DAVID SIPILIS CT10210160

TW30403 Language Testing for Primary School ... Discussions Due: Sunday, December 1, 2013 at 11:59 pm Reflection (10%) [Individual] What issues did you face when designing and developing assessment items for both the formative and summative assessments? (e.g. using Prezi as a design platform? [i.e. familiarization to the program, usage while designing the language learning material, sharing and editing with group members, launching it as a standalone program][please include other issues not mention above]) In this task, we are required to develop the assessment item using Prezi application (specifically for formative assessment). Honestly, Prezi is a new thing for me. I never used to this kind of tool for a presentation purpose before. I have only acquired a minimum understanding about Prezi. I have not heard about it before Dr. Lee introduced it to us. I still remember the way Ms. Jc delivers her lesson using Prezi; I found it very interesting, so smooth and fun. Its not like the PowerPoint all the information stays in one big page. Another problem I faced was, how I am going to adapt with Prezi in a short period of time. Where to start using and do the Prezi project, I need to discuss with my group members on how to do the Prezi since most of us didnt have the experience using it and most important thing is how to create a good teaching material using Prezi. It took me and my group an amount of time to learn how to use and create our Prezi project? For me Prezi is a great presentation tool for spicing up the mundane PowerPoint. It allows for new kinds of visualization and opportunity to link imagery to motion, which in turn creates a deeper understanding and retention duration. I also found out that, Prezi is not a typical slide-byslide presentation tool. We can do anything we want and manipulate the content anywhere on the page, which is a great invention! Another thing is this application is completely free compared to the PowerPoint. It is also accessible from any web-based computer, and we can easily create account using the Facebook account as well. The most interesting aspects about Prezi are the ability to have movement actually become part of the presentation. We do encounter problem during designing and developing assessment for both assessments. I face a little problem about the assessment items too. At first I look the easy way by scanning the selected questions. After we edited it we manage to prepare 12 assessment items, 2 set for each Band. Problem rise when we tried to answer the questions in Prezi. It took me for a few days more to get me back on.

How did you do to overcome the issues (problems)? Talks about Prezi, honestly this tool are new for me. Its so hard for me when tried to download it. It takes a few times before I succeeded. Even I watch a video at YouTube on how to download it and how to use it but I'm still blurring huh! I also ask my group members to seek clarification. I also went to sign in as a member in Prezi.com. Poor internet connection in my area also one of the big problems for me. We decided to build our own original assessments by referring to few workbooks. We referred to few workbooks. Its not easy to gain ideas as I thought when to build the assessments items for my mix ability pupils at my school. It took me a week to finish my parts for the assessment items, one for each band as requested by the rubrics. Our leader, Mr. Jackson asks to email it to our group members to seek for agreement. What issues did you face when designing assessment items (in both the formative and summative assessment) in relation to i. Objectives and outcomes as stated in the syllabus ii. Standards for assessing performance iii. Language testing theory and teaching and learning theory My group had chosen the Year 1 pupils for designing formative assessment. We referred to the Year 1 KSSR Teachers Guide. The standards for KSSR are also stated clearly. We decided to choose the listening and speaking skills as the skill that we will assess using the items developed. Therefore, we will try to develop 6 assessments altogether which are from band 1 to band 6 for a year 1 class. Luckily for our group, Abd. Rahman, Seri Dewi and I are teaching Level 1 classes in our school so we able to design the assessments items properly. The area that we had and ought to fully consider was the objectives of the assessment items. After several discussions and considerations, we made sure that the objectives were achievable and clearly measurable. Finally we produced a simple and unison objectives for the target pupils. We also need to consider the level of the pupils in developing the items. Therefore, the issues faced in this task is also identical to the first one, which are getting familiar with Prezi, connection issues and issues on how to save the items developed. In relation, the issues were already solved by taking solutions which involves discussions, trial and errors and ideas contributed by other group members. What challenges did you face working collaboratively and how did you overcome these challenges? We are a group of 5. Our hardworking group leader Mr. Jackson Lodius, our best techinician Abd. Rahman Bura, Norhafizah, Seri Dewi & myself, David Sipilis. For myself, Im teaching in Kota Marudu, Mr. Jackson in Lahad Datu, Hafizah in Tambunan and by the time Abd.Rahman in Kuala Penyu and Seri Dewi in Beaufort. Even so, it is not easy for us to meet up and have

