If you haven’t seen the December 2007/January 2008 Educational Leadership issue (Informative Assessment.), you should check out a few of the articles online.
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.