Using SkyDrive and Web Apps for assessment

Assessment for Learning helps students develop 21st Century Skills in order to become self-directed and life-long learners. Students are most commonly assessed at the end of a learning period, but continuous or formative assessment during the learning process will help them to achieve better results.

This tutorial is designed for educators who are new to SkyDrive and Office Web Apps and shows in simple steps how to create a collaborative learning environment where students will have the opportunity to be formatively assessed, self-assessed and peer-assessed.

In this tutorial you will:

1) Understand how to use SkyDrive.2) Use Office Web Apps for formative assessment.3) Collaborate with fellow teachers to create

Tools: Microsoft Office Web Apps; SkyDrive

ICT Skill Level Required:

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interdisciplinary activities for your students.

Educator Scenario

Lisa is a Literacy teacher who is preparing her students for final examination. Lisa believes that interdisciplinary learning is the key to better performance and to prepare students successfully for the workplace. She has been working closely with Sameer, a Social Studies teacher from her school. Both of them want to plan learning activities that define learning goals for more than one academic discipline and evaluate student progress in these disciplines.

They plan to introduce SkyDrive and Microsoft Office Web Apps to their students and to use them for the formative assessment of writing assignments.

This tutorial will help you use SkyDrive and Office Web Apps to create a repository for students’ work, which you will be able to access easily so that you can continuously monitor their progress.

1. You will need a Windows Live ID for this tutorial. If you don’t have a one, see how to create one

at this web link.

2. Log in to SkyDrive with your Windows Live ID. Create a folder as a place for storing files. You

can also use Microsoft Office Web Apps to create documents, spreadsheets, notebooks and presentations. Keeping your files in the cloud means that you can access them from anywhere and make as many changes as you want whenever you want. Since you and your students are familiar with Microsoft Office tools, you will immediately know how to use their online counterparts.

3. After you’ve created your folder, you can share it with your fellow teachers and your students. To

do so just click on Share and complete the form either by writing your students’ email addresses or by sharing it on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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4. Now upload a document with the assignments and tasks for your students and invite your

students to upload their writing as they finish it.

5. You can edit your documents online by clicking on Edit in Web Apps. All your changes will be

saved. This is great for making quick changes to your documents.

6. You can monitor student work and give them descriptive feedback in the comments section.

Encourage students to leave comments for their peers as well. This will help them build their critical thinking skills.

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7. A great feature of Office Web Apps is that you can keep track of all the changes that your

students made in the documents.

8. In case there are a lot of writing assignments that your students upload to SkyDrive, you can

easily sort documents according to different criteria.

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Further Resources and Ideas

Find out more about SkyDrive Six tips on how to make SkyDrive your cloud backpack Find out more about Office W eb Apps

Framework Alignment

UNESCO CfT – Technology Literacy (Pedagogy, Integrate Technology) and (ICT, Basic Tools) ISTE – Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity (1c,d), and Design and Develop

Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments (2b,c)

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