room time with LaRhonda for several reasons. First, it was good to hear about the sites she has been exploring. Next, she gave me a different perspective on LoTi levels, where a site I had been looking at which I thought was a lower LoTi level, LaRhonda was able to provide an alternative perspective that allowed me to see it was actually further along the continuum than I had originally thought. Last but not least, I had been looking for an online resource where I could start my site for EDIT 7500 and LaRhonda told me about Weebly, which I opened an account for. I wish I had thought about this site earlier because I could have done my blog directly from there instead of linking to an external Google site, but regardless, it will be valuable in creating one home base where I can host my Individual Integration Project, Digital Citizenship Project, and more.

This week I've been working on my Webpage with Examples assignment and have found several great resources that have been helpful in thinking about my Individual Integration Project. I've had the opportunity to speak with our Professor, Chan Min Kim, about the possibility of completing my project with adult learners in a K - 12 setting, since this is the primary group of learners I am currently working with.

As a result, I've reviewed two sites thus far and considered important areas such as the target audience, technologies used, and how the site meets ISTE standards/LoTi Level 3 above.

First I visited the Google Apps Education Edition training module which can be found at http://edutraining.googleapps.com/Training-Home/module-1. This site is an online resource for educators looking to integrate Google Apps into their school and/or classroom, and provides a breakdown of four sections including areas such as "Getting Around" and "Customization". I considered this in relation to the ISTE Standard: "i. Participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning" this site was a great example of how technology is being creatively used to improve student learning.

The next site I reviewed was BetterLesson.org, which can be found at www.betterlesson.org. This site was developed by teachers, for teachers, and is an online social networking/collaboration site where teachers can upload resources, ideas, and more, and gather same from other teachers, searching by standards, content area, keywords, and more. The reason I believe this is at a Level 6 for LoTi is because it truly involves two-way collaborations amongst educators, with teachers both uploading resources, gathering resources, and engaging in interactions with 21st century tools such as "tagging", a BetterLesson blog, Twitter, and more. I actually had the opportunity to sign up the teachers in my school for this site and thus far have had positive feedback from users who have gotten to go to the site and share/download resources.

For the remaining sites I will explore, I am interested in finding sites with videos and other dynamic learning experiences that relate to adult learners in the field of education.