April+2010

Monthly Activity Reflection
April 2010 Standards V-A, V-B The Technology Task Force meets in April. I am the team leader for this group. A needs assessment has to be done before entering data in the district’s Technology plan. We discuss the results of the survey taken during the March workshops and any other request from the faculty and staff. We discuss purchases, changes in hardware or software and any new information from TEA. Another subject on the agenda is the latest research on how technology is being used in the classroom. We also talk about any new updates from TEA and the state Legislature. An activity I facilitated this month was the use of the Classroom Performance System (aka “the clickers”). We use our Flex days to assist those students that have been classified as needing a little nudge before taking the TAKS test. I helped a teacher set up her class in the software, and then helped her create the assessment. Before we created the assessment we looked at what types of data the software would collect and report so that she could determine how she wanted her feedback. She was thrilled with the types of reports the software generates. On the days we call “Fantastic Friday,” her mathematics class used the clickers to participate in an interactive assessment. The teacher used the data generated by the software to determine from which lessons the students would gain the most benefit. Before the next Fantastic Friday we created a new assessment based on the data generated from the first Fantastic Friday. The activity taught me that different forms of assessment are often just as good or better that paper and pencil tests. In this case the students were engaged and worked to get correct answers. I will be able to use the lessons learned from this activity for finding new ways to assess how the students are learning.