USING ASSESSMENT EFFECTIVELY What are the qualities of Effective Records?
In the previous module I discussed how vital it was to keep track of the progress of the students in your class in terms of their ICT capability. Record keeping is not only good for that but also it aides in the progression and continuity of student learning. Imagine if you were able to keep accurate records of students and be able to pass it on to other teachers so that they can plan. You may recall how I discussed earlier on the importance of accurately assessing students’ capabilities and being able to use the Learning Continuum level descriptions in a more effective and efficient way. By keeping accurate records you will be able to achieve exactly that. The ‘best fit’ scenario will mean that you will be able to pin point where they are exactly between various levels of progression. To keep effective records it is important that they show the complete coverage of ICT used and the progression that you had planned for it (Ager, 2003). It needs to be a quick way for you to recall which group has done which activity. The first record I would suggest for this would be having an ‘aide memoire’. As a teacher myself, I know that time is never on our side and so having one of these will help you keep track. Adequate information needs to be kept in them to help not just your planning but also if you have any pre-service teachers or supply teachers who might be taking your class in the future. Most importantly, and I will quote Ager (2003, p. 71) that there “needs to be an appropriate balance between the time time to fill in the information and the detail of information recorded.” For example, if you make it too quick to fill out it may hold too little information and be worthless. On the otherhand, a sophisticated recording sytem may be fantastic in theory with potentially great information, but teachers don’t have a lot of time on their hands and so you may not have of that time to fill it out completely rendering the entire system useless too. Keeping records needs to be a managable task not just for you but the whole school system. You may recall the activity planning sheet I discussed earlier with you. You can follow on from this by having a checklist indicating which students have carried out various activities. Your record must be informative and contain the main techniques you want the students to learn and develop. Once again, I will emphasise the assistance of the coding sytem to record the progress. If you need help in completing these systems enlist the assistance of an adult helper or teaching assistant. Continuing on with your teacher records from the planning sheet you can design a sheet to record anything significant concerning a particular student’s progress. This should not take up too much time as it has little to do with the activity itself. Instead record points about the coverage of techniques a student learnt and their confidence in using them. In addition, don’t forget to recognise their higher order skills such as planning, choosing techniques, hypothesising and evaluating the techniques and tools used. Student self-assessment records will need to be kept on file. They can record their own progress. Can you recall what I said about how they should look? Possible statements that it could include are: • “I can analyse results and present the information in a variety of forms.” • “I can access information from the Internet.” • “I can program a sequence of instructions (traffic lights) using a control box.”
(Ager, 2003)
Such records can be used by the students as a basis for talking to you about their work when they completed the task. © ICTE Solutions Australia 2017
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