Technology Assessments: Pros and Cons

In my opinion, assessing student technology knowledge and skills is important because it holds teachers accountable for student knowledge. Students are expected to be “technology literate” by the end of 8th grade, by having assessment to measure student knowledge and skills we can measure our progress towards this goal. In my district, we currently have each student take a technology assessment when they finish 8th grade. To support the middle school, as an elementary computer teacher we began assessing our students in 5th grade. The data from this assessment allows me to refocus my teaching to specific areas for my next 5th graders. More specifically, this last year my end of year 5th grade assessment data showed my students were high in internet safety but low in evaluating the effectiveness of websites. As a result of this data, I have begun this year teaching internet safety to get into things and then we are doing a 6 week focus on searching/finding information on the internet and determining its’ effectiveness. A con of these assessments is that my students know how to complete tasks but have a hard time reading and understanding the assessment questions. Not understanding what the question is asking does not show students’ actual ability. For example, if we are in Microsoft Word and I have the kids’ center a picture they can do it yet they cannot answer on the assessment a question like “when using a word processing application what is the correct form of justification for this clip art”.


For educators, we annually use the Texas StarChart to assess their technology knowledge and skills. I feel there are many issues that skew this assessment data although I am thankful for having the assessment because district at least has some form of data that shows them the need to increase technology focus across the entire district. I am in charge of getting everyone on my campus to complete their StarChart, one problem I see is that teachers speed through the survey because they are busy with other things more important to them. They also often do not understand what the question is asking, much like I spoke of for the students. The StarChart only asks teachers questions, it’s an opinion, it does not ask them to show or prove their knowledge and skills and classroom use. The respondent can choose any answer they want whether it is accurate or not. For example, one teacher in my school answered developing tech for everything and did not begin to understand what the questions were asking. On the other side, there is a question about using the TA TEKS, where teachers answered it is not a focus on our campus when in reality there are two teachers (including me) who’s full time position is focusing on these specific TA TEKS and many teachers across campus who integrate technology and use the TA TEKS for their projects but a pre-kinder teacher who answered incorrectly does not know what goes on on the other side of the school with the older kids and does not understand that by having her pre-K students use the mouse and correct technology terminology she IS teaching towards the TA TEKS.