K12 Online Conference 2008

I listened to two different session: one about assessment and the other about global learning. Both were really interesting. It was hard, though, to focus for both because the speakers were speaking to a slide show; that is all I saw, a slide show as opposed to a person speaking (I guess that's the concept of an online conference).
The one about assessment was thought provoking. The speaker really took the concept of assessment to it's original purpose - having students prove what they know/have learned. He looked at all the different ways to do such. He went over the history of assessment. He states that he learned all he knows about assessment from Shakespeare (Midsummer's Night Dream, the Tempest, Othello, and as he put it, CSI: Denmark, a.k.a. Hamlet). His main point was that assessment must be purposeful and be effective. Assessment is a difficult task. There are so many different ways to assess and different students require different means of assessment. It is a grey area, but one that needs to be explored more.
The second session I looked at was about global learning. This one provided many suggestions and tips for implementing this style of learning in your own classroom. This one was much easier for me to pay attention to because it had much more engaging slides. Because of this class, I was familiar with many of the tools they mentioned for making your classroom globally connected. This session was a lot more inspiring, in my opinion. The assessment one was a lot of talk and ideas to get you thinking, but nothing that made you get excited or feel motivation to assess better. The global session made me see how easy and effective it is to make your classroom globally connected.
Asking Bigger Questions about Assessment: http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=301
Connecting Classrooms Across Continents: Planning and Implementing Globally Collaborative Projects: http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=335