Task
design and assessment is central to many educational conversations today, and it’s hard not to think about how the use of educational
technology can really lend itself to this work.
As more and more students and teachers use online
collaboration tools, it seems to me that assessment is an easy fit.
Let me give you an
example.
I can pick any web 2.0
tool that’s on the CBE’s Accepted Tools list, like KidBlog and be able to see a
child’s learning process.
Why?
Well, blogging is a means for documenting thoughts and ideas that can be shared
across a platform while receiving feedback.
The feedback is important in this process because it offers
the writer an opportunity to reflect on new ideas and suggestions for future
work.
The intent is that the
writer continues to blog and reader’s can see how the writer develops as they
share new ideas.
But blogging is
only one way of formatively assessing student work.
I’d like to share another example.
With the release of Google Apps for Education in the CBE, a
whole new world of opportunity to engage, connect, and assess has opened
up. Google offers a variety of
apps including Drive, Sites, Groups, Gmail and Calendar, all with their own
unique purpose. The common feature
between all of these apps is the ability to collaborate simultaneously with
many users. To fully understand
the capacity of this environment, I will zero in on Google Drive.
Google Drive consists of Documents, Presentations,
Spreadsheets, Forms, Drawing and the ability to add even more. With Documents, students can work together on a project where each individual student
contributes their own work.
Through the revision history available to them and all those sharing the
document, it’s easy to see who is writing which part of the project.
The share feature allows users to
invite others into the document, including outside CBE contacts, like
parents. Imagine that. A place where parents can
come in at any time, as long as they have Internet access, read their child’s work, and be able to comment (if the permission has been set). The teacher can also comment and
provide feedback along the way so the students know how to improve. If that sounds too busy, permissions
can be set to read only, and parents can have a discussion with their child or email personal comments
directly. The other neat feature
about Google Drive is that users can upload all types of documents, images, and
videos, and be able to share in the same way. I believe this app supports the shift in education towards a more student-centered focus.
Before closing, I’d like to also
mention that Google Forms is a great way for users to conduct summative
assessments. Teachers have been
using Google Forms to create pre and post-assessments to gauge where a child is
in their learning. To know what a
student knows, what they want to learn, and what they have learned at the end
of a task (commonly known as K-W-L) is one such example. The responses are easily submitted and
the data is compiled for easy viewing.
The teacher can then print off graphs and charts to share, or can make
visible the responses to each person submitting a form.
Assessment plays an integral role in education and we would
be completely amiss if we did not incorporate educational technology into
the conversations. There's so much possibility. We just have to enter.
Specialist, Innovation and Learning Technology
