Summative+Assessment

=LiveBinder =

LiveBinder is a free web-based portfolio tool that allows teachers to collect students' best pieces of work in a digital format to be evaluated based on "long term documentation of student mastery of course material" (Science Education Resource Center, 2011). It is important to ask students to reflect on the materials that they put in their portfolio. This helps students and teachers both gain an understanding of mastery. By allowing for students to put in documentation over the long term, differentiation occurs because students can have a greater variety of assessments to choose from as their best possible work.

=Mathematical Thinking Classroom Assessment Techniques (Math CATs) =

The CATs are web-based modules that are consistent with current professional standards of assessment. The CATs are linked to a set of discipline-specific "tools" that can be downloaded for immediate use. The Math CATs, for example, are designed to promote and assess thinking skills in mathematics. Many teachers today find it difficult to promote and, in particular, to assess the development of mathematical thinking. That is to say, they sometimes struggle to help their students solve problems that are not as straightforward as those commonly encountered in mathematics textbooks. The Math CATs are designed to address this challenge by offering ways to assess and instill a broad range of the mathematical thinking skills important for students in the science, mathematics, engineering, and technology disciplines (Ridgway & Swan, 2011).


 * Description of the Five Math CATs:**

1) __Fault Finding and Fixing__ - students analyze mathematical statements and detect an error, explain the cause of the error, and then rectify it

2) __Plausible Estimation__ - students create estimates, communicate their assumptions and results, and then check the plausibility of their answers

3) __Creating Measures__ - students are prompted to evaluate an existing measure and then create and evaluate their own measure of this concept

4) __Convincing and Proving__ - students are required to argue logically, using examples and counterexamples to justify their reasoning, and to identify breakdowns in seemingly rational arguments

5) __Reasoning from Evidence__ - students analyze unsorted data, drawing sensible conclusions

=Prezi - Online Multimedia Presentation=

Prezi is a slide show creation program that allows anyone to create free, online multimedia presentations. With Prezi, everything is stored digitally and can be displayed through a web browser on any computer with internet access. Prezi is extremely user friendly and much more multimedia driven than PowerPoint. It is highly engaging and students can create very memorable and meaningful presentations. It can be used as a summative assessment, in that students are not only responsible for demonstrating their learning by creating the presentation, but can also be graded on their ability to present the information from the class. Students respond well to multimedia presentations, as "our eyes and ears, in conjunction with our brain, form a formidable system for transforming meaningless sense data into information." (Simone, 2002) Thus, presentations are valuable learning tools for all students in the classroom, not just the student who made the presentation. Additionally, for teachers, all presentations are stored so teachers can search for a presentation they may want to use for their students in class. Sometimes only a few simple edits are needed to allow the presentation to make sense for the students.

Resources

Ridgway, J. and Swan, M. (2011). Electronically received September 6, 2011, from []

Science Education Resource Center, Aug 3 2011. Accessed Sept 6 2011. []

Somone. (2002) Accessed September 7, 2011 from []