Technology Assessments - An Opinion

The value of assessing educators’ technology leadership knowledge and skills is imperative. If educators are not knowledgeable about technology, students will surpass teachers in their technological use, practice, and experience. The only way anyone can measure whether or not educators are knowledgeable about technology is to assess their knowledge. One good assessment is the Teacher STaR chart. This assessment tool asks educators the right questions and aids decision-makers to use the results to plan and perceive future needs. Once teachers complete the assessment, results will reveal whether they are reaching the desired technological goals.

My campus requires each teacher to complete the Texas Teacher STaR Chart so that the information submitted can be used by decision-making administrators and our grant writer. Our campus has recently received technological grants to supply teachers with classroom technology and students with math intervention hardware and software. Teachers have received interactive technological equipment and training for its use, and students now have access to math intervention technology. Each day students use the equipment, they are assessed on their progress.

All these assessments, however, are only perceived observations on paper given to our decision makers. We are assessing ourselves so much that all we consider in our decision making are the numbers on a page. Actual visual, walk-through observations, rather, can reveal whether an educator is knowledgeable and/or whether a student is learning. Even these visual observations will carry a grade for each area of assessment. I don’t think we can get away from assessments because this is the foremost method used to document actual progress.

Now that we have access to this new technology on my campus, I believe another assessment (visual or written) would reveal that our educators are improving in their knowledge and skills about technology and certainly experience. Obviously assessing the students will reveal whether or not students are progressing in their knowledge resulting from the use of technology.