Carly Straight

Being comfortable using technology and understanding that technology is an ever-growing, rapidly changing field are important in today's workforce. As a teacher, it is valuable to incorporate technology in our own delivery of materials and instruction and in the submission of work from students. However, if we want students to use technology on their own, we need to make sure we are clearly explaining how each program works. We cannot assume knowledge from our students.

Teamwork is a hugely important skill in the workforce, and particularly aviation, which is what my students are being trained to work in. Proper communication and understanding between individual members are the building blocks of a good team. 

Critical thinking is a skill that should be valued in the classroom, in the workforce, and in the everyday life of the student. Encouraging students to share their points of view and to have discussions on content will help them learn to articulate their points and to see beyond their own limited scope. A large part of this is learning how to ask good questions and to be open-minded when hearing responses. 

This section stressed the importance of assessments beyond the typical multiple-choice exam. It is important to allow students the opportunity to express the knowledge they've gained in multiple ways, and perhaps in ways that are closer to their preferred styles of learning. This allows for deeper understanding as opposed to memorization, which does not always translate to long-term retention. 

I didn't realize that Canvas has an e-portfolio option. Having my students work on that over the course of the quarter would allow them to reflect on each individual assignment as it's graded and returned to them beyond just what their final score was. That reflection would hopefully encourage real learning and fewer repeated errors. 

The use of well-written rubrics can help turn what can often be subjective scoring into more objective scoring, which is fairer to the students. In addition, it gives the students a clear indication of what is expected of them and what they can expect to learn. Descriptive verbs used in well-considered objectives can help teachers bring students to deeper levels of understanding.

I need to include more formative assessments in my courses in addition to the summative assessments I currently rely on. This will give me more real-time progress on my students' areas of strength and weakness, which allows me to reinforce concepts that they are struggling with. Part of my implementation will simply be asking more open-ended questions more frequently. 

It is important for students to learn skills beyond just their day-to-day tasks. Having the solid foundation of soft skills allows them to prepare for any field they may want to enter and sets them up for success and potential promotions down the line. These are also skills that students need while they are in school, and it is important to build these skills into the curriculum as a way to encourage/require students to begin using them. The more comfortable they are using these skills now, the more natural it will be to use these skills in the future.

Once a rubric is complete, the process is not over. You need to evaluate whether the rubric actually serves its intended purpose. This can be done through feedback from coworkers and students and from the use of a metarurbic. 

It is fine to use already developed rubrics from the internet or from your school's resources as long as those rubrics specifically match the criteria you are looking to grade. If not, you can adapt them to match. A good rubric is fair for all students and would yield similar results if used by multiple people to grade the same assignment.