Module 5 Blog - Assessing Student Projects

How do I assess student learning?

In my experience, there are many varied ways of assessing student learning depending on the class I am teaching and the school/college where I am teaching. For music classes, assessments are largely performance based. Rubrics and assessments are available for use, or I can use assessments that I created, but in the end, all students have to assessed within the bounds of differentiation. Every student's learning style, background, and present ability to learn should be a factor over and above the common assessment both at the high school level or at the college level. For other classes, more common assessments are used where performance is assessed in different modes of activity, tests, projects, presentations, reading assignments, etc. With all students and classes, I feel it is the utmost importance that all students are assessed using differentiation that is appropriate to each student's level of learning and learning style.

The Module 5 assignments have helped me to further refine my student sample and broaden the scope of the overall subject of music as a reflection of society. As the project continues to unfold, I keep finding more material that student could use as information for their own music/society projects. The latest topic that I discovered (or stumbled upon) is the area of children's songs. There is a wealth of musicians and songs that are written for children that educate about world issues on a level appropriate to their age. Of course the more successful musicians also use music as fun in addition to education. The latest example of this for me is Tom Chapin's song, "Not On the Test". These topics could easily be built into a semester long class.

How do I involve students in the assessment process?

I feel it is extremely important to involve students in all stages of the learning process. As a teacher, it is an important first step in defining student expectations for not only student work, but also in classroom behavior and etiquette. I believe this important step also empowers the students to take charge of their own learning so that they are more excited by the process and are more apt to forge a direction (or topics) for learning. In all classes that I teach and at both the high school and college level, I find that students are very aware, honest and forth rite in self assessment when asked to do so. I also find that it is important that students first identify areas of strengths, successes, and improvement. By doing this, students are not looking at their work as "glass half empty" but as "glass half full". This to me is by far a more successful approach to developing a strong assessment that is student driven.

I am finding that in future class offerings for Dirigo, I am considering asking for funding to offer a class that explores music and society.

How can technology be used most effectively to support and assess student learning?

The subject of my project is "How does music reflect society?". When I originally began to work I intended on focusing on music's reflection of the Civil Rights movement. As I continued research and gathering of resources, I realized that there was enough information available to broaden the possibilities of topics to almost any major historical event where conflict, war or injustice was involved. I then decided to alter my project goals to include these possibilities giving the student the opportunity to have more personal input in their assignment and the freedom to shape it's direction.

I chose to focus my student sample on music and the Vietnam War. At first I thought I would find mostly music that protested the war, however as my research progressed I found that there were many examples of songs that both supported and protested the war. I also found that many song topics explored many other aspects of the war. There were examples of what roles, jobs, expectations, feelings, hopes, dreams, patriotism, honor and pride.

In building my student sample, I found that technology can be used effectively through the different modes of presentation that are available. I found that my project could also be a model for the Audio Visual class that I have been teaching. It would be possible to present this project in almost any medium available, IMovie, Pages, Keynote, PowerPoint, as web page and all could have blogging incorporated as well. For my project I chose to use Pages because I had never used this before. I quickly learned that there were many advantages to using this software and the ease of setting up something that was visually striking. However, I did learn that there were limitations that left me in a position of not being able to offer actual musical examples, (as suggested by two colleagues). I then learned that I could move the entire project into IWeb or to set the project up as a Google page, which brought the entire project to a new level visually, but also its accessibility to others on the web. This of course expanded the possibilties for student use and accessibilty. I feel that I will be able to guide students into more exciting directions and options for their work.

The creation of my student sample helped to ensure that students could find nessesary information to complete a project within a reasonable time frame while having the choice of using a variety of technological mediums to produce a project. Designing the project also helped me to frame the project as possible use in my History of rock and roll class, but also gave me many new ideas for students in my Audio Visual classes.

Student learning can be ensured through the available information on the topic of music as a reflection of a significant historical event. Student interest can be encouraged through the variety of available technology to produce and build a project, and also the many ways students can save work through bookmarking sites. external storage, e-mail and server storage. Students also have the ability to interact with each other, the instructor and other resources (both human and electronic) throughout the world. I can also ensure learning through benchmarks, rubrics and by providing example sof past work. There are also many resources available as websites, dissertations and available information from protest composers.

3.22 Making Connections Blog

There are many resources on the internet that support my project and student learning. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on line website offers many ideas and lesson plans which I can draw from and also can be used by students for information to complete project assignments. Another website is the Memphis Rock And Soul online museum which also contains information for both students and for my project. I have also found many other valuable websites that support the topics of protest music and civil rights that are specific to rock and roll, folk music, jazz and also the blues. It has been interesting to find that many have written their dissertations using the same subject ideas. Online Civil Rights time lines and historical information will also be useful.

To insure proper internet use for students, I regularly use a contract which is reviewed and signed by parents. I also am sure to include requirements for proper use as part of an assignment grade as well as correct work citations and copyright permissions for any information, pictures, music, web sites etc, which are used in any student project. I am careful to check for permissions by making sure student requests are either C.C.'d to me or e- mailed to me to insure viability for both the student and owner of the copy written material.