TFTL+Standard+IV

TF/TL Standard IV: Assessment and Evaluation

The performance indicators for this standard include assessing student learning, the collecting, analyzing, and reporting of data, and evaluating technologies for effective use (Williamson 88-89). When I was a member of the Site Based Decision Making Team (SBDM) at my previous district, I was working with my colleagues there on a campus plan based on identified needs that were specific to our campus. This experience was in many ways similar to the process we followed to create a campus plan to work on this standard. I really enjoyed working on the campus action plan and got to see this process in action on the SBDM team. We took it piece by piece and worked on make data-based decisions to help our students and faculty. It was good to be able to be a part of that process and get to see the results that doing that can yield. The online course creation process was not always user-friendly but the end product was very good and something that can be used to great advantage for my students. I am continuing to investigage more "real" resources for online course creation, such as spellingcity.com, thinkcentral.com, riverdeep.net, educationcity.com, and other.

Another activity that I worked on at my campus in relation to this standard was the move to electronic portfolios for our students (January, 2010). Instead of having a couple of writing samples that are passed from teacher to teacher in between school years, we are now working with students to formulate electronic portfolios that will move up each grade level with them. I attended a training on this and brought it back to my campus. We are using this tool as a more authentic form of assessment of student growth in their work over time. Our youngest students are doing hand written assignments as they always have, and those assignments selected for their portfolio are scanned into their file. Older students are doing more and more work in the way that they will in their future jobs: on the computer. The items selected for the portfolio for these students are then saved into their portfolios directly. This is still a new tool to us, but we are excited to be able to see student growth in a more long term way by doing this.

In sharing with our leadership team about a device I learned of while working in my previous district, I was asked to research Soundfield systems (September, 2009). This system is something that we now hope to be able to receive a grant to place in our classrooms. We would like for this to happen on our campus as a pilot, and then share our results with other campuses so that they may get this system as well. I helps teachers not exhaust their voices, helps student's attentiveness in class, and has many other benefits. I am already wishing we had this system, because after learning about it and talking to other teachers who currently use it, I think it would be very beneficial.

I was asked to create a presentation for our leadership team with TAKS data (January, 2010). We used this information and presentation to identify areas of need on our campus and plan needed interventions for student groups on our campus in preparation for the next round of TAKS.

Williamson, J. & Redish, T. (2009). //ISTE’s technology facilitation and leadership standards: What every K-12 leader should know and be able to do//. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education, pp. 57-99.