October 2005 — Features

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Tech + Imagination = Results

). For instance, pre-service teachers taking an online educational foundation class created assessment games for the Jeffersonian chapters in their text, and then sent these to each other to play and assess their knowledge. The professors reported that their students constructed questions that could be used in the games, posted these for others to tackle, and have testified that using this assessment strategy is not only fun,but has resulted in improved learning.

Web-Based Tool Sets, ePortfolios, and Wireless Response Systems
Developing an evidence-based approach for teacher education has been a major element in ensuring that standards-based formative and summative assessments are informing decisions made by individual faculty and students, by program areas, and by the school of education as a whole. Faculty members were introduced to the Web-based tool set TaskStream as a mechanism for posting and providing feedback on lesson plans; assessment tools; student work samples; and ultimately, portfolio evidences that correspond with expectations for student performance. Across all of the programs—including elementary, middle, secondary, and special education—pilots for ePortfolios have been initiated, and a full implementation is in process. Other technologies are coming into play, as well. In exploring real-time data collection, the use of wireless response systems for immediate data to make informed decisions has resulted in the identification of two systems that are currently being utilized at the Watson School of Education: the Classroom Performance System from eInstruction (www.einstruction.com) and OptionPower from Option Technologies Interactive (www.optiontechnologies.com). These handheld response systems have allowed the workshop leader, the administrator, or the professor to gain immediate feedback from participants. They also have enabled the participants to almost instantly ascertain the responses of their peers.At the fall 2003 faculty meeting of the Watson School of Education, for instance,over a hundred participants were asked and responded to questions; those responses were tallied in real time, and displayed for all to see and share.

Motivated by Possibilities

UNCW’s teaching, learning, and assessment technology initiative has further modified a culture where people are now using, requesting, and partnering to incorporate technologies to problem-solve and influence decision-making. During the project’s third year, for example, the goal was to have 60 interns placed in implementation sites; 104 were actually placed. Elementary education methods students were to be trained on assessment practices and the use of handhelds: Instead of 165 students as intended, 224 were trained. In the middle school program, the target was set at 20 students who would be trained and would then apply the strategies in their clinical sites; as it turned out, that number was actually 50 students.