Digital Tools That Support Assessment

Week Twelve

There are numerous websites that cater to providing digital online assessment tools which can be utilized for formative assessments. Playposit is a free online service which allow teachers to improve flipped classroom lessons by adding interactive assessment questions to video content. Pear Deck is a cloud-based service which works with Google Suite for Education. It allow teachers to turn their presentations into interactive formative assessments which can be used to inform instruction and student engagement. Socrative is another player in the online assessment tool arena. The cloud-based application can be used on any device and allows teachers to devise quizzes, polling, games and exit tickets with real time results. These tools aid instruction by providing other modalities to engage students while informing group and instruction dynamics.

When formative assessment drives instruction, it becomes a valuable tool for teachers to be able to provide descriptive feedback which assist students in their learning. The sooner feedback can be communicated to students, the sooner opportunities for learning growth become available. To provide differentiated instruction, a teacher needs to gain insight from both pre-assessment and formative assessment. Attention to voids in learning aim to cater to students' individual needs, and can dramatically change learning outcomes. If utilized properly, formative assessments inform decisions which are vital to learners, the subject matter being taught, and the capabilities of instruction by producing the facilitation of learning. After the learning has taken place, the summative assessment narrates a story of the quality of instruction. Summative assessments informs the teacher on how well they taught. This information can be used to inform changes teachers may need to make in their own instructional design. The aim of instructional effectiveness in the 21st century is to provide learner centered instruction which is technology rich and caters to the learning needs of each individual.