Learning Outcomes 6 & 7

Learning Outcome 6: Evaluate technology resources to facilitate effective assignments and evaluations

Learning Outcome 7: Utilize technology to collect and analyze data, interpret results and communicate findings

Activity

Last year while looking at instructional goals and assessments, I was overwhelmed.  In kindergarten, learning is developmental.  If a student does not master an objective initially, the teacher will retest that objective until mastery is met.  There are no number grades.  In other grades, the teacher teaches an objective and students take a test. The class then moves on.  This is not the case for kindergarten.  This system creates a lot of work for the teacher when it comes to assessments. 

Before finding a technology based assessment, I was creating spreadsheet after spreadsheet.  Now, I did love a good spreadsheet but it was too much paperwork to keep up with.  Not only did we need the pieces of the actual assessment (ex. cards, manipulative, etc.) but each test had a form of its own.  When you are testing thirty different objectives, that creates a huge portfolio that you have to manage and be able to deifier so you can understand each child’s strengths and weaknesses.  The purpose of assessments is to check for understanding and building intervention groups when mastery is not met.

Fortunately, I found a great online assessment tool called ESGI.  This online software gives you access to over two hundred premade test.  You also have the ability to create assessments easily too.  This program was created by a kindergarten teacher who understood the importance of merging technology and assessments while saving teachers hundreds of hours of assessing and paperwork.  ESGI keeps up with all data and has its own reporting system.  Teachers can use this data to create individualized lessons, small groups and whole group lessons.  The software automatically generates spreadsheets and pie charts.  As a visual learner, this was very motivating for me.  I wanted to see my class pie charts filled with green which motivated me to test often.  I can also easily see where my teaching gaps were.  If twenty percent of the class was struggling with an objective, I would create small groups and offer interventions.  If half of the class was not mastering an objective, I took that as a reflection of my instruction and planned a different re-teaching experience.  This was great for me as a teacher because it provided immediate feedback and allowed me to assess my own strengths and weaknesses.

Chart Example

Assessment should not guide instruction, meaning teachers should not teach to the test, but assessment is a reflection of a student’s ability to learn the curriculum.  Teachers should use assessments as a personal reflection.  I think sometimes it’s easier to blame the student for not understanding a lesson when they do poorly on an assessment then using that data as a personal reflection because they were not taught in a manner in which they learn best.  As a teacher, our goal must be to meet the needs of all students so that means that we must always be willing to change our instruction and be willing to provide different learning experiences to meet the needs of all learners.

I present professional development to thousands of teachers each year and it saddens me that many speak of how much they despise assessing students.  For them, it takes so much time, which lessens the time of actual instruction.  I feel very fortunate that I found an online service in ESGI that helps me to be a better teacher and saves me time.  My goal was to always give my students the best and because of that program, I felt challenged in my instruction and knowledgeable of my student’s data at all times.