My students are signed up for Raz-Kids and Prodigy. Both of these websites provided monitoring of student activity and monthly reports on student progress. You are able to see how often the student is logging in and what levels they are attaining. These tools should be used for planning and not as formal assessment data. There is no way to insure the student who is logged in has actually completed the level in terms of assessment, and in fact the programs often provide valuable collaboration time in the lab as students help each other find their way through the different levels. I have just started investigating the Lexia reading program, and it too provides on line monitoring of student activity.
Digital portfolios are another way of use technology to assist with assessment. Photographs can be taken of artwork, group work and ‘live action’ activities and saved to a flash drive or on the cloud. It is not recommended that things be saved to the school server, as that is cleared at the end of the school year. With the ‘hub’ and D2L active within the HWDSB a student can now create a profile that will be with them for their entire career within the board (even if the switch schools). Although some individuals have been actively utilizing this set of tools already, it is new to most and there have been recent upgrades. It should prove to be a great asset for both students and educators.
Voice recordings, just like photographs, capture digital records of a student’s learning. Some students are unable to present in front of the class, but could record an oral presentation for the teacher. A teacher could make voice notes while walking the classroom and observing individual students or groups at work. It is a great way to quickly take ‘notes’ during the day.
Zombie Growl....Not a Student
https://soundcloud.com/kristine66/vn-20130613-00004/s-na0Hq
Video recordings, just like photos and voice notes, are an excellent way to document activities in the classroom. Whether recorded by the teacher, or students themselves, it provides a digital record of what achievements are being made. Having groups record their activities allows the teacher to be in two or three places ‘at the same time’. I find it is helpful to record group presentations because it allows me to remained focus on the presentation and I can go back and make individual assessments later. When taking notes, you often miss ‘the best parts’. (A word of advice….if possible, use a tripod.)
I am not very proficient in the world of excel, but know people who use it to input data and track student progress rather than the old fashioned class lists that I use. There are a variety of web-based data management systems designed for educators. Some boards, in particular in the secondary panel, provide a system for their teachers to input student data and it is all correlated for report card creation.
The HWDSB secondary panel currently utilizes MARKBOOK, and has for about a decade. The program is available for Windows, Mac and there is an App. It can be used to correlate and communicate data, analyze achievement, track loaned items and build web reports.
Next year, however, the HWDSB will be rolling out a new system for the secondary panel that will sync with the new POWERSCHOOL Student information system from Pearson. The elementary panel has not been officially told of a roll out for the new software. POWERSCHOOL is a web based data system that can be used to track attendance, seating plans, discipline and assessment reporting and is accessible via iPhones or Android cell phones. There is a parent portal and co-teaching section. The drag and drop schedule maker and seating charts seem very user friendly. There are many other tools that can be used for assessment and data management purposes that can be accessed for free or a small fee.
Some worth investigating are:
APPS
Teachable
• Integrates planning, tracking and reporting
Student Tracker
• Develop student profiles that detail historical and current data
Running Record Calculator
• Quickly calculates student accuracy and self-correct ratios
Socrative Student Clicker
• Works on any device with a web browser
• Student responses in real time
• High student engagement
For the PC:
Gnowledge
• Free site for designing assesments
eduCanon
• Interactive video creation for the flipped classroom
Seosimmo is a site I plan on looking into further for next year. A number of colleagues are using it and have reccommended it....
Seossimo
http://www.seossimo.com/?gclid=CLHT-72rjr4CFe87MgodMREAYg
Also worth looking into further….
Formative Assessments
by Dawson Education Services
Co-op Course Description
With the upcoming Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), it essential to prepare our students to be college and career ready. This training course will demonstrate ways teachers and students can use the iPad as a technology tool to assess. Various apps, strategies, and resources will be demonstrated throughout the course. Teachers will learn how to make better use of technology in formative assessments in order to prepare those students for the summative assessment whether it be the PARCC or other assessments. This also accompanies TESS Domains 1 and 4 for formative assessment
Formative Assessment Tools
https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/ipads-assessment-winning-combination/id600557773?utm_campaign=Listly&utm_medium=list&utm_source=listly
Great post Kristine, I love some of your ideas. I love that technology has make it so easy for us to record assessment data so that we can properly review it later. Recording a child's presentation through video instead of having to feverishly write and look up at the same time allows for more effective assessment. I remember as a child even I always felt like the teacher was looking down at my best parts, the parts I was the most confident about. Do you think that some teachers will maybe refrain from doing this because they feel it will take too long to go back over the footage?
ReplyDeleteI think it is possible but even having the footage to pick and choose from if they feel like they are unsure or maybe missed something would be very helpful.
Wow! What a thorough reflection and commentary on assessment. I resonated strongly with your examples on the use of audio and video assessment tools, especially for subjects that do not need to be "text" driven. Our tools of today provide many options for choice of medium and yet, teachers and parents continue to fall back on the written word as "demonstration". In your experience as a learner, have you used audio or video to showcase or demonstrate?
ReplyDelete