Mosart Website

   The Mosart website was very interesting and informational.  This website was developed to make the assessments available and free for any pre-service teacher or any teacher who wants to help and aid their students to learn as much as they can. Each MOSART assessment instrument has a set of multiple-choice items for grades k-12 in the subject of science and to help the teachers see what kind of misconceptions the students are having and to prevent them.  These tests probe for any conceptual shifts to help the teachers realize what the students need and how to teach the students how to understand and learn from the misconceptions they have.  This website is a great tool to use because it allows teachers to be able to use a misconception based test and give it to the students to try to cover the misconceptions before the lesson begins. 

   This website does impact me as a teacher because it is a very helpful tool.  I remember in elementary and middle school how we would just dive right into a subject with out knowing the background of the unit or really anything about it except our misconceptions.  I really don't remember if we took a misconceptions quiz before the unit began but I am pretty sure we did not in most of my classes.  I think the misconception tests are a really good idea to use because it helps the teacher and the student.  It helps the student to start thinking about what they are going to talk about and they start thinking about their own conclusions and own ideas of the topic.  It helps the teachers as well because they are able to see which student has what misconception and be able to cover them before, during and after the unit.  Then making sure that the students leave the unit with the right knowledge about the unit while leaving their misconceptions behind.  I am glad we got to visit this website because I think it will be very useful!