Assessing with Technology

This week I had the pleasure of working with my colleagues, +Joseph Depalma, +Nancy Atterberry , and +Elizabeth Hick to research and reflect on the topic of assessing with technology.  We had two Google hangouts to share ideas, discuss content, organize thoughts, and create a Prezi to demonstrate our work together.  We broke the task into parts so that each of us could work independently.  All group members were productive, respectful, flexible, and helped each other learn about the intricacies of the presentation tool Prezi.  It was a true collaborative effort and the final product is here Assessment In The Digital Era Prezi . 

The topic of assessing with technology is broad and ever changing.  There are some tools which are free and some which are costly.  There are wide scale assessment applications such as SBAC and there are classroom level applications such as Socrative which provide immediate responses.  E-portfolios have made the archiving of  student work easy.  Blogging allows a student to clarify their thinking in written form.  The multimedia aspect of technology allows for assessment to take on a whole new form which may be a better assessment of students' different learning styles.  

Although this video on Khan Academy is from 2011, (old in tech terms), it demonstrates how technology can personalize learning, provide teachers with standards mastery data, and customize the learning experience in a flipped classroom.  The benefits of using technology in teaching, learning, and assessing are varied.  The teacher/school/district does need to invest a certain amount of energy into aligning the curriculum, instruction and assessment tools.  Caution should be exerted to use an assessment because it fits the learning target, not because it is new and different.  Providing evidence of learning is no longer solely a paper based process.  As we move more into technology enhanced assessments the only constant is that there will be change!