Erin Davis

Mrsdavismarinescience.weebly.com
EDU 225
December 21, 2014
Sonya Berges

Part 1: Assessment Technology

Kahoot is a great assessment tool. The link to the quiz created is:
https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/19921bd6-7c05-4923-8106-577ccc74e73e. This assessment is a basic
geometry quiz for grades 9-12 special needs class. It is on the unit of angles, types of angles and
how to find supplementary/complementary angles. This is a formative assessment which will
inform the teacher if the students understand the material in order to move on to the next section.
Each student will have 90 seconds to answer each question. This will give them time to do any
subtraction where needed. The answer key to the quiz is as follows:
1. Right angle

6.

149

2. 180

7.

30

3. 90

8.

50

4. Less

9.

60

5. more

10.

W and Z

The data from this assessment will be utilized to move on to the next section or improve teaching
skills for what needs more attention. Tutoring sessions may be scheduled for those who need
extra help.
Part 2: Blog Post
Introduction
Assessment is an ongoing process aimed at understanding and improving student
learning. It involves making expectations explicit and public; setting appropriate criteria and
high standards for learning quality; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting

evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards, and
using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance (Angelo, 1995).
Technology based assessments are extremely efficient in the classrooms. They help teachers
analyze which students understand the material and which ones need to focus on which subjects.
There are many different tools to assess with immediate results. A few of those tools are Write
To Learn, Summary Street, and STAR Assessments. These assessments focus mostly on reading
and math.
Technology to Facilitate Ongoing Efforts to Assess Student Learning
No longer are the days of proficiency testing with scantron answer sheets and a number
two pencil. Technology has made assessing students in the classroom much easier and
tremendously more accurate. There are many different websites which teachers are able to make
up their own quizzes, whether they are multiple choice, true or false, short answer, or in the form
of polls. These quizzes can be performed at school in the classroom or at home if needed. They
can be taken on computers, tablets, or any other mobile device, which makes taking them more
convenient. According to the Renaissance Learning website, Effective teaching moments are
shaped by insight. This is the purpose and the power of good assessment. Technology makes
assessments very effective. Teachers have immediate results to make up their data for the
placement of the students. Who needs more help and who is able to move on?
(Write To Learn) Write To Learn is a web-based assessment tool which focuses on
reading and comprehension. Teachers can utilize this in the classroom with each student. It
combines practice and assessment in reading and comprehension with expository writing about
what was learned (Landauer, Lochbaum, & Dooley, 2009). This tool also generates immediate
computer evaluations. This tool may be used frequently to encourage, enhance, assess, and

reward progress. Write To Learn could be incorporated into a weekly lesson plan, maybe more
towards the end of the week. This will help the teacher determine if the students completely
understood the weeks lessons.
(Summary Street) Summary Street is another web-based tool which gives learners more
practice and has frequent assessments and tutorial feedback on reading comprehension and
expository writing (Landauer, Lochbaum, & Dooley, 2009). Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), a
form of artificial intelligence that measures the semantic similarity of one passagesentence,
paragraph, or essayto another independent of the literal words used, is utilized as well. The
students get to choose the passage they would like to summarize. With LSA the computer can
inform teachers how much of the passage is actually understood by the summary. Students as
well as teachers are able to see the results and are able to see how close they are to any goals set
up.
(STAR Assessment) STAR Assessments are usually given at the end of the school year.
These are the assessments which are summative. They can help teachers determine which classes
the students should be placed in the following year. The STAR assessment focuses on reading
and math (Assessments Built for Insight). The STAR Assessments are available in six different
forms: STAR 360, STAR Reading, STAR Math, STAR Early Literacy, STAR Custom, and
STAR Reading Spanish. The STAR 360 allows the teachers to build their own assessments or
import one already made. These assessments help the students. If the student answers a question
incorrectly, the next question will be a little easier. If the student answers the question correctly,
then the next question will be a little harder to challenge the student. The questions are based on
the students responses.

Formative and Summative Assessments

Formative assessments are the evaluation for student learning according to a specific time
frame at different points is gathering various activities and assignments to make sure the students
are developing the knowledge, skills, and ability to master the content. Summative assessments
are the process of evaluating the student learning at any given point in time (Shelly, Gunter, &
Gunter, 2014) Write To Learn and Summary Street are forms of Formative Assessments. These
can be used in class to make sure the students understand the material. STAR Assessments are
used as Summative Assessments.
Pros and Cons of using Technology to Facilitate Assessment
As always when dealing with technology there is always the thought that if the servers
go down, there will no longer be electricity for the technology being used. As for the technology
itself, when dealing with multiple choice or true or false questions, students may guess at the
answers. When doing this, they may score higher than their actual level. On the other hand, they
could score lower and that will hurt them in the long run. For example, Avalon Elementary
School uses a program called Accelerated Reader. With this program they read books and then
take quizzes to see how much they understood. If a child just guesses at the answers and passes,
he/she will not benefit from it. On the positive side, these assessments help the students get more
excited about the testing because they get to use some sort of technology. Kids love using
technology. It also helps the teachers produce results faster.
Should a teacher only use technology to assess student learning? Why or why not?
No, teachers should also use old school pencil and paper. When performing a math
assessment, students are not able to work problems out on the computer, so it is double the work

to write out the problem, get the answer, and then type the answer into the computer. It would be
easier if they did it on paper only.
What is the importance of assessment technology in connection with the ISTE standards?
The importance of assessment technology in connection with the ISTE standards is that
the tools are set up to use common core learning, especially the STAR Assessment.
Concluding Paragraph for Software to Support Assessment
There are numerous amounts of tools which can be used in assessing students in the
classroom. Some of these are Write To Learn, Summary Street, and STAR Assessments. All
three of them focus on writing and reading comprehension. STAR assessments also deal with
math and a reading Spanish assessment. All of these tools allow the teacher to print out data
sheets to help understand who is getting the material and who is not.

References
Salend, S. J. (2009). Technology-Based Classroom Assessments. Teaching Exceptional
Children, 41(6), 48-58.
Landauer, T. K., Lochbaum, K. E., & Dooley, S. (2009). A New Formative Assessment
Technology for Reading and Writing. Theory Into Practice, 48(1), 44-52.
doi:10.1080/00405840802577593
Assessments Built for Insight. Retrieved from: http://www.renaissance.com/assess
Angelo, T. (1995) Thomas A. Angelo, "Reassessing (and Defining) Assessment" AAHE
Bulletin, 48(3): 7.
Shelly, G., Gunter, G., & Gunter, R. (2012). Communications, Networks, the Internet, and the
World Wide Web. In Teachers Discovering Computers Integrating Technology in a
Connected World (7th ed., p. 84). Cengage Learning.