Reflections on Module 7

Another fantastic week of new information. 

This week changed gears a little bit,  focusing on assessments and ways in which to improve productivity in an administrative way. 

In regards to assessments, maybe I was missing something but not much of the Module information provided had anything to do with the discussion of assessment.  The text dealt with administrative topics mostly, and though the discussion post did get us all talking about how we assess, there was not much background information on it provided.  Many of the key concepts in relation to assessment I luckily have been exposed to before, in my creativity class which discussed concepts like validity and reliability, and other classes covered formative and summative assessments.  Validity is how well a test actually measures what is claims to measure, and reliability is the degree to which a test obtains consistant results.  Formative assessment is a way of continually monitering student progress and providing ongoing feedback, while summative involves the final, or partial assimilation of knowledge obtained, generally via benchmarks.  The idea of performance based assessment, or as the text described in an earlier chapter, project-based learning, seems to fit the music education field quite nicely. 

Moving onto the administrative side of the learning from this week, I was very pleasantly surprised (again) with the amount of information I did not have, and how easy it was to get caught up to current practices.  Thankfully many techniques are already in use, but both the text and supplemental material gave numerous suggestions on ways to improve my current strategies.  For instance, I use Facebook, but had never thought about creating a closed group.  Using a website with an imbedded calender to keep all student and parents regularly informed, and using Google in ways I did not know existed.  Google forms for creating easy and quick assessments, presentations, newsletters, etc are just a few of the ways I did not know the full capabilities that Google could offer.  The assignments that involved exploring these possibilities in addition to the calender have opened my eyes in many ways to possibilities I had never previously imagined would be so easy to implement.  Marketing in these formats as well as with social media is something I have explored, but not to the depth presented in this Module. 

I really enjoy how this class has opened my eyes to many things I had never known about before, and to new ideas of working with the tools I already had in more efficient and productive ways.  It might take awhile to get all of this set-up , but I look forward to the challenge. 

Now it is time to finish the last few assignments for this course, my WebQuest and E-Porfolio.