Using Nota as a Formative Assessment Tool

1. By Kelly Geigner, TEC 546 Using Nota as a Formative Assessment Tool

2. What is it? • Nota is a collaboration tool similar to an online whiteboard. Multiple users can work together to design their nota board with colors, images, pen marks, text, and built in shapes. • Nota boards can have multiple pages, and can be made public or private. • Nota boards can easily be shared via blogs, embedded into sites, or printed.

3. How can it be used? • The same way teachers have been having students make “posters” for years…only now it can be done instantly online with multimedia features. • Examples include: • “About me” posters • Reports on historical figures • Diagrams and explanations, “how-to” • Infographs • Organizing thoughts and brainstorming for a project

4. Isn’t there something like that online already? • Yes. What makes Nota unique is its simplicity. Nota is not designed for business use, and is not as feature rich as Glogster, which some teachers will find attractive. • Nota is free of advertisements. • Nota has minimal text to read, which is ideal for low-level readers and ESL students. • Nota lets you easily search creative commons photos from flickrand add them instantly. • Nota lets you add video, wikipedia info, and more.

5. 4 Unique Ways to Use Nota • Have students create a profile of a famous person they admire, but DO NOT include the name of the person anywhere. Have other students guess the person and why the student found them interesting. • Use Nota as a survey keeper; share the board with students in a group and have them paste information to it. • Have teachers in the building create a teacher profile to paste on the school website for new students to see. • Have students choose a business, park, or location in their home town and create a board about it. Share the boards on the class website and direct local visitors to learn more about that location.

6. How much does it cost? • Nota is entirely free! • Nota is web based and runs on PCs or Macs. • Nota requires flash, and therefore will not run on the iPad at this time. • Registration is required (username, password, and email address) to access Nota.

7. What are the drawbacks? • Though there are many one-click ways to share the created board, a quick email link is not provided. • I found some of the features were limited when I used this in Internet Explorer; it worked much better for me in Chrome. (This is only a drawback if you are limited to IE.)

8. How do I use it to drive instruction? • Nota can be used as a unique formative assessment, having students create a board to demonstrate the material previously taught. • Example: After a unit on WWII a teacher may ask a student to create a Nota board that shows information about how the war started.

9. How do I use it to drive instruction? • Like any formative assessment, teachers can view the results to determine if the student has grasped the concept or not, and may need additional practice or reteaching. • Alternatively a teacher could create a board on a topic with factual and misrepresented information, then ask the student to edit the board so that it shows only the accurate information.

10. Does Nota allow for differentiation? • Yes. Teachers are able to increase or decrease the amount of information they require students to put on a board easily, without having to embarrass students by using a different program.

11. Resources to Check Out • Nota was featured as a 2011 winner of AASL Best Website’s for Teaching . • View a presentation on using alternative forms of assessment, such as posters, in the elementary classroom. • Read this article regarding using posters as a means of assessment.