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Goal Five: Assessment 

Tracie Weisz EDET698 Portfolio Class Goal Five: Assessment Spring 2014

The Alaska Toolkit brings one of the strongest aspects of technology integration to teachers, which is the ability to provide ongoing and varied assessment to their classroom with more ease. The ability for teachers to choose technology tools and integration ideas linked with the standards and based on their own readiness levels means that more teachers will be able to harness the increased power of assessment that comes with teaching with technology.

Integrating technology into instruction means that often, assessment is built in to the instruction by the virtue of the tool itself. Assessment becomes more accessible to the teacher through faster means of checking and feedback, but more importantly, greater student empowerment through self-assessment is one of the hallmarks of using technology in instruction.

Technology automates many of the processes that used to take longer when done manually. For example, even having students write in electronic documents, rather than by hand, builds in self-assessment with features like spell check and autocorrect. Students are now capable of doing more self-assessment for things like spelling and grammar, which used to take longer, given that the teacher or a peer would have to find the mistakes, correct them by hand, and then get them back to the student to fix.

Even simple web tools used in instruction can help students self-assess through automated feedback they get from the tools they are using. For example, a student who is being introduced to some basic geography facts about Africa might get a link to a web tool such as Sheppard Software's geography games. They can quickly practice and learn basic facts through automated game play, without having to wait from feedback from the teacher to determine how they performed.

Using videos and screen casts as available resources to supplement student learning allows the student greater freedom in terms of deciding and controlling the level of support they need. If a student grasps a concept the first time, they have the freedom to move on with their learning. However, if they struggle, they can turn to video resources the teacher has made available. Depending on the level of support they need, a student may use these multiple times, pausing and starting as necessary.

Integrating technology into learning means that the student has many more possibilities to create original products which demonstrate learning and knowledge in various ways. This allows for more project-based learning and performance assessments, which benefit both students and teachers. Students are given some autonomy in how they express their learning, and teachers can much more accurately assess and give important feedback on authentic student work. Teachers are also freed from spending excessive time on assessments that can be automated, thus spending more time analyzing and planning with data, and less time collecting it.

Click here to link to my post for EDET 637 - Differentiating Instruction Through Technology, in which I explain what technologies I use to allow students to demonstrate they have met the standards set in a rubric. These varied technologies are also found frequently as resources with different strategies - many assessment - throughout the Alaska Toolkit.

This is a video I created describing how I use tools in the cloud to deliver feedback to my students.These are strategies emphasized throughout the resources of the Alaska Toolkit.

Click here to link to my post for EDET 633 - Classroom Integration of Multimedia, in which I describe the assessment for a class multimedia project. These types of rubrics and performance assessments are found in the Advanced strands of the Alaska Toolkit.

Download my post from EDET 636 - Impact of Technology on Student Learning, in which I describe how blogging can be used for formative assessment. . Ideas and strategies for using blogging for learning and for formative assessments are found throughout the Alaska Toolkit.

Download my post from eDET 636 - Impact of Technology on Student Learning, in which I describe the possibilities of adaptive tutoring for learning and assessments. . Adaptive tutoring tools are infused throughout the resources for teachers in the Alaska Toolkit - it is one of the beginner level technologies that teachers are guided and encouraged to use immediately in their classrooms.

Download my post from EDET 636 - Impact of Technology on Student Learning, in which I describe how iPads can be used in the classroom for learning and assessments. . Ideas for use of mobile devices and strategies for integration are included in the Alaska Toolkit, as are ideas contained in this post.

Download my post from eDET 636 - Impact of Technology on Student Learning, in which I describe how technology allows students to build and curate their own eportfolios for learning and self-assessment. . The idea of using platforms such as blogs, wikis, and websites for learning, collaboration, and publishing artifacts of their learning is found throughout the resources in the Alaska Toolkit.