April 22, 2012
Software to Support Assessment
Every semester and every year, teachers are tasked with assessing their students’ achievements to evaluate where they stand with the given curriculum that has been presented to them throughout the school year. With classrooms sizes increasing rapidly every year, technology based assessments are needed so that it cuts down on the amount of time teachers are spending to review the assessments of their students. The process of assessing students doesn’t stop once the student advances to the next grade level. All of the student’s previous success and or failures are kept through an information technology system, which is “defined as the tools and systems used to share information e.g., hardware, software, networks, and the process to manage them” (Ligon 2005 page 1).
Although using technology seems to be a quicker easier way to assess students, there are assessments that are required that doesn’t incorporate the use of technology. For example, teachers need to evaluate their students quickly after completing a lesson plan so that they are aware of any misunderstanding and to be able to determine if they need to continue and go more in depth with the lesson plan or not. Assessments that are given without students’ knowledge can be extremely helpful because it reduces the stress of the students and they are able to perform slightly better in these instances. Assessments that are in the form of games, or group interactions show students eagerness and positivity to learning new material and obtaining the knowledge as well. Assessments are a huge topic within school districts, state and federal governments because they want to ensure that standards are put into place that’ll provide them with the information they need each year and that’ll enable them to track the progress of students and schools. There are two forms of assessments that are generally given by teachers to...