“Technology-Enabled and Universally designed Assessment: Considering Access in Measuring the Achievement of Students with Disabilities- A foundation for Research” is an article that was written at the Invitational Research Symposium on Technology-Enabled and Universally Designed Assessments meeting. This meeting was “focused on the emerging and dynamic field of technology-enabled assessments (TEA) and the principles of universal design for assessment as they relate to students with disabilities.” (Almond, Winter, Cameto, Russell, Sato, Clarke-Midura, Torres, Haertel, Dolan, Beddow, & Lazarus, 2010, p.4) The paper was written by researchers from many different fields, all of whom had a background in education, phycology, and children with disabilities, assessments, or technology in education.
This paper was written to spark the debate on how technology can be used to help students with disabilities do better on standardized testing. All students, regardless
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“…a student may not benefit from a standard read aloud version of a test if it is distracting to the student, in this case, another testing condition or accommodation such as a student controlled text reader might be more beneficial.” (Almond, Winter, Cameto, Russell, Sato, Clarke-Midura, Torres, Haertel, Dolan, Beddow, & Lazarus, 2010, p.8) Not every student needs the same modification to their assessment and with the universal design (UD) that the article discusses, this technology would be able to adapt to the needs of the student before the test so that they have their best testing environment. “The core tenet of UD is to create flexible solutions that avoid post hoc adaption by considering from the start the diverse way in which individuals will interact with their environment.” (Almond, Winter, Cameto, Russell, Sato, Clarke-Midura, Torres, Haertel, Dolan, Beddow, & Lazarus, 2010,
Student, environment, task, and assistive technology tools (SETT) consist of several questions that serve as a guide for collecting data and making important assistive technology decisions” (Barbara, n.d.). The purpose of these questions is for the IEP team to “consider the student’s needs and abilities, develop a system of tools that address the student’s needs, and connect the AT assessment with the proposed intervention.” (Marino, 2006, p. 21). When asking these questions it’s important to focus on all aspects of “SETT”: the student, the environment, the task, and the devices being used. The ultimate goal is to have a balance between all four areas (Marino, 2006).
The topic of assessment alone raises many debated discussions, among teachers, and to add Special Education students into the polemical dialogue intensifies the debate. As a result, there are several alternative methods in assessing Special Education students within the learning environment. Professionals have created specifically designated techniques in helping these and all students achieve academic success.
The district is now making all teachers use an assessment tool called iReady. It is a website that assesses students in math and reading. They are first tested on a kindergarten through fifth grade range to find out what they know. Then the program takes that score and determines the right level for the child and they are tested again on the level. Once all students have been assessed the program orders the students from highest to lowest and by average grade level skill they are on: early second grade, middle second grade, late second grade or any other grade. The teacher uses those scores to create her reading groups, math groups and the students she will give extra assistance to. They haven’t officially established how many times and when they will do this iReady assessment but for now they are doing it once a week for forty five minutes. The test also flags if they spent too long or too little time on a question. The ones that spent less than 15 seconds per problem are to go back and do the assessment again.
Elwood, J. (2006). Formative assessment: possibilities, boundaries and limitations. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 215-232, doi:10.1080/09695940600708653
This paper explores a few of the many alternatives to standardized testing within the education system. Also, this research helps the reader understand what standardized exams are, why they are used, and how educators can use other ways of assessing to “test” the children’s/students’ abilities throughout the year. Some of these substitutions may include personal portfolios, developmental benchmarks, and a variety of analyses on comprehension by recording different sessions. Furthermore, this exposition uses research from many different resources to support the importance, credibility, and objectivity of other assessment tools besides standardized test. By reading this composition, one will learn the pros and cons of uniform evaluation implementations and why it is important for everyone’s individual learning and development that standardized testing are no longer required.
For the PDSA cycle I am going to use individual journal entries because they are engaging and interactive to every student, and they are a great tool in reflecting on what each student has learned in the lesson. “Student-centered assessments must be engaging and interactive, while incorporating sharing, trusting, team building, reflecting, helping and coaching.”(Pitas, 2000) The students will be given the freedom to write anything that is on their mind and the students will answer three questions that will help generate well thought out answers. The students will write at the very least a paragraph for each day they are learning a lesson.
