Some essential features for constructed-response and selected-response assessments are the types of questions constructed, such as questions that would be verbal information or concrete concepts. Also, making sure you have constructed good questions and have created ILOs are other essential features. Good assessments start out with an ILO and then have a question pertaining to the topic being taught. Also, a good assessment has a pre-assessment, a within-instruction assessment and a post assessment to assess your students learning capabilities. Constructed-response and selected-response are two different types of assessment that are important to use accordingly for each type of learning in order to gauge your student’s learning capabilities.
    I think students should be introduced to assessments at a young age. Even starting in preschool, teachers use assessments  to see how much their students know. For younger children, doing a simple  assessment with them, which might include asking them questions verbally and  showing pictures and letters. For older students, asking them questions verbally  in class about the topic is a good way to introduce them. Then, creating a  written assessment for them to do would be good for the teacher to use to assess  their learning.
 
     Learning hierarchies are a good way for teachers to be able to create an assessment for their students. It helps them to evaluate a student’s performance for a certain topic. An intended learning outcome is similar to a learning hierarchy in that it is an assessment of what students should know. ILOs are good for teachers to use because they are an organized way of assessing students on what they should know of a certain topic and what their mastery skills should be. Students can also use learning hierarchies and ILOs to create their own assessment of what they should understand on a certain topic.
     Students should be introduced to learning hierarchies in later elementary years because they are more complicated. The way in which they should be introduced should be through first explaining what a learning hierarchy is. After a good foundation and understanding on learning hierarchies, the teacher can then give the students an assignment to create their own. By students creating their own learning hierarchy on a topic they have learned in class, the teacher can evaluate their understanding on that topic. This also helps the student to understand more a certain topic learned in class.
 
     Concept maps can be helpful in many ways and have many valuable features. A concept map is a great way to organize information and ideas on a certain topic and is a great visual to help people learn, especially those who are visual learners. Introducing concept mapping at a young age can be very helpful for students in the future. As they get into harder classes, concept mapping can be very useful to help them learn and the early introduction they had to it makes it easier for them to use. Besides organization, concept maps help to show patterns and connections instead of memorization of certain topics. They show the key concepts that need to be focused on for a certain topic and can even be used as an assessment for teachers to see how much their students know on a certain topic.
     Students should be introduced to concept mapping around second or third grade. They know how to read at this grade level and a concept map gives a good visual to understand certain topics.  Students should be introduced to concept mapping first by the teacher explaining to them what a concept map is and how it is used. Examples are a great way to help introduce them and can help give students a good idea of how it can be helpful in learning.  After students understand what a concept map is, they should learn how to create one themselves. Working in groups is a great way for students to help each other out in creating a concept map.
 
    Databases are a great way to save documents on the web that you could access from any computer. Some of these databases include weebly, google docs, and grubba. They each have a variety of custome feature that you can use to create databases.
    Students can be introduced to these databases by having them complete projects on google docs and present the projects to the class. This allows for everyone to see how certain features were used.

Below are some summaries of Databases:

Weebly.com>Contact Form
Weebly.com’s contact form is very useful for certain purposes. You can put in what information you want the people visiting your website to give and can control what is required before the submit it. It, quite honestly, reminds me of a address book, only instead of having to go and meet the person (employer, coworker, etc.) you can do communicate over the Internet and always have the information you need (unless they change, say, email addresses). An important thing is that this is not listed for anyone who visits your page to see, so if you fill it out you won’t get some annoying spam from somebody you don’t know. Also, the do offer online help in the form of readings and you can send in your question to a member of the support team. However, if you know who you are looking for, there is no way to search through the names quickly. Also, if you want to share large files, you have to buy there “Weebly Pro.” I think that there are better ways for sharing files, but as a  resource to share information, thoughts, and possible job oppurtunies it is a realitvely good resources for students and teachers (although, I am more incline  to say that it is a better resources for teachers then students).

Google Docs>Form
Google Docs has many useful properties to its forms. The is a large amount of templates available to customize your form. The data type is similar to Excel in the form of doing calculations. The negatives of Google Docs would be that I could not find the a good search options on the tool bar. Also the help is in the form of reading materials not one-on-one. However, the Google Docs Team does inquire at the end of the help page if there is any way that they could be more clear in their instructions. The best property of Google Docs would be the ability to share your files through a cloud network with whom ever you choose. This is an ability  that can be used in the classroom by student to work on group projects together  (just like we do). Overall, I find Google Docs to be a good resource for  students and teachers.

Grubba.net
At first glance, it looks like  Grubba would be a place for businesses. When exoloring the site there were many  different options great for people who want  to keep track of the things that  they collect.  As a user, you could keep track of your music , book, journal,  game collection, etc.  It was hard to distinguish if  this site had some of the  qualities because most of the features you could not  access unless you had data  inserted in your “form.” Overall, this would be a very good database resource.  It has a quick and advanced search option which is extremely helpful handling  large amounts of data.  I was not able to figure out how to share data which, if  this is not possible, would be a big downfall using Grubba.  It also helped that  this site contained a tutorial that demonstrated how to use some of the features  found on the blog that were confusing to use at first. Teachers could easily use  this to keep track of grades,attendendce, etc. 
 
    There are many valuable features to a spreadsheet. First, the presentation is  great. When a teacher creates a spreadsheet, she will be able to very organized.  If the presentation of the information is easy to read, it will be that much  easier to understand. Students do not need data or information presented to them  in a complex format. Unfortunately, the students will not listen to what the  teacher is talking about if the previous occurs. Therefore, teachers should use  spreadsheet to present their data or information in an organized and complete  fashion. Second, the math functions on a spreadsheet are useful to teachers. A  teacher can use a spreadsheet to make a grade book to keep track of student’s  grades. Before this class, I had never made a grade book. I was a good  experience for me to do the assignments in the course pack because it showed me  how to make a grade book step-by-step. Now that I know how to set up a grade  book I will be able to used it in the future. When doing calculation a  spreadsheet, the spreadsheet make simple to do big amount of data in minutes  instead of hours. For example, in a spreadsheet use can do the summation of one  row, and then use that formula as a format to sum all the other rows. All you  have to do it highlight the cells you want to do the sum for a click the fill  button in one of the menus. This help with time because you are do not have to  type in the same formula twenty times to sum each row. Third, a spreadsheet can  help a teacher make good visual aids such as tables and graphs/charts. A teacher  can use the table function of a spreadsheet to insert a table of information  into notes, worksheets, or homework assignments. Also, a teacher can use a  spreadsheet to make a graph/chart of data they are going to present to the  class. Once you make a graph/chart in a spreadsheet you can customize it, copy  it, and place it into a power point presentation.
    Students at the  high school level may be exposed to spreadsheets by having to do an assignment.  For instance, a student would have to create a table that represent something we  were doing in class. Also, a student could use a spreadsheet to make a  graph/chart for a presentation he has to present to the class where a visual aid  is required. Although today, a student can also get introduced to a spreadsheet  if he takes a computer class in high school. He would have to do many assignment  that just had to deal with spreadsheets. I believe this is a good thing for any  student to do, because once you know how to use a spreadsheet you can use it in  your everyday life and future classes.