The value of assessing the educators’ as well as the students’ knowledge and skill levels in technology is very useful and very much needed; because in every application, you have got to know at what starting point each is at before moving forward new plans and goals. You simply cannot put the “cart before the horse,” as my mother used to tell me when I would get excited about weekend plans when I still had a week full of chores to complete. The same applies with technology education—you cannot simply hand a teacher a technology curriculum to integrate within their classroom if you have not first assessed their own level of technology skills in which they will be required to teach with, nor can you assign an entire classroom of students a homework assignment to be completed on the Internet if you have not first assessed whether or not the students can even operate on that technological level (depending on grade level, of course). Assessments are a good way to gain some insight on what you are working with on a knowledge and skill basis.
However, with almost any topic, there are both pros and cons to these assessments. On the “Pros” side, if the assessments are answered both honestly and accurately, one can gain a fairly decent, overall grasp of the strengths and weaknesses of the individual taking the assessment and can get an overall direction that the individual can work towards technologically. Answering dishonestly and inaccurately would definitely be a “Con” that completely skews the usefulness and application of even giving the assessment and further sets back that individual in their growth towards becoming more technologically skilled, which would be like a Butcher applying for a Banking position—nothing good would come from it. Another downside of the written assessments is that they do not confirm that the individual actually has the skills that they could say they have; having an actual set of skills to be performed (i.e. creating a PowerPoint or Blog, etc.) as part of the assessment would be a better confirmation of where that individual stands in their knowledge and skill
level.
However, with almost any topic, there are both pros and cons to these assessments. On the “Pros” side, if the assessments are answered both honestly and accurately, one can gain a fairly decent, overall grasp of the strengths and weaknesses of the individual taking the assessment and can get an overall direction that the individual can work towards technologically. Answering dishonestly and inaccurately would definitely be a “Con” that completely skews the usefulness and application of even giving the assessment and further sets back that individual in their growth towards becoming more technologically skilled, which would be like a Butcher applying for a Banking position—nothing good would come from it. Another downside of the written assessments is that they do not confirm that the individual actually has the skills that they could say they have; having an actual set of skills to be performed (i.e. creating a PowerPoint or Blog, etc.) as part of the assessment would be a better confirmation of where that individual stands in their knowledge and skill
level.
In summary, I do still believe that having these assessments does play a positive, critical part in the overall success of teachers as well as the students in the area of technology. What do you think?
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