How can assessment help?

I write a lot about learning …

And the many ways things are connected to learning …

As well as so many inspirations for learning …

Assessment is connected to learning …

But it tends to have a negative connotation to it …

So I mostly stay away from writing about it

But assessment does not have to be a bad thing

It is just showing what you know and where you could use a little more help

While helping some teachers a few weeks ago with some features of ActivInspire, I decided that it would help me if I had a way to get a quick temperature check on things they did and did not know.

So I pulled out the ActiVotes (voting devices) and used the quick response method to ask yes/no questions.

I know you are probably saying that I was not able to collect much data using this method and asking this type of question …

But I was able to get the information I was looking for!

Before meeting with this group, administration has asked me to teach about creating ActivInspire flipcharts.

I found a flipchart on Promethean Planet that would help introduce many of the features available in ActivInspire for creating flipcharts.

So I had the content I needed

But there was a problem

I did not know much about the knowledge and skills of the teachers …

How many of us have sat in trainings where we already knew what was being covered or were so far behind that we did not understand anything that was being covered?

I consider those a waste of time

And I did not want to waste the time of the teachers I was working with!

This is where the assessment comes in … and the ActiVotes!

Using an ActiVote each teacher responded to one question at a time …

And then we continued based on their responses

For example, I asked, “Do you know how to add text to a flipchart?”

Three out of four teachers responded YES, so I asked one to come to the board and show the group how she added text. Then after a quick example and discussion, we moved on

When I asked about adding images to a flipchart, I got some puzzled looks and only got one YES response.

That teacher said that she saved images to her desktop and then inserted them. I agreed with her that was one way to add images, but then I showed the group the images in the resource browser. They had a great time exploring and discovering thing they did not know about before.

Think about how much more I was able to cover for these teachers by not spending the ame amount of time on every feature … whether they knew how to do it already or not

These quick assessments helped me see the areas where I should focus and spend time

I also used these quick assessments to let me know when teachers were overloaded and it was time to quit …

Sure, I may not have covered everything on my list …

But I felt THEIR learning was more important than MY list …

Each group of teachers may not have had the same ActivInspire features covered that day …

But the teachers came to me with different backgrounds and different levels of knowledge, so they did not all need the same things covered …

Analyzing the results of quick assessments helped me to realize those things! 

Each of these teachers not only explored some features in ActvInspire that day but also saw possibilities for a way to use these voting devices in their classrooms.

If you are interested, here is a Symbaloo Webmix containing links to ActivInspire tips and helpful hints as well as instructions for ActiVotes and ActivExpressions.