To Be or Not to Be....

Too young for online assessments?

So a few weeks ago, we did our first round of assessments for our kindergarten students.  No big deal, or is it?  This time we did the testing on Chromebooks with the kids wearing headphones.  Now for most students, I would say fine because they are in deed Digital Natives.  But for kindergartners, I would have to say, we are not there yet.  And if we want to get there we have to do a lot more to prepare our students at the preschool ages.  There's a big difference from a toddler playing games on a tablet for fun and a baby taking a test that is recorded and reported as a part of our end of the year scores.  The question becomes to be or not to be?

As I sat and assisted each student in my group through our version of the MAP test without offering any assistance but instead just trying to keep them on task, I would have to vote, "not to be".  I had one little girl telling me how pretty my nail polish was, while another kept trying to give me hugs.  Then there was the one that I had to keep reminding that she was actually taking a test so she should look at the screen and finish.  Then there was the ones that were so intrigued by the touchscreen that they just kept hitting letters with no regards to the correct answer.  It was absolutely horrific to watch.  And I fear the results in the end.  For this environment, I don't think that the touchscreen Chrome books was the best tool especially seeing that this group of kids were not regularly using Chrome books in the learning environment.  This is a prime example of the problems posed with evolving technology.  "One of the acknowledged truisms of educational technology is that technology evolves much more rapidly than the willingness of teachers, learners, and educational institutions to exploit those technologies for learning." (Mason, 2004, p. 3)  In this case, a better idea might have been to use assessment tools that included audio and visual stimulants but with less distractions.  Maybe if it was designed as more of a game delivered on a tablet, then the kids would focus more on getting the answers right.  Also maybe if there were stimulants to let the kid know how they were doing, it would keep their attention on doing better.  Another idea would be video conferencing where an instructor goes over each question to the group and then the kid just selects the right answer on their tablet.The keyboard and touchscreen together overwhelmed the kids and our test results will reflect that in the end.  Unfortunately that is one of the downfalls of technology, if not used appropriately in the proper setting, you can get results that do not accurately reflect the performance of the audience.

References

Mason, R. (2004). Evolving technologies. Encyclopedia of distributed learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.