Technology in Evaluation & Reporting

As with assessment, the purpose of evaluation and reporting, ultimately, is to improve student learning. New approaches, and new technologies, provide educators with new opportunities to benefit students. Consider the fundamental principles of assessment practices, as per Growing Success, which are that assessment, evaluation, and reporting:

·             Are fair, transparent and equitable

·             Support all students

·             Are carefully planned

·             Are clearly explained to students and parents

·             Are ongoing and varied, and provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning

·             Help students to become independent learners

I feel that currently, with the prevalence of technology that we as educators can access, there has been a measured improvement in the way that evaluation and reporting takes place.

By definition, evaluation is the process of judging the quality of student learning based on established criteria and then assigning a value to represent that quality. Evaluation often occurs at the end of a period of learning. In a previous post, I discussed the idea of an online portfolio, such as Evernote, which allows for students to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways (multiple opportunities) and with a variety of mediums. This allows teachers to be fair to all students, and allows students to have multiple entry points into the same assessment criteria. Further, online portfolios like Evernote are useful because student marks can be inserted into Evernote Notebooks, which allows educators to provide comments and anecdotal notes, and also lets teachers keep all of their marks in one place which is useful when reporting. Consider, for example, a Student Success meeting regarding a student. You are asked to bring your notes on a student to a meeting, but to give the student success teacher and administrators a change to really look at these notes, you share the student’s Evernote Notebook in advance of the meeting. This allows teachers to arrive prepare to meet and discuss the student’s success, as well as what can be done to support the student.

The main pitfall that I can see for the use of technology with reporting and evaluation is privacy. Obviously, every board has their own assessment/evaluation policies, as well as their own privacy policy when it comes to student work/evaluation/reports. It is therefore necessary to consider these policies when it comes to storing any kind of student data in the cloud.