Assessing With Technology and Assessing Digital Literacy / Week 7 / ED 7726

Assessment

The focus this week was twofold - assessing with technology and assessment of digital literacy. Having each member of the class post links to relevant websites along with a summary and evaluation provides an excellent resource for all of us.

Assessing a student’s digital literacy is critical, yet it is often ignored. As adults, we frequently assume that students are digitally literate since they “digital natives” in a sense. Most of the students have grown up with technology; they can’t remember a time when people didn’t have computers and cell phones.

They may be digital natives, but what do they really know?

However,  I now realize that being able to post on Instagram or create a Vine does not necessarily qualify a person as “digitally literate.” Students must be able to navigate the web effectively and safely. Evaluating the validity of sources is also a critical skill. The link to the  TRAILS-9 website, which Christel posted, is an excellent and quick way to assess whether or not students can develop a topic, identify potential sources, develop search strategies, evaluate sources and recognize how to use information responsibly and ethically. The assessment is quick, practical, specific, and provides necessary information.

How can we utilize technology for assessment?

            Blogging is another digital tool which is excellent for assessment. Monica Hayes included a link for The Reading Workshop . The blogging rubric presented on the site can be used and easily adjusted to assess student understanding and/or digital literacy. Laurie Brandl also mentioned the use of blogging as a means to assess students. Blogging is an excellent medium for students to self-assess and provides opportunities for positive interaction between students. One common thread is that successful assessment is embedded into the classroom. The video posted by Laurie,  Assessment is a Technology, makes this very clear. Students benefit from teacher feedback, as well as self-reflection and peer reflection. After reading this week’s posts, I am definitely going to include more self-assessment in my classes. I’m interested to try using social media tools such as Vine or Instagram for reflection, as suggested in the video. I agree that whenever students have to think about their processed and evaluate their own work, the learning is enhanced.

I am sure that the more I learn about using technology for assessment, the more I will use it. Carl Pastor discussed using technology increasingly for “hands on” assessments. Students are no longer just consumers of information, but their assessments should show that they are also producers and creators of information. Josh Lambert also mentioned the importance of aligning the learning goals with the assessment. He noted that technology can be embedded to asses what a student can do (quantitative) and how deeply a student thinks on a topic (qualitative). Cari McKee recommended Socrative and Lino which I hope to try out soon. In my reading for this week, I saw those sites endorsed in multiple articles.The  article by Clarke-Midura & Dede, which was posted by Mimi Knibbs, makes the point that point that many teachers are not using technology to its full potential for assessments. I plead guilty as charged! However, I look forward to trying some of the easily available tools. Embedding technology into lessons will increase student engagement and will facilitate both formative and summative assessments.

Image Credits:

Baby

Blogging

Assessment Wordle