Technology Enhanced Formative Assessment

@JoeTaylorDHS/@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

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Early in my career, I was having a conversation with the best Division Head I've worked for (It isn't a secret - her name is Elaine Burcham, and she was Div Head for World Language/Social Studies/ELL/Health at Buffalo Grove High School). I was excited about a lesson I had just taught, and I told her that the students had really seemed to grasp the concepts I was discussing. She said, "So, how do you KNOW that they got it?" I was going to talk about the answers that I got from some of the kids in the class or the fact that so many were nodding their heads in agreement, but she had me. I didn't KNOW. I certainly didn't know that they ALL had it. That one question from Elaine changed my practice.

From that point on I really spent some time studying formative assessment in the classroom. I believe strongly in Assessment for Learning, or "the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there" (Assessment Reform Group, 2002). Back in the day, that was something I did on paper. The process is so much simpler and can be so much more valuable now that we have Chromebooks and other networked devices to help us.

Technology Enhanced Assessment for Learning has become the basis of my instructional technology research at the moment, and even simple steps can lead to big changes in the classroom, and it can help us flip the way we think about teaching and learning. The researchers, Beatty & Gerace (2009), basically suggest some of our best teaching happens not when we instruct and then ask questions, but rather ask questions and use those as a context for sense-making and guided instruction.

Years ago, I created a PD session that looked at a variety of tools for quizzing, polling, ideation, direct classroom instruction, and facilitating discussion. Most of the tools have been written about by Lisa, Dan or myself at some point in the last couple of years, but many of the tools have been improved to make function better in the classroom, or they just may deserve a second look. For instance:

• Google Forms If it has been a while since you looked at creating quizzes in Google Forms, it might be time to look again. They keep getting better and now allow for the inclusion of open-ended questions as well as objective questions. (Here are some easy-to-follow video directions as well: Simpletivity directions for creating quizzes using Google Forms.

• Quizizz is a free, online tool that allows you to create classroom game show-like quizzes.  Similar to  Kahoot, the students have questions and up to 4 options for responses.  You can create your own or use one that has already been created.  You can even create your own quiz but then steal collaboratively take advantage of individual questions that other teachers have made and put them into your own quiz. There is an earlier blog post about this tool here.

• Google’s Jamboard is Google’s online version of the interactive whiteboard. With this tool, you can have students make their thinking visible by sharing sticky notes, written notes, pictures, or textboxes in real-time. This is actually a great way for groups to share out to the entire class. Here is a quick video tutorial for Jamboard.

The presentation below includes some of the discussion around formative assessment and a huge list of approved digital tools to use in the classroom. Each one of the tools includes a link to the tool itself and a link to instructions and examples. On slide 7, the "About" link will take you to the tool and the official documentation for the product. The "How To" link will take you to instructions. In many cases, the instructions come from featured articles in this blog, but we've linked to videos or other teacher sites if there is new information out there.

How are you using Formative Assessment in the classroom? Are there some additional tools we should include? If so, please tell us about them in the comment box below.