Supporting Digital Formative Assessment (DFA) in schools

All of you who are reading me know why this is a very suitable time to consider how teachers can develop Digital Formative Assessment (DFA). Undoubtedly, online learning offers a unique opportunity to rethink our approach to assessment. The main reason why educators should reconsider the way they assess students nowadays is that research has proven  that digital learning and assessment have the potential to support more powerful student learning. 

Hattie, for example, in his widely cited review of meta-analyses in education research finds significant effect sizes for a range of formative assessment methods in ICT-based environments (e.g. intelligent tutoring systems, formative evaluation, and so on) (1)

We may try to pinpoint some of the  advantages of assessing students through using different digital learning environments: 

• it offers rapid  feedback and scaffolding of further  steps for learning at an appropriate level of difficulty

• it allows for learners’ choices, which leads to personalising  learning and increasing  intrinsic motivation)

• it includes mobile tools to support assessment of ‘anytime, anywhere’ learning

• it is beneficial  to  students with special needs  (for example, students can simply touch the screen for the answer instead of writing it. Speech to text is also another great option and a great solution to people facing difficulties in essay writing)

• it supports collective engagement in problem solving in small groups or in massive multiplayer online platforms

• it provides with  opportunities for self- and peer-assessment 

The question is: how can  teachers develop DFA?  I would say there is still a need to train teachers on how to  incorporate online methods in teaching and assessing. From this blog post, I would like to share a powerful review on the literature of DFA  written by   Janet Looney  last September 2019.  I  am sure that you will not be disappointed when you find a great deal of examples of technologies used to support DFA.

Next seminar session we will discuss the broad range of practices included in DFA . Online assessment, in essence, should  support the assessment of student progress and provide information to be used as feedback in order to modify the teaching and learning activities in which students are engaged.

I hope we will meet very soon  so that we can interact  face to face and  discuss  DFA in our CLIL classrooms. 

References:

(1) Hattie's https://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/

Suggested Bibliography:

Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (2018). Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice 

Taylor and Francis online Journal 

Volume 25, 2018 - Issue 6

Participate in an exciting Robotics competition

A variety of projects on Robotics is already being developed in many of our schools and the new  official  call to present new projects on Innovative Science and Technology for 2017-2018 is open  till May 8th. If you choose to take part in Robotics, you will probably be interested in knowing about World Robot OlympiadTM (WRO). This association  brings together young people from all over the world to develop their creativity, design and problem solving skills through challenging and educational robot competitions and activities. If you want to engage your students in Robotics, why not participate in the competition in Spain and try to qualify for the international WRO final which takes place once every year in November.  The winning teams from national competitions will represent their countries from November 10-12 in Costa Rica, the hosts of WRO 2017! 

There are different categories as well as different age groups, ranging from under 12-year-olds to 17-25-year-olds so both Primary and Secondary students can take part in it. You can read the general rules here.  Why not start by trying the local competition on June 10th in Bilbao? As Patricia Briggs says, "trying is always enough".  Good luck!

WORLD SCIENCE DAY FOR PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT 2016

UNESCO encourages us to celebrate the World Science  Day  for Peace and Development.  It  is annually held on November 10 and its purpose is to  renew the international commitment to science for peace and development and to stress the responsible use of science for the benefit of society. The World Science Day for Peace and Development also aims at raising public awareness of the importance of science and to bridge the gap between science and societies.

The WSDPD's objectives are :

• To strengthen public awareness on the role of science for peaceful and sustainable societies
• To promote national and international solidarity for a shared science between countries
• To renew national and international commitment for the use of science for the benefit of societies
• To draw attention to the challenges faced by science and raise support for the scientific endeavour

In order to raise your students' awareness on the topic, you can place the official poster on your classroom walls  and develop an activity that highlights the important role of  Science in society.  If you wish, you can use   this reading comprehension  activity that describes   how researchers from Virginia Tech attempted to reforest post-mined soil using biochar.  Teacher's notes and answers can be downloaded here. This activity is an example from www.readworks.org, an excellent website to improve students' reading comprehension skills.

I cannot  end this post without sharing   the UNESCO Science report towards 2030 with you. It provides more country-level information than ever before. The trends and developments in Science, Technology,  innovation policy and governance between 2009 and mid-2015 described here provide essential baseline information on the concerns and priorities of countries that should orient the implementation and drive the assessment of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the years to come. Therefore, a must-read for Science and Technology teachers.

Happy WSDPD and let us hope that our young students become aware of the essential relation between Science and Peace and Development and fight actively for it.