Brightbytes: Use Digital Assessments Strategically

Based on our Brightbytes data all of our schools are in a good place to consider how to use digital assessments strategically. Many district teachers are already using digital assessments regularly with students.

Formative assessment is a great tool to support the learning process and provide students with timely, personalized feedback. Technology tools, such as discussion boards (Padlet) and polls (Kahoot/Forms),  give us a greater range of options and efficiency in assessing students throughout the learning process.

It is important to select tools strategically—whether they’re technology-based or not. The following questions can be a simple metric for assessing the appropriateness of a strategy:

• What am I looking to assess?
• How can this tool save me time and provide reliable data?
• What can I learn about student knowledge and needs by using this tool that I can't learn using other techniques?

Please share your favorite digital assessment tools and how you use them to support your instructional practice and provide feedback to students.

Brightbytes Data Insights: 21st Century Teachers and Students

Thank you all for taking the time to participate in the Brightbytes Technology and Learning survey. Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing data points from our collection, as well as, supporting research and resources, related district plans, and more.

First, I'd like to highlight 21st century teacher and student data points. It's great to see that teachers' foundational and online skills are strong. Notice that students do not feel as confident in some of these skills. While kids spend a lot of time interacting with technology, it is often focused on social media and multimedia. We need to help them learn the productivity tools (Docs, Sheets, Slides, email, etc). On the flip side, our students can definitely support our growth in multimedia skills including photo, video, and sound editing. Professional development for Multimedia Skills was the highest ranked need by teachers and will be considered in planning session schedules next school year.

Our district technology committee has spent the past year researching digital citizenship resources and curriculum and is in the process of developing curriculum and professional development.  This ties into Classroom Management with Technology being identified as an area to provide additional professional development.

Spring 2018 Technology Data Collection

We are partnering with BrightBytes, an educational research organization, in order to learn more about your and your students’ technology access and use for learning.

We are reaching out to ask you to take part in our teacher and administrator questionnaire. Your participation is essential to help us form a more complete picture of technology use for learning in our students’ lives. Please know that all of your responses will remain anonymous to protect your privacy. Your answers will help our school choose the right technology for our classrooms and the right professional development for our staff. It will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete.

The last day to complete this questionnaire is Friday, April 20.

Check your email for the link to complete the survey.

For more information on our spring technology data collection, check out our slides.

Door prizes include screen cleaning kits, iPevo PageStays to hold books open, movie passes, and more.

Brightbytes Internet Access Data

This fall we surveyed grade 3-12 students, parents, and staff using Brightbytes Clarity to collect baseline data on classroom practices, access, skills, and environment in relation to technology. Our access to technology at school and at home is a bright spot in our survey data and our overall district access score is rated exemplary.  This has allowed us to focus our efforts on growing in the skills, classroom (integration and digital citizenship), and environment (tech support and professional development) domains. Checkout our district and building access data points in the presentation embedded below.