week 2 Assignment, part 3: Blog Post#1-Technology Asessments

Technology Assessments establish a framework for how well teachers are prepared to equip students with technology knowledge & skills.  These assessments are valuable to schools, teachers, and to students.  Without assessments the planning team does not know where to begin.  So many valuable things come from assessing a campus.  Assessments help plan for future growth too.  As the Texas STaR chart helps with state funded grants that schools need so desperately in order to keep up with technology in the 21st century. Without assessments like the STaR chart, the state could not fund schools with grants and monies for technological advances.  Data for the STaR chart or other technology assessments reveal overall learning conditions that affect learning, discrepancies in areas that need improvement, and ways to accomplish improvement.

There are way more pros to technology assessments than cons to them.  The assessments help schools build on strengths but also focus on what needs to be improved or changed.  Companies like Edvantia, http://www.edvantia.org/about/index.cfm?&t=about&c=home, do technology assessments for campuses throughout the nation.  They focus on growth and a shared vision of technological needs.  This company will assess the teachers and administration and design a plan for growth or an intervention for the school based on analyzing the data from the assessments they conduct.  Just like the Texas STaR chart analyzes teacher's and campus' proficiency in technology, Evantia conducts surveys as well.  The TX STaR chart tells us a lot about the campus, the staff, the administration and the students.  It's survey measures where the campus stands in this 21st century world of technology.  After analyzing the results we can see where our strengths are and where our weaknesses are.  The only con I see with technology assessments is the time it takes away from teaching and from learning, but the gains attained outweigh the cons.

Without assessments we don't even know where to begin.  Assessments are crucial to growth and improvement.  Just like we as educators assess our students to gauge knowledge attained, we need assessments to see where we stand in this technology driven world.