Carol Ann Tomlinson’s article, Learning to Love Assessment, outlines ten understandings that grew out of her experience as a teacher. Some of them are very related to the use of mobile performance assessment of 21st Century Skills such as teamwork, creativity, problem solving: (5) Informative assessment isn’t about “after.”  (6) Informative assessment isn’t an end in itself. (7) Informative assessment isn’t separate from instruction.

Stephen and Jan Chappuis’ article, The Best Value in Formative Assessment, discusses the advantages of formative assessment. I love these sentences:

“Formative assessment, on the other hand, delivers information during the instructional process, before the summative assessment. Both the teacher and the student use formative assessment results to make decisions about what actions to take to promote further learning. It is an ongoing, dynamic process that involves far more than frequent testing, and measurement of student learning is just one of its components.”

They list several benefits to formative assessment in the classroom:

• The timeliness of results enables teachers to adjust instruction quickly, while learning is in progress.
• The students who are assessed are the ones who benefit from the adjustments.
• The students can use the results to adjust and improve their own learning.

Robert Sternberg’s article, Assessing What Matters, is inspiring. Consider his main contention: worthy assessments drive students to value being creative, analytical, practical, and wise. In contrast, he says,

“Traditional assessments provide little help to students in learning how to capitalize on strengths and compensate for or correct weaknesses.”

We believe that when you use GradePad in the classroom to do observational assessments of collaborative work, team projects, problem-solving, social interaction, and other 21st Century Skills, you aid both students and transform the learning with assessments for learning, not of learning.

Press Release

GradePad 1.2, as an iPhone app for teachers, will make it easier for teachers to import class lists, create GradePads, share GradePads with others, and export your assessment data to other formats.

The GradePad account allows you to import class lists, create new GradePad rubrics online, and add GradePads that are shared (More GradePads) to your account.

Besides emailing your data, the iPhone/iPod touch app  includes options to  to log into your GradePad.com account. You can:

• export group lists from your iPhone or iPod touch to your account,
• export GradePad definitions to your account,
• export the results (the assessment data) to your GradePad account,
• import class lists from your GradePad account to you iPhone or iPod touch,
• and import GradePad definitions from your GradePad account.

If you already own a version of GradePad, these features will be part of the 1.2 update. Once the new version goes live, the cost of GradePad will go from $1.99 to $2.99.

The version of the mobile performance assessment tool for teachers, trainers, and coaches improves the touch sensitivity of the scoring on GradePad assessment rubrics. This update also improves the sending of data to your email application.

With GradePad, you can assess a variety of behaviors and performances. You can create your own GradePad rubrics with criteria, definitions, and scales. You can manage groups of individuals. You can track their performance over time. You can share your data by sending the assessment scores to your email account for further analysis.

Here are just a few of the resources we found online:

Ten Things New Teachers Need to Succeed  By Robin Fogarty (2007)

I love what he says in his chapter on Performance Assessment. “Rubrics are our new best friend.” He says the essence of authentic assessment is an instructional method that dictates performance tasks and authentic evidence. An analogy, he says, that might look like this:

Evidence : Judgement :: Performance task : Rubric

Understanding and using reading assessment, K-12  By Peter Afflerbach (2007)

The Essentials of World Languages, Grades K-12  By Janis Jensen, Paul Sandrock, John Franklin (2007)

Performance assessments for adult education  By Robert J. Mislevy, Kaeli T. Knowles, National Research Council (U.S.). Committee for the Workshop on Alternatives for Assessing Adult Education (2002)

Teaching the Best Practice Way  By Harvey Daniels, Marilyn Bizar (2005)

Rubrics for assessing student achievement in science, grades K-12

Classroom assessment for student learning  By Richard J. Stiggins, Judith A. Erter, Assessment Training Institute, Steve Chappuis, Jan Chappuis, Educational Testing Service (2004)

Renaissance in the classroom  By Gail E. Burnaford, Arnold Aprill, Cynthia Weiss (2001)

Formative Assessment Strategies for Enhanced Learning in Science, K-8  By Elizabeth Hammerman (2008)

Standards-based Activities with Scoring Rubrics: Performance-based projects  By Jacqueline Glasgow (2002)

From standards to rubrics in 6 steps  By Kay Burke (2002)

There are clearly many factors that lead to dropping out of school, including socioeconomic background, parental values, disabilities, and stressful life events — which are difficult to control or mitigate. But some factors, such as attitudes toward school and a sense of belonging, are factors that schools can and should be able to deal with.

