Courses

EDTC 300, Learning Project

Learning Project: Shape 10

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“Caw-nva”

I was determined this week to branch out from YouTube and find a new resource for learning a new shape. A few weeks ago I had attempted to use Pinterest as a resource but struggled finding good instructions. Last week I heard about an origami instructional app from the Apple Store (I can’t remember the name of the app). I use a Chromebook so I knew I couldn’t use it, but it gave me the idea to search for something similar that I could install on my computer. Aha! A quick search of the Google Play Store led me to various origami apps. 

After reading the reviews for a few, I settled on an app called Animals Origami Instructions by Tunny Apps. 

This app is explicitly devoted to animal origami (which I’m not sure if you’ve noticed is my favourite type of shape to fold). The app is pretty bare bones so it’s very easy to use. There is a pretty extensive menu of animal shapes to choose from.

I tried a few at the request of my youngest son (giraffe, elephant) but I wasn’t happy with how they turned out.

In the end I decided to give the crow a chance. I love all birds in the Corvus family (crows, ravens, magpies) as they’re so smart and I’m always reading about these incredible behaviours that they have. Seriously, if you’re curious, Google crows. They’re truly fascinating! 

The instructions on the animal origami app were fairly simple. There is no sound at all. There are just simple animations for each fold. The interface is pretty simple with just six buttons you can use for controlling the play and speed of the animations.

Sometimes I found the animations a bit difficult to follow once the folds got a bit more complicated. In those cases I just had to play those steps multiple times until I completely understood what to do. I like that there is a lot of choice as far as animal shapes go, but a lot of the shapes require having solid coloured paper to truly get the full effect. I only have patterned paper so for my crow, I tried to find the least-patterned piece in the darkest colour.

I decided to make a step-by-step infographic to teach others how to fold an origami crow. The program I used is called Canva (this blog post title finally makes sense!). I’ve used this program a few times before to make posters and birthday invitations. I use the free version but there is a pro version you can buy that I’m sure has many more capabilities and has lots of stock images. The free version does everything I need it to do plus it has a lot of templates you can choose from. 

I chose a tutorial type of template and just formatted my step-by-step photos. There were quite a few steps/folds so to fit them all in I had to make the pictures pretty small. It’s pretty clear that an infographic isn’t the best way to teach folding origami. I know this first-hand as my previous experience on Pinterest with these sorts of instructions proved to be useless. For origami, it is my experience that video instructions are definitely the best. But I wanted to try something different, so an infographic is what I did! You’ll have to excuse my unclear folding instructions as it’s really hard to put into words the steps for folding origami.

In case it’s hard to see in the poster, here is what my crow looked like in the end.

EDTC 300, Learning Project

Learning Project: Shapes 8 & 9

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Wiener Wiener Penguin Dinner!

This week I reverted back to the animal theme that I have visited over and over. Spoiler alert! The first shape I attempted this week was extremely difficult. I think I’m going to save it for one of my final weeks as a finale shape. I didn’t document folding it and it was way too difficult and took too long for me to fold for me to do another one. I’ll just leave it here by saying that it’s the greatest of all time…

Okay so back to the shapes I folded for this post. I thought I would do a couple of shapes that included some ink enhancements to add to their cuteness. The first shape I completed was a dachshund. The YouTube user that posted this video is El Origami. 

This video was comparable to a lot of the videos I’ve used in the past. The music was upbeat and the video was nice and clear. There were no illustrations of the folds but this shape wasn’t too difficult so it was easy enough to follow along. As shown in the video, I added the little nose and eye to make it look like a little dachshund which I think really finished it off. It’s pretty adorable and I think I might give it to my son’s sitter who has a dachshund of her own.

The second shape I folded this week was even cuter! The most adorable penguin, complete with eyes and a little yellow beak. As soon as I saw this shape I just knew I had to fold it. If I had solid blue paper like the paper used in the video I think it would have been even cuter but the paper I had worked just fine. This video was posted by OrigamiAko  who appears to have some really nice holiday-themed shapes on their channel. The video is completely silent although there were some captions that randomly pop up giving directions. Two elements to this video that I appreciated were a photo of the finished product in the corner (so you could always see what you are working towards) and the folder often points to the corner you’re folding and where you’re folding it to to give a heads up to the next fold. These little elements help a surprising amount when doing these shapes.

