Final Post: To PBA-ity… and Beyond!

In my teaching, I have used several PBA’s, even in just the last couple of years:

  • Blogger and WordPress
  • VoiceThread
  • Webquests
  • Glogster
  • Museum Box
  • ToonDoo, BitStrips, and Pixton

All academic benefits aside, I enjoy using them with my students, as I like the variety of products I get to see and (in more cases than pen-and-paper assessments) enjoy! Overall, I think they motivate my students more, as well as myself. It’s more fun to do something current and keep things fresh for all involved. That being said, I see downfalls from time to time. The biggest one is the managing of time. Many of my students will waste time like there’s no tomorrow. I could have a Glog for them to work on, and some could be trying to listen to music, look at classified ads, or play some online game. I often ponder taking away the Internet from their software or inventing a device that only does academic tasks…

In all seriousness, I like the creativity involved with these products, the convergence of different media on them, the sharpening of students’ technology skills in using them, and the different displays of understanding  / learning.

What would I like to see more of? I’m kind of liking what I’m seeing from Museum Box (I just signed up last week), and am intrigued by Mahara (it looks somewhat similar). I like how it marries images, text, video, and sound, and makes them look tangible in cube (literal learning objects, in a sense) form. The site is good now, but a tweaked Museum Box (or something new yet similar) could be very useful for many different projects. For example, I am getting my students to create a Museum Box based on the last novel we read. They are selecting objects they see as important from the text and are justifying / explaining their choices.

http://museumbox.e2bn.org/

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6fDRktWIGg 

Posted in: Week 10: Product-Based Assessments