Technology in education is very much focused on assessing learning through authentic tasks. It is about bringing application into the academic setting. Another duty of technology facilitators and leaders is to evaluate new tools to determine how they will benefit students or even if they will.
Technology Facilitator and Leadership Standard 4: Assessment and Evaluation
This standard for facilitators is focused on assessing student learning through authentic tasks rather than simply using multiple choice questions and standardized tests. These tools have some validity, but their application is very limited and should never be used to determine the student's mastery of a concept. Ultimately, students should demonstrate mastery through an exercise that actually shows a depth of understanding and the skill or concepts relevance in an authentic setting. I work with teachers to design activities for students to apply the academic skills they teach to real world situations through the use of technology and to use rubrics to determine the student's understanding. rubrics are a tool that I really didn't use much in the classroom. I have begun to see the value for these tools more since I enrolled in this degree program.
Another aspect of this standard is evaluating programs and technologies and our use of them for effectiveness. In Instructional technology, it is very easy to get carried away with some "cool" device or application. We have to learn to determine how effective a tool, or our use of a tool, really is. One example I have encountered is interactive whiteboards. I really have no use for SMART or other interactive whiteboards. Many teachers love them, some come from other districts that have purchased them and others just get caught up in the glitz of a sales presentation. When I really look at the value of those devices, I see a $2500+ piece of hardware that teachers use to present lecture style to the class, or if students are involved, they are moving things around on the board. The same student involvement can be accomplished with sticky tack and sentence strips and never reach the expense of that whiteboard. What is the value of having a student walk to a whiteboard and move things around on that computer screen? Is the teacher's ability to present from the front of the room worthy of the expense involved with this technology? We do have projectors in our classrooms to allow teachers to utilize multimedia in their lessons, but the SMART or Prometian whiteboards are still $2000+ dollars over the expense we have made. Another technology that we are evaluating is iPods in the classroom. These are Internet capable computers that get our students closer to a 1 to 1 student to computer ratio. We give many more kids access to the Internet for research and online word processing and presentation applications. The cost of an iPod is significantly less than a laptop computer, but when you figure in the cost of the cart, and the other equipment necessary for syncing these computers the difference in value with a traditional laptop computer begins to equalize. Our pilot team is still evaluating this program and they love them. I work with them to evaluate based on actual benefits rather than the superficial excitement they produce. Our teacher training program also focuses on examining activities that other teachers have used and evaluating them for effectiveness. This is done to build a concept of what quality projects look like. It is very easy to design activities that look cool, but have very little relevance to actual use of tools or skills. They have to be able to determine where the real value of a tool lies.
Microsoft Education. (Producer). (2008). Vision of technology in k-12 education. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhoOG5Kf1w4
Williamson, J, & Redish, T. (2009). ISTE's technology facilitation and leadership standards. Eugene, OR: International Society of Technology in Education.
Technology Facilitator and Leadership Standard 4: Assessment and Evaluation
This standard for facilitators is focused on assessing student learning through authentic tasks rather than simply using multiple choice questions and standardized tests. These tools have some validity, but their application is very limited and should never be used to determine the student's mastery of a concept. Ultimately, students should demonstrate mastery through an exercise that actually shows a depth of understanding and the skill or concepts relevance in an authentic setting. I work with teachers to design activities for students to apply the academic skills they teach to real world situations through the use of technology and to use rubrics to determine the student's understanding. rubrics are a tool that I really didn't use much in the classroom. I have begun to see the value for these tools more since I enrolled in this degree program.
Another aspect of this standard is evaluating programs and technologies and our use of them for effectiveness. In Instructional technology, it is very easy to get carried away with some "cool" device or application. We have to learn to determine how effective a tool, or our use of a tool, really is. One example I have encountered is interactive whiteboards. I really have no use for SMART or other interactive whiteboards. Many teachers love them, some come from other districts that have purchased them and others just get caught up in the glitz of a sales presentation. When I really look at the value of those devices, I see a $2500+ piece of hardware that teachers use to present lecture style to the class, or if students are involved, they are moving things around on the board. The same student involvement can be accomplished with sticky tack and sentence strips and never reach the expense of that whiteboard. What is the value of having a student walk to a whiteboard and move things around on that computer screen? Is the teacher's ability to present from the front of the room worthy of the expense involved with this technology? We do have projectors in our classrooms to allow teachers to utilize multimedia in their lessons, but the SMART or Prometian whiteboards are still $2000+ dollars over the expense we have made. Another technology that we are evaluating is iPods in the classroom. These are Internet capable computers that get our students closer to a 1 to 1 student to computer ratio. We give many more kids access to the Internet for research and online word processing and presentation applications. The cost of an iPod is significantly less than a laptop computer, but when you figure in the cost of the cart, and the other equipment necessary for syncing these computers the difference in value with a traditional laptop computer begins to equalize. Our pilot team is still evaluating this program and they love them. I work with them to evaluate based on actual benefits rather than the superficial excitement they produce. Our teacher training program also focuses on examining activities that other teachers have used and evaluating them for effectiveness. This is done to build a concept of what quality projects look like. It is very easy to design activities that look cool, but have very little relevance to actual use of tools or skills. They have to be able to determine where the real value of a tool lies.
Microsoft Education. (Producer). (2008). Vision of technology in k-12 education. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhoOG5Kf1w4
Williamson, J, & Redish, T. (2009). ISTE's technology facilitation and leadership standards. Eugene, OR: International Society of Technology in Education.