Using Technology Evaluation To Enhance Student Learning

Given the level of spending and hours devoted to technology-based activities in today's schools, educators and policymakers need to know which technologies have real, long-term payoffs for improving student learning. This volume interprets the research perspectives published in Evaluating Educational Technology: Effective Research Designs for Improving Learning to provide valuable insights for the successful use of technology in different classroom and curricular settings. This groundbreaking resource, used alone or with its companion research volume, will give you the tools you need to make research-based decisions concerning the use of educational technology.

Education is a hot topic. From the stage of presidential debates to tonight's dinner table, it is an issue that most Americans are deeply concerned about. While there are many strategies for improving the educational process, we need a way to find out what works and what doesn't work as well. Educational assessment seeks to determine just how well students are learning and is an integral part of our quest for improved education. The nation is pinning greater expectations on educational assessment than ever before. We look to these assessment tools when documenting whether students and institutions are truly meeting education goals. But we must stop and ask a crucial question: What kind of assessment is most effective? At a time when traditional testing is subject to increasing criticism, research suggests that new, exciting approaches to assessment may be on the horizon. Advances in the sciences of how people learn and how to measure such learning offer the hope of developing new kinds of assessments-assessments that help students succeed in school by making as clear as possible the nature of their accomplishments and the progress of their learning. Knowing What Students Know essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored. With the promise of a productive research-based approach to assessment of student learning, Knowing What Students Know will be important to education administrators, assessment designers, teachers and teacher educators, and education advocates.

Choose the right hardware and software for your school! This unique book is the first systematic work on evaluating and assessing educational information technology. Here you?ll find specific strategies, best practices, and techniques to help you choose the educational technology that is most appropriate for your institution. Evaluation and Assessment in Educational Information Technology will show you how to measure the effects of information technology on teaching and learning, help you determine the extent of technological integration into the curriculum that is best for your school, and point you toward the most effective ways to teach students and faculty to use new technology. Evaluation and Assessment in Educational Information Technology presents: a summary of the last ten years of assessment instrument development seven well-validated instruments that gauge attitudes, beliefs, skills, competencies, and technology integration proficiencies two content analysis instruments for analyzing teacher-student interaction patterns in a distance learning setting an examination of the best uses of computerized testing--as opposed to conventional tests, as used in local settings, to meet daily instructional needs, in online delivery programs, in public domain software, and available commercial and shareware options successful pedagogical and assessment strategies for use in online settings a four-dimensional model to assess student learning in instructional technology courses three models for assessing the significance of information technology in education from a teacher?s perspective an incisive look at Michigan?s newly formed Consortium of Outstanding Achievement in Teaching with Technology (COATT) ways to use electronic portfolios for teaching/learning performance assessment and much more!

This workbook offers teachers, superintendents, curriculum directors, and site principals step-by-step guidance to incorporate technology into the elementary school environment. The following chapters are included: (1) "The Challenge of Building a Quality Technology Program"; (2) "Creating a School Context for Technology Change"; (3) "Focusing the Curriculum with Concept-Based Instruction"; (4) "The Essential Components of a Quality Technology Plan"; (5) "Using Grade-Level Technology Skills to Enhance the Curriculum"; (6) "Acquiring Tools: Hardware and Software"; (7) "Using the Internet to Enhance Curriculum and Instruction"; (8) "Training School Staff through Collaborative Models"; and (9) "Management of the Technology Environment." Includes a list of World Wide Web sites and an Internet glossary. (Contains 24 references.) (MES)

This book examines recent changes in media education and in young people’s lives, and provides an accessible set of principles on which the media curriculum should be based, with a clear rationale for pedagogic practice. David Buckingham is one of the leading international experts in the field - he has more than twenty years’ experience in media education as a teacher and researcher. This book takes account of recent changes both in the media and in young people’s lives, and provides an accessible and cogent set of principles on which the media curriculum should be based. Introduces the aims and methods of media education or 'media literacy'. Includes descriptions of teaching strategies and summaries of relevant research on classroom practice. Covers issues relating to contemporary social, political and technological developments.

This book is a result of collaboration between NTLS and SITTE. Framing Research is targeted at individuals or small teams of educational researchers who are interested in conducting high quality research addressing the effects of technology-enhanced instruction on student learning. The book summarizes and unpacks the methodologies of a variety of research studies, each situated in the context of school subject areas, such as science, mathematics, social studies, and English/language arts, as well as in the contexts of reading education, special education, and early childhood learning. Taken together, the analyses provide guidance on the design of future technology research grounded in student learning of K-12 curriculum. The conclusions also serve as a tool for teacher educators seeking to prepare teachers to integrate technology effectively in their instruction and to motivate reluctant teachers to overcome perceived inconveniences connected with technology use.

First released in the Spring of 1999, How People Learn has been expanded to show how the theories and insights from the original book can translate into actions and practice, now making a real connection between classroom activities and learning behavior. This edition includes far-reaching suggestions for research that could increase the impact that classroom teaching has on actual learning. Like the original edition, this book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions. When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non-experts? What can teachers and schools do-with curricula, classroom settings, and teaching methods--to help children learn most effectively? New evidence from many branches of science has significantly added to our understanding of what it means to know, from the neural processes that occur during learning to the influence of culture on what people see and absorb. How People Learn examines these findings and their implications for what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess what our children learn. The book uses exemplary teaching to illustrate how approaches based on what we now know result in in-depth learning. This new knowledge calls into question concepts and practices firmly entrenched in our current education system. Topics include: How learning actually changes the physical structure of the brain. How existing knowledge affects what people notice and how they learn. What the thought processes of experts tell us about how to teach. The amazing learning potential of infants. The relationship of classroom learning and everyday settings of community and workplace. Learning needs and opportunities for teachers. A realistic look at the role of technology in education.

This volume gathers some of the methods being developed by evaluators from university settings and the private sector. While providing models and methods, these authors also raise larger questions, such as: "How can schools meet the challenge of educating all children without being limited by the educational legacy of a 'one size fits all' curriculum and normative testing?" More than documenting an "apprenticeship to gadgetry," evaluators are seeking to measure meaningful learning and changes in teaching - investigating approaches that are not possible or that are less accessible when students are in traditional classrooms without technology. In this first volume of the series Research Methods for Educational Technology (RMET) the contributing authors draw upon examples of their work evaluating the implementation and development of educational technology as well as the impact of policies and programs in this field. Within this volume several authors have written about the implementation and evaluation of technology across cultures and national boundaries, pointing to an area of research that will rapidly expand in this decade. The concern for meeting the needs of policymakers is also apparent in several of these chapters, but there is tension between providing them with positive results to support their efforts and reexamining the questions they are asking and how these questions are developed. We know that evaluation is not the extended arm of public relations, and yet it becomes clear that evaluators are often asked to demonstrate a project "is successful" on the threat that the funding will be cut. While this decision-making process fits the timetable of the fiscal year, it does not acknowledge that evaluation can be formative and strengthen programs. This timetable also ignores the investment of time that is needed when implementing innovations like the Internet into teaching and learning. Many of the authors included in this volume write from the context of evaluating federally-funded programs, and they provide valuable insight for future projects which are created and evaluated at the state-level. As technology initiatives are developed and funded outside of the federal arena, more evaluators will be called upon. From approaches developed from federally-funded projects, we can build upon these methods and models for evaluation within regional projects to answer questions related to budgets and accountability. As we answer these immediate questions, we can move forward to examine the long-term impact of technology, and the possibility that exercises in conformity will replace the adventure of human enlightenment for our children.