I didn’t formally document the folding of the penguin as I didn’t think it was necessary but I’ve included an Adobe Spark video that I made of the folding of the dachshund and the final penguin. I had completely forgotten that I had previously used Adobe Spark in a different class so was pretty excited to use it for this week. It’s really easy to use. It’s pretty limited in its function but for doing a nice little slide show, I think it works pretty well. Oh and you’ll have to excuse Finn and Kylo Ren peeking out in the pics. I was using one of my son’s Star Wars books as a folding surface.

EDTC 300, Weekly Blog

Cyber-Sleuthing Saturday

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I have spent the past few days digging up all the dirt that I could on Brooke. I found her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, Prezi, SnapChat and of course her blog/website. 

It was fairly easy to find Brooke on these social media / websites by just doing a Google search of her name. In fact, the first page of the Google search brought up each of the sites listed above.

The information Brooke has shared on these websites informed me where Brooke is from, her physical appearance, some of her likes and hobbies, and the musical instruments she plays. Based on what I saw on these sites, I would assume Brooke is responsible, friendly, a loyal friend (the same group of friends were featured multiple times), and that Brooke loves her family a lot. She appears to have been very involved in her school and is creatively inclined. It is also very obvious that Brooke is looking forward to being a teacher. I would definitely trust Brooke and, after doing an online search of Brooke, would not hesitate for a second to hire her. 

Doing this activity helped me understand how much one can glean about a person based on their digital identity. I don’t think Brooke uses social media in anything but responsible ways, but I was able to find out quite a bit about her. 

While searching Brooke’s profiles, I began to reflect on my own digital identity. I don’t spend a ton of time on social media as I legitimately don’t have the time to be on my phone. I also have made an effort to limit my personal screen time. I’m totally okay with not being super visible online as I grew up in a time without smartphones and social media so it is not something that has been ingrained in me as important or even all that necessary. I have become a lot more active on Twitter since starting my education degree and a lot less active on Facebook. Facebook has always been where I shared personal information (to a lesser extent as I’ve gotten older) but since starting school I’ve been more inclined to avoid “rocking the boat” and share less about myself. I have a lot of strong opinions when it comes to political or environmental issues but I really do not like arguing with Facebook “friends” about these opinions and so have opted to just not share them. 

I could definitely relate to Nicole Lee’s article regarding having multiple online identities. Although I have never had multiple identities on any one social media site (i.e., two Facebook profiles, two Twitter handles, etc.), I do have different identities from Facebook to Twitter (the two social media sites I use the most). As mentioned earlier, Facebook is private and my Facebook friends are people in my private life. Twitter is where I am building my PLN and so 99% of my followers on there are in my school/professional sphere. I agree with boyd in Lee’s article that “[d]ifferent events involve different segments of your network and involve different protocols and behaviors. The same is true online.” I have no problem keeping these parts of my life separate, because as mentioned earlier, I don’t place a lot of importance on my digital identity. As I build my PLN on Twitter, I anticipate the importance I place on my digital identity will change.

I briefly touched on why I don’t like debating online when it comes to my personal opinions. As Ted Ronson mentions in his TedTalk, women have it much worse online than men. As he states, “ when a woman gets shamed, it’s ‘I’m going to get you fired and raped and cut out your uterus’”. This is pretty extreme and I have never received any sort of backlash even close to this, but I do believe that women are treated way worse online than men are. Thus I would rather avoid the day-ruining comments and replies that I have gotten in the past from people I hardly/don’t know. An example of this just recently happened to me. I replied to an RCMP tweet on Flag Day mentioning the importance of remembering First Nations peoples for whom the Canadian flag means something completely different than us settler-descendents. Immediately I began receiving replies full of racism and bigotry. Even though these comments were from people I don’t know and will never meet, it still really bothered me to the point where I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I eventually deleted the tweet as I didn’t want to attract anymore negativity to my day. Some people really enjoy this sort of online debate, but I’m far too sensitive and internalize a lot of it so it’s just way healthier for me to avoid even starting anything.

EDTC 300, Weekly Blog

Talkin’ YouTube

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Grace and I had the following conversation this week where Grace was acting as the teacher and I was acting as a concerned parent. In this scenario, I was worried about my daughter being featured in a YouTube video for a social studies project. As the parent, my biggest concern was regarding safety and control over who could watch the video. Grace outlined the security settings on the video and that anytime students had access to it, they would be monitored very closely. Grace explained to me why it is important for students to be exposed to technology such as this and linked it to teaching them about digital citizenship. She also provided a link to the Digital Citizenship Education in Saskatchewan Schools document.

