While on my practicum, I have been hearing a lot about Fresh Grade, an online reporting tool that enables teachers to upload examples of student work that can then be viewed from home by the parents and students, where they are also able to leave comments.  It is marketed as an assessment tool for teachers, which also incorporates student and parent participation.  I was curious as to how it could also be used to personalize student learning.  Instead of the teacher being the one to ‘post’ on behalf of the student, why not let the students showcase their own work? I then began to think of all of the possible ways in which to bring this into the classroom: voice recording of reading, uploading pictures of work, uploading videos, etc. Each student could be given the opportunity to ‘post’ or showcase something they think they have excelled at or just really enjoyed.  It would also offer students an alternative to writing on paper. It would offer a multimodal approach to their learning.  I also began to wonder about the repercussions of using ‘social media’ as an assessment tool. This led to the generation of my ‘big question’ as well as a few open-ended sub questions.

Big question: How can technology be used as both an assessment tool and a student resource to personalize learning?

Sub questions:

How effective is Freshgrade? Or similar programs?

At what age should we introduce students to media literacy?

My current understanding is that education is continually evolving and we must evolve with it and our students.  I believe that rather than teach the whole class in a way that may only be reaching a hand full of students, that we must personalize learning so that each student has the opportunity to succeed. Growing up, my favourite teachers were the ones who tried new things, they were open to new ways of teaching and thinking. Alternatively, I also had teachers that were not as progressive, but still effective. I think back to how difficult it was for some of us to follow along, or to make sure that our work was completed in the style that the teacher was familiar with.  What would have happened had we been able to type our notes? Organize our binders in a way that would facilitate our learning? Although I believe that education should be personalized and tailored to the needs of the student, I do understand how difficult this may be. I have grown up in a digital age, which may have led to my own bias toward using technology in the classroom or sticking with what has been tried and tested.  I believe that my biases have also steered my curiosity; with most information at our fingertips, why not let students explore other modes of output? Growing up, my culture encouraged me to be curious, but to also follow the rules.  I was told to respect my elders, but also question why I might be doing something. In some situations I found this to be contradictory.  I believe that is the reason for my inquiry into personalizing learning and utilizing new sources and medias.

As technology integration is increasingly growing within elementary classrooms, I believe that my inquiry topic is extremely relevant. The Surrey School District has introduced Freshgrade this year and has planned for it to be a widely used assessment tool for all teachers in the coming years. We will hopefully be in the classroom next year and will therefore have the opportunity to work with Freshgrade as a reporting tool. Therefore, my inquiry topic will be of increased relevance to my future teaching career. Through my inquiry topic I would like to shift my focus from using technology not only as an assessment tool, but how we can encourage student use of technology to further their learning. I am interested to see how involved students will be and how open they will be to trying new things. While they are very excited to get to work on the I Pad in the classroom, they are inclined to choose games they are familiar with rather than taking a risk and trying something new.  I would like to encourage my students to try other educational ‘games’ and apps that they may not choose to explore on their own. I look forward to exploring along side my students and looking at how technology can be used to personalize learning.