Assessment of appropriate technology use in teaching and learning

A response to a colleagues’ post in class at Walden…

And their work would be evaluated to determine if they are using technology appropriately

I think assessment of teaching with technology is at least as problematic as assessing student use of technology. How does one account for innovation and then integration of new technologies?

The situation we are in now, where teachers and students are being assessed by outmoded means (such as paper and pencil multiple choice tests completed by the individual in a timed environment) can be easily recreated over and over in the coming years.

For instance, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, where I worked until very recently, established a Technology Scope and Sequence and High School Technology Graduation Requirements a couple of years ago, but if teachers were being assessed on their ability to meet he scope and sequence and graduate students who met the HSTGRs then those teachers who have adopted project based learning with iLife (iPhoto, iMovie, Garage Band, etc on the Mac), with the handheld learning environment (FreeWrite, Sketchy, PicoMap etc on the Palm), or the read/write web (blogs, RSS, FURL etc) would be judged failures.

Even the state of California Technology Assistance Project is only overtly concerned with Word processing, Spreadsheets, databases, email, and the internet. The multimedia applications and web based workflow collaboration are nowhere to be found.

So, how do we assess appropriate use of technology in teaching and learning? And, how do we ensure that our assessments evolve to include current innovations?

-Mark