Technology is impacting our traditional educational philosophies, and has caused the knowledge needed to teach to surpass the knowledge and skills of many of our educators. Our students of today are entering our classrooms so much more technologically savvy than students from years past generations. It is crucial that educators find a way to make the connections with students in this technological environment. Assessing how individuals use technology can be used to help find areas in which we need to focus on to make these connects a reality. We can use technology assessments to drive student and teacher technology instruction. Technology assessments can also be use to report on the success of the instruction for both teachers and students. Assessing a student’s technological skills is used to create a base line to find the strengths and weaknesses of individual students. By assess what they know; we can create a curriculum based on their strengths and weakness in technology. With using the base line information, we can use the strength that the data showed to help learn in their areas of weakness. Assessments could become difficult to create because we are not only assessing the student’s knowledge, but also the student’s ability to process the knowledge with in technological. According to Malcolm Welch at Queen’s University, when we think of a capable student in technology education we envision one who is able to reflect while taking action and who can act on his or her reflections. As they demonstrate their capability, students will draw on a developing repertoire of skills and knowledge that includes designing skills, making skills and knowledge and understanding of materials and components, of structures, and of existing products. (Welch, 2012). The time, money, and manpower it would take to implement this type of assessment could become the disadvantages of assessing in this manner. The value from assessing a student’s technological knowledge can be collected and then used to measure and identifying the immediate needs so that a teacher can begin making changes in their classroom. The data that is collected from teacher assessments can drive professional development opportunities. Teacher assessments can help identify teachers that exhibit strengths in areas and assist colleges who require additional knowledge in those areas. A disadvantage to this assessment would be the time used and the validity of the assessment. In conclusion, we need to do our best to assess the knowledge and skills of our students and teachers. Keeping in mind the cost associated with the initial assessments can be recouped in the end by focusing on the needs of individual learners, rather than spending unneeded time and resources to teach what learners already know.
Reference:
Welch, M. (Jan. 2012) Assessment in Technology Education: What, Why, and How?
Retrieved from: www.project2061.org/events/meetings/technology/tech2/welch.htm
Brett Murrey
EDLD 5311/ ET 8050
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