Student Assessment Technology Technology can be used in the classroom for more than enhancing learning and teaching it can be used to assess students in both a formative and summative assessments. Students have a love of technology from the use of blogs, social media to online games. As a result students may find taking tests on a computer to be more enjoyable than doing a test in a more traditional manner of pen and paper. With the use of technology teachers can gather data from assessments and improve their teaching and how they approach a unit. Three tools teachers can use to assess their students with, improve their classroom with and implement in the classroom are Blubbr, Socrative, and Poll Everywhere
Technology to Facilitate Ongoing Efforts to Assess Student Learning Teachers have to keep their students engaged and finding new ways to do this can seem like a challenging task. Using technology to help assess students throughout a unit can be difficult but using technology can help. Teachers who use web tools to create their assessments follow ISTE standards 2 by being able to create, customize and provide students with varied assessments that are both summative and formative. Using technology based classroom assessments focus on the use of technology by teachers and students by creating learning products, promote technology skills and examine student strengths and challenges along with the outcomes of daily classroom instructional and social actives (Salend, S. J., 2009). Teachers can spend more time with students who are not understanding the unit being taught because using the technology biased assessments throughout the units help teachers see which students need a little more help and which ones are doing fine by using daily polls, quizzes and other short assessments that can be individualized or done as a class. When teachers use technology in the form of formative assessments they are using something that is both helpful and informative in monitoring the learning progress of students and can help make decisions about how to improve instruction (Salend, S. J., 2009). Using these assessments will not only improve the classroom in both the short and long term goals but also maintain student engagement. Blubbr: Blubbr is a web tool that allows for a teacher to create a formative assessments with videos to help explain what the next question as well as to help them understand what it is that they are doing. Using this program would be more of a formative assessment during a unit to see how much a student is learning and where their learning progress is at because of the videos that are a part of the assessment. In the classroom it would be use weekly to help students understand the main points of that week with reinforcement of information and help the teacher see which students are struggling and which ones are excelling on any given week or day. Socrative: A web tool that would best for summative assessments at the end of a unit because of the types of questions that a teacher can use when creating the assessment. This web tool offers teachers a choice of multiple choice, true and false or sort answer assessments to test student knowledge after the end of the unit. In the classroom this would be a good way to see how much students learned and what knowledge was gained during the unit. It gives teachers the chance to save, examine and use their student data to change the unit and the information that is covered to give students a better understanding in the future. Poll Everywhere: Poll Everywhere, can be used daily to help teachers see what parts of the daily teaching is being understood by students, daily questions and quick information about the class as a whole. Poll Everywhere is able to be accessed by a computer, tablet or smart phone and results given in real time. This program would be used in the classroom as a formative assessment tool helping to change and direct the teaching and learning progress of students on a daily basis. Formative and Summative Assessments Formative and summative assessments are different and have different uses throughout the school year. A formative assessment is described as “a wide variety of methods that teachers use to conduct in-process evaluations of student comprehension, learning needs, and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course (Hidden curriculum, 2014, August 26)” Formative assessments are used by teachers to help see where students are struggling and where they are excelling during a unit. Meaning that formative assessments test and evaluate students’ progress within the unit. Giving the teacher an idea of who may need extra help and who is doing just fine and can work independently. A summative assessment is used to “evaluate student learning, skill acquisition, and academic achievement at the conclusion of a defined instructional period—typically at the end of a project, unit, course, semester, program, or school year (Hidden curriculum, 2014, August 26).” Such as a final or an end of year project to see where the student is after completing all the work for the period of time. The summative shows teachers what a student has learned or not learned. Technology can be used to facilitate both by using online quizzes, Google Docs, and daily or weekly polls. Pros and Cons of using Technology to Facilitate Assessment Using technology to facilitate assessments to see student learning can have a positive impact on student achievement because “it supports students to engage productively, and assists them in the development of self‐regulated learning dispositions (Baleni, Z. G., 2014).” Not only can it help students learn to do their work on their own it can also provide a system for student support while monitoring learning and provide formative feedback throughout the course (Baleni, Z. G., 2014). Many parents may argue that the use of technology in the classroom to do assessments distract students by allowing them a chance to go online and use tools that may not be constructive to what they are learning. Though when students are able to get feedback quickly and are able to stay focused on their own it can make the classroom run smoother and allow for the teacher to work with students who may not voice that they are having issues with a subject other than through daily, weekly and unit assessments. Conclusion Assessments are an ongoing process in any classroom and are used by teachers to help their students. When assessments can be done regularly teachers are able to change lessons, work with students, and save information about their students as students need. When a teacher is able to help their students in ways that encourage the students and give them support students succeed at a higher rate making using web tools like Blubbr, Poll Everywhere, and Socrative valuable tools in the classroom for many teachers.
References Baleni, Z. G. (2014). Online Formative Assessment in Higher Education: Its Pros and Cons. Proceedings Of The European Conference On E-Learning, 43-47. Hidden curriculum (2014, August 26). In S. Abbott (Ed.), The glossary of education reform. Retrieved from http://edglossary.org/hidden-curriculum Salend, S. J. (2009). Technology-Based Classroom Assessments. Teaching Exceptional Children, 41(6), 48-58.