I’m struggling. I’m dualing the tail end of one EETT project and thinking ahead on for our consortium’s next project.
What % of 8th grade students are technologically literate?  How do you measure how teacher professional development impacts that number?
Coming late into this current project, I thought maybe we were onto something teaming up with LearningPoint Associates to administer their TechPoints 8th Grade Technology Literacy Assessment.¬† It’s a nationally recognized assessment designed and tested by an organization I have found to be reputable over the years.¬† Except…
- I watched student gaze at the screens apathetically as they filled out yet another assessment.
- A 79 question multiple choice assessment can, at best, measure what students know.  It struggles to take into account what students are able to do with technology.
- A librarian colleague tossed some of the material into a readability instrument.  I addressed LearningPoints with this question.  Their response indicated that they had not formally measured the readability of the exam.
So.¬† We have data.¬† Does it mean anything?¬† I’m not sure.¬† Looking within Wisconsin, everybody is playing with different assessment instruments.¬† These results will be collected at the state level and forwarded upstream to the feds this summer to help, in part, determine whether federal funding for technology in education is effective.¬† What are you doing?¬† I hear one state conducts their state tests online.¬† Completing the online assessment is an assessment in itself.¬† They now have proof that these students are technologically proficient.¬† While their approach seems so very wrong,¬† they haven’t spent multiple years and millions of federal dollars figuring out ways to assess student technology literacy like the rest of us.
I looked to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills for answers this morning.¬† Our state just joined in a partnership with this group to promote this model.¬† Ken Kay, the president of the organization, has been talking about this project at technology conferences and recently spent time in our state kicking off the partnership.¬† (Chase the link to the Apple Learning Interchange, it’s worth downloading the audio.)¬† For this initiative to be successful, it needs a strong assessment component.¬† A solution to my problem?¬† Well, I’m not sure.¬† The aforementioned TechPoints survey is listed in their database.¬† I chased the trail over to ISTE’s assessment…advertised as a series of 30 minute assessments that go beyond multiple choice and have students apply skills.¬† I jumped to the site to find that the tool is “permanently discontinued” as of June 2007.¬† Back to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.¬† I downloaded and skimmed their report The Assessment of 21st Century Skills: The Current Landscape.¬† The message I got:¬† It’s hard to measure.¬† There are a few options out there.¬† No single measure does it all.¬† We could easily assess our students up the wazoo with 5 or 6 models and spent the rest of our lives making meaning from that data.
I digress.¬† I can’t solve this issue.¬† I looks like even ISTE has a hard time figuring it out.
What sold me on the Partnership for 21st Century Schools was Ken Kay talking about an example “21st Century Assessment”.¬† All 8th grade students will be able to use a GPS device to plan and propose the next location for a park within their community.¬† No doubt, we need more examples like this to bring to our teachers.¬† Chew on that idea for a bit.¬† But does this type of learning really ever translate to answer the quantitatively driven educational landscape?¬† How do I “sell” this type of logical idea in this era of “accountability”?
I’ve talked too long.¬† Any ideas and/or experience?
{ 3 comments }
John, first off, you’ve a great blog. Next, I don’t know how you go about finding out technologically literate through a bubble test. My experience with this type of testing has not been favourable. I like the idea of using an online test and having it have students demonstrate their literacy through using the tools. We are going to be doing a survey for our school in the near future and will be going online as students expressed a preference for this over the bubble type test. We’ll see how this works in the not-to-distant future. I’m convinced that we need to get past this “what are the marks?” to look at it from a problem solving angle with the students demonstrating understanding and use of knowledge. As for selling it, that will be extremely difficult. People are still consumed with data, data, data. We want to crunch numbers and demonstrate that we are doing great. Maybe begin by giving them Daniel Pinks book. Or the podcast interviews with Alan November. Or, get them to solve the problem with a GPS! That would be something to see! I really don’t have any good ideas since my sell job isn’t working here either! I’m still a lone voice crying in the wind. Sigh:( Be honest and speak from the heart or get the kids to show them. Who knows, they just might listen!
Hi John,
I’m with Generation YES. We’ve been struggling with the same questions and came up with a tech literacy program called TechYES that relies on authentic assessment of student technology projects. We think students should be allowed to choose projects that reflect their own interests (both in content and in technology used). It’s crazy to have students go lockstep through these brainless exercises and tests that don’t have any connection to the real world. Even online assessments that test performance in fake environments isn’t going to help students use real technology when they really need it.
It’s only because people are so scared of assessment that we get ourselves into these dilemmas. We have to learn to trust teachers and kids to do the right thing, and build materials and support systems that encourage authentic use of technology with built-in formative assessment.
Interesting John. You really hit some tough spots on this one for those of us who have to account for student learning to parents, other admin and board members (perhaps politicians??).
Although I am spouting over simplification here, I will venture to say that we in the education field have lost sight of what was once a revered method of program evaluation; classroom assessment. One will have to go back not that far to find the time when all of the hard work of the classroom teacher was relegated to what I call “second class”. Sadly, the standardization of assessment has also lead to a pervasive lack of instructional differentiation and a long list of school failures. Back in the early 80′s when I was in teacher school they taught us to assess, instruct, assess and remediate. Now I see folks in classrooms even more worried about content rather than skills and processes.
My answer: Build upon classroom based assessment and work to quantify it by tracking student learning data that our teachers can collect.
Is it perfect? Nope. But neither is anything else. The difference is that the students actually learn something while working through the assessment tasks and yes… the school (and whomever else) get assessment data to show learning or the lack there of. Consistency of assessment training to me is key. We must build upon assessment literacy.
GREAT post John!
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