Evaluating and Assessing Students' learning

Chapter 4 - Designing Lessons and Developing Curriculum with Technology

Focus Question: How can teachers evaluate and assess students’ learning?

An integral aspect of the teacher’s craft is lesson planning. Within lesson planning, teachers automatically design ways to evaluate and assess student performance. We are constantly evaluating students before, during and after teaching a lesson. It is important for teachers to establish an appropriate pace that suites the class, and not only to determine the extent to which the students have grasped the concept, but also to re-evaluate the teaching techniques used.

 

Technology provides various avenues by which the teacher can test and conduct performance assessments, both as part of traditional measures such as tests and quizzes and in performance measures such as digital portfolios and student writing.(Maloy, Verock,  Edwards, Woolf 2010).The use of technology is not to be excluded in the process of evaluation and assessment. In fact, schools have realized that it profits them tremendously to utilize supportive evaluative software from as early as kindergarten. According to the School District of Collier County Head Start Program, in the fall of 2012, all children entering Kindergarten were screened using the Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screener (FLKRS). This assessment is comprised of 19 indicators of school readiness as measured by the Early Child-hood Observation System. (ECHOS) and two sections of the Florida Assessment for Instruction in Reading (FAIR). These software accurately measure student performance while encouraging schools to perform educational practices.
It is said that there are three factors that influence how teachers think about assessment. they are Personal experiences, standardized testing, and Teacher Tests. Personal experiences impact much of what we do and who we are and it is not always easy to unlearn certain things. We need to utilize more broader ways of assessment such as portfolios, creative writing, group work, daily conversations, and so on. Standardized testing are over-rated. Every effort is placed on students sitting and passing tests like the F-CAT and others. Finally, there are the teacher tests;  these I feel are just as important as the other two.

Tech Tool link: Web Resources and Apps for Lesson Planning
There are websites and applications (apps) that when utilized could prove quite useful to the teacher and students. Websites include the National History Education Clearinghouse (NHEC, which could is great for the history teacher. It offers an impressive collection of online resources including a state by state database of history standards, customizable lesson plans, online discussion forums, and short updates on research and analysis in the field of history education. I am particularly interested in the apps, however. apps such as the my lesson plan, today in history, iBooks, math ref free, penultimate, keynote, cram. There is a wealth of technology that, when used correctly, can impact the modern classroom in vast and dynamic ways.

 

Resources:

Maloy, R. W., Verock-O, R. E., Edwards, S. A., & Woolf, B. P. (2010). Transforming learning with new technologies. Allyn & Bacon. 

http://www.collier.k12.fl.us/headstart/docs/AnnualReport.pdf