Assistive technology is often used by individuals with a learning disability. A learning disability “describes a neurobiological disorder in which a person’s brain works or is structured differently” (Lee1). A person’s abilities can be severely affected from a learning disability. They may listen differently, talk differently, write, spell, organize, and work with school subjects in a different way. Learning disabilities also affect people’s individual and personal lives to a great extent. According to the National Institutes of Health, one in seven children has a learning disability. The disability manifests itself when the child shows difficulty in reading, writing, spelling, and conversing with others. The added time they need to process information may make them seem less intelligent then others around them, but this is not the case. Individuals with learning disabilities are just as smart as anyone else; they just need to learn in a different way. The earlier a learning disability is noticed and detected, the earlier a child may be able to learn how to deal with or compensate for it (Lee 1). This is where assistive technology comes into play.
The purpose of technology is to help make us better. The way technology is to make us learn new things like graphing calculators, emails. Computers help our education to makes us better because it builds or modifies our personal skill with vast amounts of talents or skills. Today’s teachers uses computers to help teach the class nor do they give too much attention to computers. Schools won’t probably be called schools no more because of the vast amount of computers that it will become a learning institution. The technology can be a way of communication like the “way of communicating with other classmates or teachers” (Hill). Students no longer need to carry books, notebooks, pens and pencils. The computer has online books, Microsoft Word, and other software. Without technology there would be no smart homes, smart phones, smart cars, and smart TVs. How will the students with disabilities learn if technology was not a good teaching tool if they have a hard time focusing or has hearing loss or has a learning disability and the students are very slow learners? Students with Disabilities have the need to use a computer do homework or taking notes. Some problems that teachers have are students with disabilities of various types. The students with disabilities require more attention like my older brother Derrick because he has a learning disability so he gets a lot of attention. My brother Derrick also has a hard time walking, so my brother Derrick uses a walker to help him walk and he uses technology when he is in class. The second example of students with disabilities is me because I have ADHD which stands for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. I have a hard time focusing and sitting still and very often I forget things or I get very confused and I usually get bored very quick; therefore I get a lot of attention from
Educational assessment has two primary functions. The first of these is to determine a student’s eligibility for special education services, as prescribed by the Individuals with Disabilities
Assessments have always been a tool for teachers to assess mastery and for a long time it was just to provide a grade and enter it into the grade book or report card. Through resources in and out of the course, there has been a breath of new life into the research on how to use assessments. They take many forms and fall within the summative or formative assessment category. Sloan (2016) addresses how formative assessments has traditionally been used by teachers to modify instruction, but when we focus on a classroom that is learner-centered “it becomes assessment for learning as opposed to assessment of learning” (slide 4). The fact is, the students are the ones that should be and are the ones using the data we collect through assessments, since it is our way of providing feedback in order
Pierangelo, R. A., & Giuliani, G. A. (2013). Assessment in special education: A practical approach. (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Bowser and Reed [1995] as cited by Bryant et al [1998] argue that as a child progresses through the Education System, their requirements change and this may necessitate a need for different devices. This is not limited to those children with a physical disability but is relevant to all children with SEN as they progress and the Education System places additional burdens upon them. For children with a visual impairment ICT can provide support in various ways; tools to support communication, to improve access to information and as a means of producing learning materials in alternative. There is a wide range of devices and software, which can
Authentic assessment, though sometimes referred to as performance-based assessment is not a new idea, in fact its history dates back to the 1950’s. With more than half a century of debate on the subject in varying branches of thought, this paper will focus on a few of the key concepts of authentic assessment as seen through the lens of an artist. An investigation of the literature begins with a brief look at the historical concept of mastery as was practiced through the ancient system of patronage, workshops, and guilds. The discussion that follows will examine the theoretical thought on authentic assessment and the implications for practice.
In spite of the importance of assessment in education, few teachers receive proper training on how to design or analyze assessments. Due to this, when teachers are not provided with suitable assessments from their textbooks or instructional resources, teachers construct their own in an unsystematic manner. They create questions and essay prompts comparable to the ones that their teachers used, and they treat them as evaluations to administer when instructional activities are completed predominantly for allocating students' grades. In order to use assessments to improve instruction and student learning, teachers need to change their approach to assessments by making sure that they create sound assessments. To ensure that their assessments are sound they need include five basic indicators that can be used as steps to follow when creating assessments. The first of these indicators and the first step a teacher must take when creating a sound assessme...
Another area that technology has impacted is the expansion of the learning environment. It allows students access to primary source material they could not otherwise see, information they could not otherwise find, places they could not otherwise go, and different opportunities for collaboration and team learning they otherwise could not have (Miller 44). Students who have disabilities or transportation problems benefit from this technology. Students are able to do research from their home rather than going to the library. Pages of information can be available to students from across the nation with just a few clicks of the mouse.