MET:IPads as Assessment Tools
-Created by Eva Perez and Christine Hulme March 2014
iPads
A tablet computer that was first designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. on April 3, 2010. Since it’s release, the iPad has allowed users to interact in new and intuitive ways within a digital environment. Tablet based technology can be integrated into the classroom for many purposes, including assessment.
Assessment
Assessment plays a key role in student achievement within the classroom. Assessment is the process of gathering evidence of what the student knows, understands, and is able to do and to identify the learning needs of students.
Rational
The BC Education Plan identifies digital literacy standards that learners need in order to be successful in the 21st Century (British Columbia Education Plan, 2011). These include improved access to digital tools. In 21st Century Learning, students use educational technologies to apply knowledge to new situations, analyze information, collaborate, solve problems, and make decisions (British Columbia Education Plan, 2011). Since digital literacy is a goal for many school districts, students and teachers need to develop the skills and knowledge to participate efficiently and ethically in a digital environment (Kern, 2011).
With the iPad teachers can assess the progress of their students in real time and provide instant feedback to guide instruction. Instead of traditional pencil and paper assessments, teachers can collect and analyze data with the iPad to drive future instruction. With interactive digital tools, students feel "enabled to be part of the assessment process," and to drive their own learning (Ash, 2012). There are a variety of assessment tools that are easy, customizable, and can be used before, during and/or after a lesson/activity within a learning environment.
Assessing Understanding
In order to make judgements about student performance, knowledge and experience about the learning must be gathered and evaluated by the teacher. The following are digital tools that can assess student understanding in the classroom.
Socrative
Socrative is a free student response system/quiz engine that can be run on multiple devices to encourage student participation and allow for formative assessment opportunities. There are two applications: one for the teacher to create, and one for the student to respond. It allows teachers to create multiple choice, true/false, and short open-ended questions and gain instant results from student responses which are then sent via e-mail as feedback.
Explain Everything
Explain Everything is an interactive whiteboard tool that supports the learning process. Students can present their learning in an environment where features and capabilities include the ability to import, insert, draw, annotate, move, animate, record, export and share. ($2.99)
Showbie
Showbie is a free app that allows for teachers to effortlessly assign, collect, and review student work on the ipad (2). Showbie allows you to open and save documents directly from thousands of apps and give rich feedback by marking up student work in a an instant through annotations, voice notes and comments. Showbie is an effortless way to organize assignments towards a paperless classroom and can be seamless used with thousands of apps.
Teacher Productivity
Teachers must plan and organize their classrooms to effectively assess student learning. The following are digital tools to increase teacher productivity and assess student learning.
Emodo
Emodo is a free social platform for education where students can engage and collaborate. Features include classroom activity feed, student progress trackers, educational resource library, professional learning networks. This app provides a safe and easy way for teachers and students to post assignments, track grades, upload and share files, and have secure classroom discussions.
Evernote
Evernote is a free (premium upgrade option), easy to use application that allows teachers to organize, take notes, take photos, record audio, e-mail, save ideas and tweets, and improve overall productivity. It also allows teachers to connect to other apps and products as well as synchronize across multiple devices.
iDoceo
iDoceo is a gradebook, diary, timetable, resource manager, seating plan application: The ultimate Teacher’s Assistant. No Internet connection is required. iDoecoo allows teachers to send personalized feedback to students via e-mail as well as e-mail parents with the click of a button. ($6.99)
Notability
The Notability application allows teachers to sketch ideas, annotate documents, sign contracts, complete worksheets, keep a journal, make a presentation, audio recording capabilities and much more. It includes iCloud support and allows you to automatically back up work to Dropbox, Box,
GoogleDrive and WebDAV. ($2.99)
Easy Assessment
Easy Assessment is a rubric creation and assessment tool. It allows teachers to capture and assess performance by adding and managing groups, developing rubrics, adding text notes, videos, or images, and uploading and e-mail assessment results. ($1.99)
Peer and Self-Assessment
iPad Camera
The iPad’s camera allows for students to take photos and/or videos of their learning. By recording student’s multimodal learning and playing it back instantly, peer and self-assessment is possible.
GoogleDrive
Google Drive is a free place for students to store, share and access work from anywhere. Through GoogleDrive, students can upload and share their work with their peers. Peers can then edit, add to, and comment on work to provide feedback.
Assessing Behaviour and Student Participation
Class Dojo
Class Dojo is a free behaviour management tool that saves time by recording, tracking and improving specific student behaviours. Class Dojo engages students by providing real-time feedback and allows for the sharing of data with parents and staff.
Doodle Buddy
Doodle Buddy is a free, enhanced digital whiteboard application that can be used to save, share and e-mail creations (basic and fine motor skills) in the primary classroom.
MyClassTalk
My Class Talk is a free, efficient and reliable digital tool to track student participation. Teachers can easily collect data, award students points and rank their class based on participation. MyClassTalk is compatible across multiple platforms.
Stop Motion Video
Jonathan Weber (2018)'s Stop Motion Video for using iPads as Assessment Tools.
References
Ash, Katie. (2012). Rethinking Testing in the Age of the iPad. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/02/08/02mobile.h05.html.
British Columbia Education Plan. (2011). The Plan. Retrieved from http://bcedplan.ca/theplan.php
BC Ministry of Education. (2013). Classroom Assessment and Student Reporting. Retrieved from https://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/classroom_assessment/
Burns, Monica. (2013). Four Free Assessment Apps for 1:1 Classrooms. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/free-assessment-ipad-apps-monica-burns
Cox, Janelle. (2014). Assessment Apps fo Teachers. Retrieved from http://k6educators.about.com/od/Technology/qt/Assessment-Apps-For-Teachers.htm
Kern, G. (2011, November 3). How does technology “enhance” learning? [Web log
message]. Retrieved from
(http://go45.sd45.bc.ca/district/blogs/digitalliteracy/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=19)