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Assessment and Evaluation
Chapter Four of __ISTE's Technology Facilitation and Leadership Standards__ (Williamson & Redish, 2009) deals with assessment and evaluation. This is one of the areas that is wide open for technology integration. The use of technology in assessment opens the door for a wide variety of assessments and allows teachers new opportunities for differentiation. In discussing the required assessments in the No Child Left Behind act, the authors state, "These current conditions increase the demand for educational technologists to demonstrate how technology can improve assessment of student learning in the classroom, district-level benchmarking throughout the school year, and annual administration of high-stakes, standardized testing." (Williamson & Redish, 2009 p.78).

Handheld student response systems is one area discussed in the chapter. These devices have been available for over a decade, but are becoming increasingly popular in both public education and university level courses. In my own district the handheld device that works with the district furnished ActivBoards are used in all core area classrooms. These devices allow teachers instant feedback to determine which students understand the concept being taught and which need assistance. Not only can teachers use these devices for checking responses, but in many cases, "the teacher can print out a Study Guide for each student showing which questions were answered correctly and giving the correct answer for those answered incorrectly." (Pittler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007 p.49)

Another area discussed is the use of technology in alternative assessment. Students can be allowed to work on projects and represent their learning in a variety of ways. "When appropriate criteria for acceptable performances are in place, these student artifacts and reflections can yield insight into learning in different and often deeper ways than multiple choice, true-false, and matching items on traditional tests." (Williamson & Redish, 2009 p.79). This conforms to what I have already experienced in my own classroom. Allowing students to create a sample web page on a subject of their choice presented me with an interesting variety of products that all demonstrated the student's mastery or lack of understanding of the concepts that were taught.Even the method of assessment can in many cases be left to student choice. "Perhaps the most obvious use of Web 2.0 tools for assessment would be for students to be able to show what they know in a wide variety of media." (Solomon & Schrum, 2007 p.168)

The chapter also discusses some of the issues facing the use of technology in assessment and evaluation. There are issues of funding and the lack of federal requirements for reporting and using technology in assessment. There is also no accountability attached at present to the No Child Left Behind requirement for technology literacy by the eighth grade. In the large scale student assessment area, few states have the systems in place to track student achievement as measured on standardized testing across the grade levels. This data source has the potential to allow teachers to differentiate across all of their classes if it can become manageable data. My own experience with our district student data system does allow me to view student test scores on benchmarks and state administered tests for numerous years. Having access to previous scores does not break down which areas the student is struggling with, but does allow me to get a general feel for where they are in a specific tested area.

This chapter blended factual information about assessments using technology with my personal experiences. The larger area of challenge is not the individual student assessments, although there is a great potential there, but the area of data collection and analysis for improving instruction has huge potential to affect the way our students are taught and learn. I believe this challenges me and other technology facilitators to study methods and technologies that will help fill this role and easily provide the classroom teacher, school and district administrators the information needed to plan effective instruction for students. This is an area that I will need to discuss with my campus teachers as it relates to their individual classrooms and my peers in similar positions as it relates to the larger issues of district and state accountability.

In my field based research, I was able to develop alternative assessment methods involving technology for our Universal Design unit. I collaborated with my team and together we developed an interesting mix of assessment tools that allowed for differentiation among a diverse group of students. The Google site with the archived activities can be located [|here].

References

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). //Using technology with classroom instruction that works.// Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Solomon, G. & Schrum, L. (2007). //web 2.0 new tools, new schools.// Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.

Williamson, J. & Redish, T. (2009). //ISTE's Technology facilitation and leadership standards.// Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.