Although my sensationalist comments about perverts getting off on watching little kids on YouTube seem extreme and are obviously exaggerated for the purposes of this assignment, as a parent myself, it is not all based in fiction. My husband and I have restricted our children’s exposure on YouTube for reasons similar to these. Although we would never not allow them to be visible on a school YouTube video, when it comes to their friends’ YouTube channels, we have maintained a pretty strict policy. We do not have control over the security settings that other children may or may not have set on their channels. Although we completely trust that their parents are monitoring their YouTube activity, we’d much rather be safe than sorry when it comes to our own childrens’ online safety. I think it’s important for both teachers and parents to be diligent about online safety. As long as the proper protocols are followed and security settings are all in place, there is no reason that teachers can’t use technology, such as YouTube, in the classroom.

EDTC 300, Learning Project

Learning Project: Shape 7

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Can I Fold It? You Bet Jurassican!

For my learning project this week, I decided to try a Tyrannosaurus Rex – a shape that I found a few weeks ago that I really wanted to try but was a bit scared off by its tiny arms. I found a video that folded a version of the T. Rex with fairly easy-to-fold arms so thought I’d give it a shot. The video is on YouTube and is by YouTube user PPO. The video tutorial was pretty good. It has some catchy music and has clear video of the folder’s hands making all the folds. 

I thought this would be a good shape to use a bigger piece of paper with and since I still have not bought bigger paper (by now I think I might just call a spade a spade and say buying bigger paper is just not gonna happen), I thought I would just use a piece of construction paper and fold then cut it to make a square. Unfortunately the construction paper that I have does not fold well at all so I had to scrap this plan and use my trusty 6” x 6” paper that I’ve been using all along. I was reading one of Richelle’s blog posts where she gave some tips and tricks on using tutorial videos and one of her suggestions was to watch the video at 3/4 speed so it’s easier to follow along. Previously I had always been pausing and starting the videos so I could keep up with the folds but this week I tried Richelle’s suggestion and it worked pretty good. Thanks Richelle! 

I had some issues with the head (throwback to my issues with folding the crane head and the hammerhead shark head) and made a few mistakes along the way that could easily be undone (it didn’t have a tail for a short while). 

This week I decided to make a video of me folding the T. Rex. I used a program called Filmora to edit the video. I’ve used Filmora a few times before. It’s probably my favourite video editor as it has a ton of really neat effects and is really user friendly once you figure it out. It has lots of music options and really cool transitions for photos. Plus I like how it has video and audio layers that are easy to edit independent of one another. Unless you upgrade, it does have a watermark on the finished product, but I don’t think it takes away from the final video. I also had some issues trying to crop the video so there wasn’t a bunch of carpet in the background which is why it jumps around a little bit – I split the video before cropping so attempted to crop each part of the video the same which was next to impossible. Oh well – I’ll say it was on purpose to make the video more visually interesting…

I ended up folding two T. Rex’s. As per usual, I folded the first one the wrong way so the plain, white side of the paper was facing outwards. I learned my lesson on the second go around. These are my two T. Rex’s together.

ECS 410

Week Eight: Looking Forward and Learning From Peers

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My first key question regarding assessment that I would like to ask my cooperating teacher is: how do you decide the specific format you use for formative assessments? I would like to know how teachers know the best methods to use for formatively assessing students – especially as a new teacher. Is this something that teachers learn through trial and error? For example, if during a lesson I want my students to learn a new concept through research or information provided to them and then I want them to work through that new information with each other, would assessing them formatively work best through a jigsaw activity or a carousel? Is there a science or formula to deciding what sort of assessment to use? Or is it just something you experiment with as a new teacher and tweak as the years go on? 

My second question about assessment has to do with differentiation. Differentiation is a topic that we, as future educators, have not had a lot of practice applying. It seems to be an extremely important topic in today’s classrooms (as it should be), especially with so much diversity in the classroom and students with such varying needs. How do teachers recognize which specific students require differentiation and how do they know what the most effective types of assessment are for those students? I worry that I will not be able to figure this out until it is too late in the semester and I have let those students down by not having the expertise to identify them and recognize the types of assessment they require to be successful. Is this another trial and error scenario or is this a skill that will just come with experience?

