Increasingly, teachers are using technology to embed assessment into instruction and provide immediate feedback on student understanding. But rather than simply buying additional technological bells and whistles, educators should clearly define why and how technology will further the formative assessment process and enhance student learning.
Every classroom at Nantucket Elementary School in Crofton, Md., is equipped with an interactive whiteboard and three student computers. Teachers wear microphones so that their voices are projected through their classrooms via surround-sound speakers. "Clickers," also called "student response" or "classroom response system technology," are used in all of the classrooms. April Crovo, a 1st grade teacher at the brand-new school, is thrilled that she gets to use all of these technology-based tools with her students.
Crovo is able to assess student progress on a daily basis with the technologies. Crovo's students write their answers to math problems on the interactive whiteboard or cast their votes for multiple-choice questions using the clicker technology. "Everything is interactive," says Crovo. "As a teacher, you can really see who understands what. It's easy to gauge student understanding."
Harry Tuttle, an education consultant, agrees that formative assessment is an important instructional practice that can provide teachers with the information they need to help students achieve. "I believe that formative assessment involves not only measuring the students' progress, but also giving the students new strategies that will allow them to be successful," he says.
The tools Crovo uses—and others such as web-based surveys, assessment software, digital video recorders (DVRs), blogs, wikis, online quizzes, and tests using virtual reality—are just a sample of the technologies teachers can use for formative assessments. Some formative assessment tools even align with state standards. While there are many benefits to using technology-based tools for monitoring students' day-to-day progress, educators should strategically choose and properly use the most appropriate tools for meeting the school's defined learning goals.
Picking the Right Tools
With all of the technologies available to teachers, which are the best tools to use for formative assessment? According to Bill Ferriter, a language arts teacher in Wake County, N.C., it depends. "Any digital tool can be used for formative assessment," says Ferriter, who often writes about using technology in the classroom on his blog, The Tempered Radical. "The trick is matching the tool with the kinds of skills that you want to measure," he says.
"If a teacher is assessing a student's ability to identify and correct common grammatical errors in writing, then a wiki is the perfect tool because it allows teachers to look carefully at the content of the revisions that students make to a piece of writing," Ferriter says. And if the goal is to assess a student's ability to take a position and persuade a larger audience, then having students create, maintain, and contribute to a blog is a great means of conducting a formative assessment because the project allows students to practice the skills necessary for communicating with a broad audience, Ferriter says.
Also, if making instant adjustments during the course of instruction is important, then clickers "are the right tool to use because they allow for quick changes in direction," Ferriter adds. Precisely for this reason, Crovo uses clickers with her students to immediately collect data on student understanding, based on how students answer questions when they "vote" with the remote control clickers. When students cast their votes, the system tells Crovo who didn't vote, who got the question wrong, and who got it right. The information comes up as a pie chart, which can be switched into a bar graph. The data immediately show Crovo and her students which questions were the hardest and in what areas students need more work.
The data generated from the clicker system also help Stacy Fleisher, a 4th grade teacher at Nantucket Elementary, easily differentiate her instruction based on her students' comprehension. "I know if I need to reteach a topic to the class or small group, or extend the material to a group of students. In addition, I am able to give work and homework based on their understanding levels."
According to Ferriter, before deciding which tools to purchase, teachers and administrators should develop a clear vision for what they want their students to be able to do in the classroom and then choose technology that will measure student progress on development of particular skills.
"When there is alignment between the skills that teachers are trying to assess and the tool that they're using for assessment, the synergy is beautiful," says Ferriter. District and school leaders may waste time and money, Ferriter adds, when they become enamored with "whiz-bang gadgets and end up investing in tools that don't match the practices they want to promote."
Judy Rogers, a 5th grade teacher at Stevenson Elementary in Bellevue, Wash., uses DVRs with emerging readers and has the students read a fluency passage into the DVR. She then manually marks errors on a copy of the same passage and analyzes it to look for patterns of errors and evidence of strategies students might be using or not using, such as whether or not the students read right through punctuation or self-correct for meaning.
"DVRs allow me to hear more kids per day, and to listen to reading they do at home. And it's motivating and engaging for the students," says Rogers. She keeps track of types of errors, strengths, needs, goals, and accuracy rates on various spreadsheets and other student records. Organizing the information in these ways helps her see how students are progressing.
Investing in Learning
Purchasing and implementing technology to conduct quality formative assessments can be costly both in terms of funds and staff time; therefore, to avoid wasting resources on technology that doesn't do what teachers need it to do, teachers and administrators should be clear about their reasons for making the investment. "The goal is not to just have cool technology," says Bill Tucker, the chief operating officer of Education Sector, an education think tank.
Before signing a check, education leaders should ask their teams, How can we create better formative assessments, and what do we need? Without proper planning, teachers can become discouraged when they take the time to learn the hottest new technology only to find the tool doesn't really fit their instructional needs. Tucker also encourages school leaders to factor in the additional costs for the necessary professional development, training, and tech support when purchasing new technology. This ensures that it is implemented and used properly, rather than going to waste after teachers become frustrated with their lack of expertise or technical assistance.
Rogers says that in her school district, teachers use a helpful reading assessment tool that works with handheld computers and that "instantly calculates, tracks, and even analyzes the data for the teacher." Initially, every teacher in the district received 8–10 hours of training on the system, and they get a refresher at the summer training institute, Rogers says. Teachers also share tips on how they are using the technology with their students.
At Nantucket Elementary, teachers also received professional development when implementing the tools. "Our principal has done a wonderful job of giving us training experiences with all of the technology," Crovo says. The teachers also received training from the county's tech department and the companies that supplied the software. Crovo notes that the initial learning curve for the teachers and students created additional work in the beginning of the school year, but now she feels more comfortable with the technology and her students are also getting the hang of it.
Engaging Students Through Formative Assessment
Integrating technology can provide teachers with instant data and offer a new, exciting challenge for students. Rogers says that the reading assessments she conducts with the DVRs motivate her students to work harder. "Sometimes I have students do a 'cold read' and we count their words per minute, and I show them their accuracy rate," she says. "Then they read it multiple times into the recorder, and then I check in and listen to them again. They can chart their own growth, which is proven to improve student gains in fluency," Rogers explains.
Crovo says integrating technology into the classroom doesn't just stimulate her students; she enjoys it as well. "It's so much fun to teach using technology," says Crovo.
