Monday, October 10, 2011

Technology Assessments - Pros and Cons

Some of the pros for requiring the educators to complete a technology assessment are receiving feedback to the campus and district to evaluate our technology plan, comparing campus and district goals to actual educators’ results, tracking progress of technology literacy in the classroom and with students. The pros for assessing our students is to insure their technology requirements are being meet and identity areas of weakness that need to be address.  This survey will allow the district and the campus to apply for grant funding to support the technology integration and provide for additional technology needs to better serve our students and staff. A pro for the student assessment is to see what technology they have mastered.

A con of technology assessment is the results are only as good as the data collected. For the student assessment since there is really no pass or fail grade associated with it, they just do not have the same incentive to do well on this assessment.  I actually proctored the last 8th grade technology assessment and found this to be true. Student were more concerned if it would go on their permanent testing records and once they found out it was not going to count against them, they just did their “best.” Teachers are forced to complete the STAR chart each year and many do not put the thought in it as needed, just another task to complete. Therefore, technology assessments really are not very accurate, just more a generalization of the climate of the campus or district.

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