A third question I have regarding assessment is knowing when and how to most effectively use self- and peer-assessment. Are these types of assessments used in conjunction with every summative assessment? Is there a set number of self- and peer-assessments that should accompany formative assessment? Are these assessments ever taken into consideration during summative assessment (i.e., do they factor into a final unit or lesson grade)? Or is the grade that is given on a self/peer assessment arbitrary and is the actual act of assessing and practicing assessment as a life skill the important take-away during self/peer assessment?

While watching the group presentations for the 21st Century Assessment project, I was impressed with the variety assessments that each group came up with. Technology appeared to be a running theme in every group’s assessment. From a podcast to posting on Instagram, it is clear technology is important when considering different ways to assess students. A couple of groups made sure to specify that they would provide class time for students to work on their projects. Giving ample time to work on assessment projects during class is important for not overloading students with homework and allowing them a life outside of school. There were also some really good ways to provide differentiation specified by groups. One group would give students the choice of format they could provide their infographic in, be it digital or drawn by hand. Another group suggested strategically making groups so students who may be more comfortable with coding are grouped with students who may be coding for the first time. These are simple strategies to differentiate assessment that take no time to plan but foster inclusivity and encourage success for all students.

The assessment  tools that each group used varied as well. Rubrics were quite popular with one group using a two-point rubric. Seeing how different groups decided to assess their assignment made me think about what sorts of assessment tools I would likely use in the classroom. Although choosing which assessment tool to use is a matter of trial and error combined with personal preference, I still prefer the tool my group chose which was success criteria. I like that it is a form of a checklist but also allows room for feedback in a comment section.

EDTC 300, Learning Project, Weekly Blog

Learning Project: Shape 6

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I “Rose” to the Occasion

As promised, this week I ventured away from the animal kingdom and looked for a good origami flower video to try. I thought I’d try a different approach this week and went onto Pinterest and did a search for flower origami. As per usual, Pinterest did not disappoint and there was a plethora of projects that popped up. Most looked way beyond my ability level but I found a couple that I thought I could handle. Unfortunately they did not include video instructions (which apparently is key for me) and instead just had step by step photos. I won’t get into it too much but here are my failed flower attempts.

Back to good old reliable YouTube. I found a flower video that I thought looked much more manageable by YouTube user Ventuno Art. This was by far the most aesthetically pleasing origami video I’ve seen yet. The video itself has an almost nostalgic feel to it with a beautiful piano melody playing. It’s like watching a music video. The video went through the steps pretty quickly so I had to pause a lot during it, but any shortcomings in instructional quality is made up by the cinematography of the whole thing. The music really is beautiful!

To document this week’s shape, I was tasked with using an app or tool that I had not used before. I don’t even know where to start with this task. This turned into a three-hour long wild goose chase. I have a Chromebook so I did Google search after Google search trying to find a good (free) video editor for Chromebooks. I must have downloaded and deleted about five different apps. Every time I tried one, it either required a paid subscription in order to have any useful capabilities (even though it was advertised as free) or it just wouldn’t work. I don’t know if it’s my inexperience showing or what, but I was getting frustrated to no end. I also have a Windows-based desktop PC so I thought it might work better to try a Windows-based app. I found one called VideoScribe that uses photos instead of video. This app “draws” your photos for you that you can put together into a video. You can set it to music and even add text. It was getting a bit late in the day (on a Saturday night no less) and I was getting pretty tired so I’ll be honest, I didn’t explore this app as thoroughly as I would have liked to. The way it works is you import your images into the app.

There are different options for how you want your picture to appear. They can slide in from the side or appear to be drawn. I chose “draw” for all of my pictures.

For each picture you can change how you want it to appear, how long it stays, and how it transitions to the next picture. These changes can be made when you import the photo or there’s a quick option to make these changes.

  • Option to make changes when importing
  • Quick changes

At any time you can also rearrange the order of photos.

Overall I thought this was a very user-friendly app. It had a lot of stock music options to choose from (although I wish I could have found that beautiful piano melody from the flower YouTube video) and it was very easy to export for me to share. I didn’t explore the text option but from what I can tell there is an option to add text to each photo as well. I would recommend this app to anyone looking for this sort of capability. The biggest downfall is you have to pay for the app in order to remove the watermark and use this app for more than a week. I downloaded the trial version and only have it for one week. Here is my final result.

As you can see from the video, I ended up making three of these flowers. Each flower is folded from five different pieces of paper. Needless to say I had become extremely proficient at folding the petals by the time I got to the fifteenth petal. In my first Learning Project post I had mentioned I wanted to work my way to a multi-piece project so I’m happy to say I’ve achieved that goal. 

