Journal Entry # 12 What's the Big Idea? Assessing for Understanding

You recently noticed that it is hard to grade formative assessments quickly enough to make it useful for your teaching and to provide timely feedback to your students. You decide to attend a professional development (PD) on the use of technology and formative assessment. During this PD, you learn that teachers regularly utilize technology for formative assessment, and that technology can be a great way to reduce grading time and provide students with immediate feedback. You learn how to use Google Forms, Socrative, ExitTickets, and Kahoot! When you implement these tools, you notice that students are really engaged. You begin to use these tools almost daily, and you find that the most significant advantage of using technology for formative assessment is that teachers can see the results immediately, which is beneficial for on-the-fly assessments. You can see where students are confused and address it right away. Another advantage is that students are exposed to many different apps, tools, and websites that can help increase their literacy with technology. Students can also be assessed in a way that doesn’t feel like an assessment. You find, in fact, that students even begin to ask if they can play Kahoot! after lessons.

Write a two-paragraph essay describing what formative assessment is and how it can be used to determine when you should give a summative assessment. Include an evaluation of assistive technology tools for formative assessment, describing some of the challenges that teachers could face in implementing these tools. Suggest work-arounds for these technology issues. Include a description of what meaningful assessment is.