A sense of belonging includes levels of participation in extracurricular programs — sports, arts, music, drama, clubs. Success in these programs contributes to improved self-esteem. But, how would you know you have a talent for something, if no one had pointed that out? Talent development includes on-going, or formative, evaluation of behaviors and performance.

We think GradePad can help educational professionals document and quantify student performance — including social skills, problem-solving, cognitive skills, and interpersonal relations. GradePad has been designed to a teacher tool for on-the-spot assessment for a range of settings.

In the paper, they recommend:

“Assessment must be seen both as an instructional tool for use while learning is occurring (formative), and as an accountability tool to determine if learning has occurred (summative).”

21st Century Skills include hard to measure skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration.

They write:

“Thus, a 21st century assessment must be able to measure or observe a student’s mastery along several different axes. In addition, assessing student work using established rubrics and checklists is important. Not all assessments need to be formal and published.”

They recommend that assessments be part of a comprehensive continuum:

“21st century skills assessment must be ongoing. Students must visualize their thought process and how it aligns with a strategy to solve or complete a problem. Since students’ thought constructs are continually changing, formative assessment should be regularly given so students can see improvements in their skills and strategies, as well as knowledge transfer to parallel or related problems.”

They also recommend that assessments reflect learning that is multidimensional, integrated, and revealed in performance over time:

“Formative assessments should relay to the student that high-quality education involves a process of knowledge integration, processing, and performance.”

We believe GradePad helps teachers do ongoing performance assessment for 21st Century Skills.

In Arts and Media, we have assessments for portfolios, projects, and collaborations. In the classroom, we have assessments for cooperative learning, problem-solving, and learner attributes. For communication skills, we have assessments for persuasive speeches and public speaking.

For foreign language skills, we have assessments for an oral interview. For interpersonal skills, we have assessments for Social Interaction, Teamwork, Behavior, Public Interaction, and Meeting Leader. For language arts, we have assessments on the Writing Process, Expository Writing, Descriptive Writing, Writing a Business Letter, and Fluent Reading.

Today, there’s a new report that’s been released, Teen Voice 2009,  by the Search Institute and funded by Best Buy Children’s Foundation. They use a concept “sparks”. From the report:

Our research uses sparks as a metaphor for describing how young people experience talents, interests, or strengths that make them feel really happy, energized, and passionate, and that give them real purpose, direction, or focus.2 So sparks are part of who a young person really is—part of their sense of identity. Here’s how we described the concept to teens in the survey:

When people are really happy, energized, and passionate about their talents, interests, or hobbies, we say they have a ‘spark’ in their life. This spark is more than just interesting or fun for them. They are passionate about it. It gives them joy and energy. It is a really important part of their life that gives them real purpose, direction or focus.

1/3 of surveyed 15-year-olds said they didn’t have a spark.

There’s an app for that, right?  Yes, www.gradepad.com

We believe we should help kids identify their skills and abilities.

We believe kids expect us to document and share that growth.

We believe kids should know what their talents are before they leave school.

We believe that kids who drop out of school, probably, yes, are terrible at taking reading and math tests. But some appear to have excellent interpersonal and leadership skills to organize 190 kids to call in sick on the same day. Are all of their performances being assessed?

With GradePad, you can track assessment in core 21st Century workplace skills.

In David Warlick’s book, Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century, he says in the final chapter on Ethics and Context,

“Characteristics of the future workplace that will certainly impact lifelong learning are teamwork and collaboration.”

GradePad has rubrics to help you assess those skills in your students. There are GradePads for: Interpersonal Communication, Teamwork, A Project, An Oral Presentation, and Behavior.

In designing GradePad,  we wanted to include rubrics for social competence, how groups work, how someone can communicate a vision, how sensitive they are to the needs of others.

In my blog about TeamTreks, I’ve cited the report from the Federation of American Scientists in 2006. Harnessing the Power of Video Games for Learning.

The report discussed the nature of work in a conceptual, innovation-based economy. What skills do employers want in higher-wage workers?

• Interpersonal skills
• Team Building
• Decision-making
• Strategic thinking
• Problem Identification
• Plan Development & Execution
• Self-Direction
• Negotiation and Influencing.

What is your strategy for assessing your students in those areas?

Let GradePad help you design and deliver those assessments where the performance really takes place.

GradePad, an iPhone/iPod touch performance assessment tool
for teachers and trainers, is available at the iPhone App Store for $1.99.

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