If anyone has any suggestions for good (free) Chromebook video editing software (that actually works), I would love to hear from you!

Oh and as an aside, because this was the day after Valentine’s Day, I tried folding a heart which I think is super cute. These little cuties might be popping up around the house, in my kids’ lunch boxes, in birthday cards, in the envelopes when I pay my bills…

ECS 410

Week Seven: Differentiation

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Tomlinson et al. (2008) explain that because of the increased diversity in schools, the need for differentiation is greater than ever before. Tomlinson and Moon (2013) identify the five elements of a classroom where differentiation can occur: learning environment, curriculum, assessment, instruction, and classroom leadership/management. They go on to identify that teachers can differentiate through content, process, product, and affect/environment that will vary with students’ readiness, interests, and learning profile. They break each of these elements down in order to show how each can be differentiated. The struggle related to figuring out how to differentiate each of these elements is a feeling of uncertainty regarding how differentiation looks like in practice. Even when examples are provided, the next challenge is knowing how to pinpoint which specific differentiated element is needed in each class each year. With students rotating through the school, it is impossible to reuse the same differentiated setup because students’ needs will always change as students move through the system. Even if the same few students are taught the following year, their needs may have changed from one year to the next meaning specific differentiation will again need to be identified and carried out in new ways. It’s not reinventing the wheel each year, rather it’s figuring out what wheel works best based on what medium the road is made of.

Another point that Tomlinson and Moon (2013) and Tomlinson et al. (2008) discuss is “teaching up”. This method answers the question of whether it’s best to plan instruction at the level of the “average” learner and differentiate for those students objectively “below” this level, or whether instruction should be at the level of those requiring extra support and differentiate instruction for those students considered above average. When “teaching up”, lessons are planned at the level of the “above average” students and then scaffolding is provided for the struggling students to work their way up to the advanced-level task. This is considered a way to respect individual students by pushing them to strive for achievement levels beyond what they consider possible for themselves. Similar to this concept, Tomlinson and Moon (2013) discuss readiness as a compass for differentiation. Readiness relates to “teaching up” as it informs not just what students can do but rather what students need to do to succeed. Like “teaching up”, it means forward thinking with a focus on where students need to get to. While the idea of “teaching up” sounds very attractive on paper, the challenge with it is structuring differentiation in a way that both challenges “gifted” students and legitimately results in struggling students achieving success. It would have to be carried out very strategically and would likely take a lot of trial and error before it’s done successfully. While “teaching up” seems like a daunting concept to carry out, Tomlinson et al. (2008) support its use by stating “struggling students don’t often benefit by doing less of what they don’t understand, and it’s not helpful for advanced learners to do more of what they already know” (Figure 1.1). This lends good support to why “teaching up” is an effective method to use that benefits both types of students.     

Applying differentiation in the classroom goes hand in hand with creating inclusive classroom culture that welcomes all learners. As Tomlinson et al. (2008) demonstrate when describing the two schools that successfully implemented differentiation, not only can it lead to increased test scores, but can “also extend to student, parent, and teacher satisfaction, [and] increased student engagement…” (para. 40). The actual application of differentiation appears intimidating, but with experience and practice should, in theory, become more natural with each passing school year.

EDTC 300, Learning Project

Learning Project: Shapes 4 & 5

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🎵Baby Origami Shark Do Do Do-Do Do-Do🎵

This week I thought I’d give a shark a try. I was going to start with a great white shark first, but then I saw there was a video of a hammerhead shark so I thought I’d jump into the deep end (of the ocean) and give it the old college try. Let me start off by saying that was a big mistake. As you’ll see, it was a bit tougher than I anticipated. I guess the fact that it was a 12-minute video should have been the first hint it might be a bit more than I can handle. The video I chose was from the YouTube user Amazing Easy Origami – Yakomoga. This video was different than ones I’ve used in the past in that it was completely silent during folding. There was no illustration of folds or any sort of narration but the video was good quality with a clear and close view of the hands folding the shark. I’m not sure if it was the complexity of the folds or the lack of narration/illustration or some combination of them both, but I did not find this video as helpful as previous videos I have used. 

