Technology Assessment for Schools, Leaders, Educators, Students

What are your recommendations for assessing technology from the lens of a school, leader, educator, and student? We are currently looking at this at the NYC DOE and the canned programs that I've seen do not appeal to me. Please share success, warnings, advice.

Thank you.
Lisa Nielsen
Instructional Technology PD Manager
NYC DOE
http://TheInnovativeEducator.blogspot.com

Tags: assessment, technology

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Hi Lisa,
I believe I can help, but could you clarify a bit? What exactly is it that you are assessing and what do you mean by "from the lens of..."?
Jon Becker
Fantastic. Thank you. Tell me if this makes it more clear. How can a school, leader, educator, and student be rated/assessed so that once they are assessed you can provide them with tools to move to a higher level. Does that help clarify?
It does a bit, I think you're looking for some kind of operationalized "measures" of the NETS-S, NETS-T and NETS-A?

Also, there are lots of "constructs" to measure/assess. For example, for students, there are measures of technological literacy, measures of technology skills, etc. For teachers, there are a similar host of constructs. There are many fewer measures for leaders (that's my real interest). Scott McLeod developed a Principal Technology Leadership Assessment (PTLA) that works nicely to assess principals.

So, believe it or not, you probably need to be even more specific as to your goals. I'd be happy to help further if I can.
Hmmm...well we want to be able to rank a school as to their technology level because we want to create a roadmap to move each level. We want to do the same for the others (leaders, educators, students). So basically we're looking for a tool to assess where schools, leaders, and teachers are in technology/21st Century tools/skills and depending on the result provide a roadmap to move to the next level.
Jeepers. That's a sizable undertaking. Are there re$ource$ behind this effort?

The CEO Forum's STaR Chart was developed (literally at the turn of the century) to be that sort of tool, but I didn't like it much.

Ultimately, though, I really think you should start by operationally defining "technology level". In my opinion, that's very broad. So, if you're interested in levels of "technology literacy," that's one construct that can be measured. If you're interested in "technology access", that's another measure. If you're interested in "levels of technology integration", that's another measure. Maybe you're interested in all the possible constructs that can be measured? That's where you need to start, IMHO.

Even then, though, doing this sort of work is complicated by lots of noise. Especially in a place like NYC, where there is high turnover of teachers and leaders, these measures are moving targets.

It's all doable, and really worth doing, but it's a fairly resource-intensive proposition.

I blogged about a related topic not long ago. You might want to check out the resource I linked to there as well: http://edinsanity.com/2008/04/11/assessing-technological-literacy/

JB
I will look at your blog post. I know of STaR and I have some others posted at https://iworking.wikispaces.com/Tech+Assessments. My department is looking at Learning.com which I really don't like at all. We do have funds for this, but are looking to go somewhere that has already delved into this work.
Lisa, the wikispace is private so I can't see it.

In my other, non-professorly life, I work with an ed. tech. research and consulting firm that is on the NYC list of approved vendors and that has experience doing surveys and assessment in and around NYC. Let me know, perhaps offline (jonathan.d.becker@gmail.com), if you'd like to discuss the possibility of working on this more.
The easy way to plan assessment would be to decide where you want the kids to be at the end and work backwards. After 25 years teaching special ed students (with IEPs) I've probably written 5000 goals and objectives over the years.

To me, if you used the NETS standards, it would be simple to write some broad goals for all kids K-12 that could be easily assessed. I've got examples if you need them.
Thanks for the feedback Nancy. Examples would be great!
Here's a couple of measurable goals:
After 36 weeks of instruction, given 2 tasks, issues, or problems, the student will plan, collect, view, analyze and report relevant data using 5 or more digital devices and/or computer applications.

After 36 weeks of instruction, given appropriate digital media and communication environments, the student will support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others by collaborating on 1-2 digital presentations or products in a curriculum area.

These goals are based on the NETS standards and would be assessed by the use of rubrics. They are special ed goals and sound wordy, but you could write something as simple as

After 36 weeks (one school year) of instruction, given appropriate materials, the student will write, edit and produce a 3 minute video.
Lisa,

Two things to take a look at...

1. LoTi
2. Technology Integration Matrix
Carol thank you so much! I had info on LoTi but had never heard of TIM. I've collected all these wonderful ideas and resources on my wiki at TIE's Tech Assessments. I hope others find this useful.

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