discussions because we are teaching in different district Being in different places, this means some of us have poor internet connections, and this could pose problems since the item files were much too big to be uploaded in an email, because we can only upload up to 25MB of file in yahoo mail. Time constraint and distance are our main issue in working to discuss or meeting face to face about our group task. In the task given, we used Prezi desktop as the platform to develop our assessment items. This is because, Prezi online needs internet connections to work, and since some of us have poor connections, we decided to use the desktop version. Prezi desktop saves its file in .pez format and can only be opened in another computer or laptop without Prezi installed when shared. However, when shared, it saves the file into a zip and compressed format. The file that is shared is over 100MB of file, the issue is how we are going to share the finished items if that file is much too big to be uploaded with poor internet connections, and in addition, email services like yahoo mail can only upload 25MB size of files. After a few discussions with the members of our group, Abdul Rahman Bura suggested that we could use Google drive to upload the file. Google drive is an online file sharing service provided by Google. The service enables users to upload large files up to 15GB. We can share the file by sharing URL links to the file and at the same time enable us to download the file. Although it takes a long time to download, we managed to share the files successfully. Therefore, our issue on how to share the items is solved although we are staying in different districts. Our innovative and hardworking leader, Mr. Jackson had created a group to discuss through Facebook, Whatsup, by phone and also exchanging emails to send information, ask questions to seek clarifications. What challenges did you face during interaction with the lecturers and the learning materials and how did you overcome these challenges? During Face to Face interaction we ask a lot about this tool to our lecturer, Dr.Lee. We also use the Schoology to ask and seek clarifications during our Non Face to Face interaction. We also use the Social Network such as Facebook to interact with Dr. Lee. It so relax, enjoy and easier when we interact with him. Does this experience (challenges and issues) motivate and empower you to be a valid, reliable, objective teacher in carrying out assessment the classroom? If yes/no, why? Yes, this experience (challenges and issues) motivate and empower me to be a valid, reliable, objective teacher in carrying out assessment the classroom. Using tool likes Prezi in the classroom is widely believed to help teachers promote a constructive class environment and it is viewed by many researchers to have an influential effect on the teaching and learning process (Muir-Herzig, 2004). However, the integration of computers in the classroom may be difficult by some and may not be found effective in teaching and learning when introduced within the traditional curriculum setting (Jules Van Belle and Soetaert, 2001). Newby et al. (2000) argued that when the computer-based learning environment is implemented in classrooms, there is a need for the modification of educational goals.

Furthermore, from educators perspectives, with a variety of computer-based activities, computer can help facilitate needs and challenge students learning practices (Warschauer and Healey, 1998). However, many findings concluded that letting the students use computers in the classroom without any concrete activities that relate to language learning and without any understanding of the conditions of using computers in the classroom may hinder the total utilization of them (Bromley, 1998; Gunderson and Anderson, 1999; Hartschuh, 1999; MuirHerzig, 2004). Conclusion In terms of language instruction, the uses of computers have a great influence in education, especially in teaching the second language. Computer-supported learning environment is predicted to be one of the ways to give students an authentic learning environment and this condition helps students to learn English better than the daily classroom context (Egbert and Jessup, 1996). The change of the education system direction that now focuses on the social context and no longer has learning in isolation opened a wider perspective to implement computers in education. With good computers facilities and tool in schools may not promise a good use of computers in the classroom (Muir-Herzig, 2004) unless the objective of having computers in the school is studied and implemented. Teachers need to be guided on how to integrate computer use into their lessons and instructed regarding what learning software to use to achieve the best results. A lack of useful guidelines will slow the process of successfully promoting computer use in schools. Computer use in ESL teaching and learning can no longer be associated with individual learning activities undertaken in an isolated environment. Computer use can support and augment the learning and use of English by promoting the use of language in an authentic environment. However, integrating computer use into lessons focused on the extant curriculum requires the development and application of new approaches to teaching When recall back what our group have getting through to finished this task assessment, honestly Prezi gave me headache and for sitting down for several hours to download the tools and built the assessment for our mix ability pupils. By the way, it also motivates me to be a better teacher by bringing up a better lesson for my pupils in the classroom. The result we gained from the assessments also reliable and helped us a lot in preparing better assessment.