I chose my paper and got started. Right off the bat I realized I was folding the paper the wrong way so the white side of the paper was going to be on the outside. I was committed so I kept on…believe me, the white paper was going to be the least of my concerns. I kept on folding…

…and folding…

Until I finally got to the finished product. I’m hesitant to call it a hammerhead shark because, well, as you can see, it doesn’t look like much. The head was really difficult to fold because the more I folded, the smaller it got and the harder it was to make subsequent folds.

In case you can’t tell how awful it turned out from the side profile, here’s a shot of it from the front. Yikes!

This was a pretty complicated shape to fold and I think it must be beyond my ability level at this point. The video was 12 minutes which speaks to its complexity. Here’s what the head is supposed to look like:

Once I stopped laughing at how hideous my hammerhead is, I decided I should go back to my original plan and try the regular great white shark. This time I used a video by Wonpyo Lee – Origami&DIY. Again, this video did not have illustrations to show the folds, but it did have narration giving instructions. Unfortunately for me they were in Japanese (I think it’s Japanese). But the narrator’s voice is very soothing and I did enjoy listening to him for the entirety of the video.

This shape had some similarity to the hammerhead at the beginning, but was not nearly as complicated when it came to the head.

Turned out much better! I’m happy with how it looks. Here are my sharks together.

It would have been wise to start with the great white and then move to the hammerhead. I mentioned last week that I wanted to get bigger paper but I didn’t have a chance to pick any up. The hammerhead likely would have been easier with a bigger piece. I might revisit it again in the future to see if I can redeem myself.

I think next week I might try to venture away from the animal kingdom and try a flower of some sort. I would also like to try a t-rex at some point as I’ve seen that pop up a few times. But it may have to wait until I get that bigger paper because its teeny tiny arms look like they’d be difficult with the smaller pieces I have right now. I also noticed on the Wonpyo Lee – Origami&DIY YouTube page, he has some multi-paper pieces that almost look like tops (they can spin) that I would like to work up to. But those are weeks away. Until then I’ll just keep swimming… 🎵🎵🎵

ECS 410

Week Six: Struggling with Assessment as a Learner

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The concept of transference is something I can most definitely relate to. I graduated from high school in 2000 so I was immersed in very traditional forms of education and assessment throughout the 90’s. I think the biggest experience from my past regarding assessment is the notion that grades are everything. For me, this has been the biggest hurdle to get over. I’m not referring to my future students’ grades, but my own grades in my current classes. I have had to work really hard to focus on the learning and growth that is taking place, rather than the grade I receive. I have found if I get a grade less than what I expected, my mind can very easily go to a very dark place where I begin questioning if I am cut out for this profession, if there’s something wrong with me, and other similar unproductive thoughts. I often have to talk myself off that ledge and remind myself it’s the process, not the product, that is important. Grades and the weight they carry are so ingrained in me that I can’t help but equate my self worth with them. At this point, I would almost rather just receive the feedback and not even know what my grade is. I think this mindset comes from past experience where we didn’t know what we were being graded on (no rubrics or assessment criteria avilable to us) so it felt like the grade was just some independent mark you got not based on anything.

Another part of assessment that I have really struggled with is unclear expectations for assessment. I have found myself in some classes where the instructor gives either not enough information about what is expected, or gives so much vague directions that I find really difficult to sift through to figure out exactly what I need to do. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with instructors having a constructivist philosophy or 21st century teaching, but it drives me crazy to no end! Some of our readings in this class have talked about how students shouldn’t have to guess what the assessor is thinking so I feel like that should apply in our classes as well. On the other hand, this could also go back to my expectation of being told exactly what to do. I have a longstanding personal narrative that I am naturally uncreative, so I really struggle with having to come up with anything new without being given some direction. Whether the problem lies with the instructor or if it is a problem with me, it’s very frustrating for me either way.

When I was in high school, education and assessment followed the positivist philosophy to a tee. It was very traditional – lots of exams where I would spit out all of the “knowledge” I had gained in order to make room for more knowledge. It was the very definition of Freire’s banking concept of education. I can recall very few assessment techniques outside of this. If they weren’t exams, they were essays or research assignments. There was very little collaboration with peers and not a lot of room for creativity. The odd time we did receive an assignment that allowed us some input into what the final product would look like, it seemed like such a far stretch from what I was used to and felt like sooooo much work! This past experience has been a bit of a roadblock for me with coming up with inquiry or student-led methods of assessment. It has absolutely nothing to do with personal resistance or refusal to change and everything to do with just really struggling to think outside the box.