Today, in many states across the United States, policymakers and educators are trying to integrate technology and interactive media into classroom instructional, assessment and progress monitoring practices, with the view to supporting the development and learning of students.
This effort calls for continuous review on how emerging technologies should be used to promote the social, linguistic, and cognitive development of students (Couse & Chen, 2010), and also how these technologies should be evaluated to ensure their effectiveness in enhancing the capacity of students to learn, problem solve, and convey their ideas (Beck, 2002).
From the interview with the school psychologist in Perris CA school district, it is evident that the use of technology is critical to the assessment and progress monitoring of young children within the school system.
The interviewee was first asked to shed light on how technology is used in the assessment and progress monitoring of young children in her school.
Based on her response, it is evident that teachers within the school use technology to scaffold children’s learning or to gather information on children’s learning experiences; for example, teachers usually ask the young children to take digital photos, videos, or audio recordings of activities in the early childhood education setting and later review these together to assess the children’s level of understanding.
Children are also asked to employ technology to document and reflect on their own learning or to share their learning with parents and other educators; for example, teachers routinely ask the young children to use technology to create portfolios of their own work, which are then used to evaluate progress in the children’s learning and development.
Additionally, technology has made it possible for the school to utilize the hosted online version of the Online Assessment Reporting System (OARS), which serves as a bank of standards-based test questions with online scoring and analysis capacities for purposes of assessing students and generating analytical reports from the scores (Montero, 2012).
In monitoring the progress of young children, available literature demonstrates that “children who use computers have been found to show greater gains in intelligence, structural knowledge, problem-solving, and language skills compared with those who do not use technology in their learning” (Couse & Chen, 2010, p. 76).
According to the interviewee’s responses, technology has been used by the school not only to monitor the progress of the young children towards their learning objectives but also to provide feedback that is critical in assisting educators in identifying students who may require additional instructional services.
Technology has also been used in the school to facilitate teacher collaboration in the enhancement of their craft; for example, if the young children in one class demonstrate a strong understanding of a particular standard, another instructor may be interested in the technique used to assist his or her students.
Available literature demonstrates that “assistive technology applications are increasingly implemented in early childhood settings for children who are at risk or who have disabilities” (Parette, Blum, & Boeckmann, 2005, p. 5).
The assistive technology evaluation process described by the interviewee revolved around the employment of observational strategies to establish whether the targeted assistive technology-supported interventions implemented by the school made a difference in children’s learning.
The interviewee was clear that the school used the concurrent time series probe approach, which required multiple performance measures of a child engaged in a targeted task over time – both with or without a particular assistive technology tool.
Lastly, the interviewee was keen to add that this approach had demonstrated powerful child progress monitoring implications, not mentioning that it was effective in assessing the effectiveness of assistive technology devices in supporting skill acquisition for young children in the classroom.
Overall, the interview with the school psychologist demonstrates that the use of technology is of immense importance in the assessment and progress monitoring of young children within the school system.
References
Beck, J. (2002). Emerging literacy through assistive technology. Teaching Exceptional Children, 35(2), 44-48.
Couse, L.J., & Chen, D.W. (2010). A tablet computer for young children? Exploring its viability for early childhood education. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, vol. 43 no. 1, pp. 75-98.
Montero, J.D. (2012). Perris elementary school district technology review.
Parette, H.P., Blum, C., & Boeckmann, N.M. (2009). Evaluating assistive technology in early childhood education: The use of a current time series probe approach. Early Childhood Education Journal, 37(1), 5-12.