Acuity UnWired Ties Formative Assessments to Classroom Clickers

CTB/McGraw-Hill (a unit of McGraw-Hill Education) has released Acuity UnWired, a new tool that allows the company's Acuity InFormative Assessment to integrate with interactive classroom response systems (also knows as classroom clickers). The announcement was made at this week's National Education Computing Conference (NECC) in Washington, DC.

The software allows McGraw-Hill's assessments assessments to work with student response devices, including those provided by Qwizdom and eInstruction. According to the company, the technology allows instructors to generate "standards-aligned Acuity reports within minutes. The instantaneous feedback provided through Acuity UnWired gives educators the ability to make data-driven instructional decisions without delay, providing students with targeted instruction in real-time."

McGraw-Hill said it piloted the technology in 14 trials involving more than 300 students of varying ages.

"Giving teachers the ability to get immediate feedback, without having to grade a pile of papers, is very powerful," said Joe O'Reilly, executive director of student achievement support for Mesa Public Schools in Arizona, in a statement released this week. "For example, as one teacher watched her students answer questions on a test, she pointed to one question on her computer screen and said, 'They should know that.' So, when the test was done, she immediately started re-teaching. This truly expands the power of Acuity in the classroom and its strength as a formative tool to immediately inform classroom instruction. Teachers who have taken our course on using the clickers and Acuity report that students are doing better, the instructional activities that can be assigned engage students, and some students have actually asked for more formative tests to show how they are doing."

Further information can be found here.

About the Author

David Nagel is the former editorial director of 1105 Media's Education Group and editor-in-chief of THE Journal, STEAM Universe, and Spaces4Learning. A 30-year publishing veteran, Nagel has led or contributed to dozens of technology, art, marketing, media, and business publications.

He can be reached at [email protected]. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrnagel/ .


Featured

  • blue AI cloud connected to circuit lines, a server stack, and a shield with a padlock icon

    Report: AI Security Controls Lag Behind Adoption of AI Cloud Services

    According to a recent report from cybersecurity firm Wiz, nearly nine out of 10 organizations are already using AI services in the cloud — but fewer than one in seven have implemented AI-specific security controls.

  • stacks of glowing digital documents with circuit patterns and data streams

    Mistral AI Intros Advanced AI-Powered OCR

    French AI startup Mistral AI has announced Mistral OCR, an advanced optical character recognition (OCR) API designed to convert printed and scanned documents into digital files with "unprecedented accuracy."

  • robot waving

    Copilot Updates Aim to Personalize AI

    Microsoft has introduced a range of updates to its Copilot platform, marking a new phase in its effort to deliver what it calls a "true AI companion" that adapts to individual users' needs, preferences and routines.

  • teenager interacts with a chatbot on a computer screen

    Character.AI Rolls Out New Parental Insights Feature Amid Safety Concerns

    Chatbot platform Character.AI has introduced a new Parental Insights feature aimed at giving parents a window into their children's activity on the platform. The feature allows users under 18 to share a weekly report of their chatbot interactions directly with a parent's e-mail address.