Technology Assessments

Technology assessments can be valuable for many reasons.  First, assessing an educators’ technology leadership knowledge and skills can be helpful.  It can be a valuable tool for an educator to know what their strengths and weaknesses are.  When an educator can identify a strength they can become mentors in those areas.  They can help improve curriculum in those areas.  When a weakness is identified an educator can seek professional development in that area.  They can seek out others who have strengths in those areas to find ways to improve their weaknesses.  They can also join online communities to exchange and share ideas in an effort to improve.  For example, if an educator struggles finding ways for students to use technology to collaborate or communicate with groups outside of the school, that teacher can have discussions with other teachers who have had success in that area.  They can talk about methods they have used and strategies to make the use of that technology successful in their classroom.

Assessments of student technology skill levels can also be helpful.  They can identify students’ strengths and weaknesses.  If a class has similar skill levels, a teacher can focus more on a classes’ weaknesses.  Also, if the assessment in done before students are scheduled for classes, students can be placed based on their skill levels to allow teachers to meet the needs of the students.  If assessment find that a class has a mixed group of skill levels, students can be arranged so that students with different strengths can be grouped together.  This will allow students to utilize their strengths while helping their classmates improve their weaknesses.  Knowledge of students’ learning styles can also be helpful when creating assignments and projects for a class.  Assignments can be tailor made to meet the styles of all of your students. 

Technology assessments have more pros than cons.  It is helpful to know what you or your students need to improve.  However, when we know we need to improve in one area we can easily neglect to maintain our skills in other areas.  If an educator had a strength in applications, but a weakness in Web 2.0 tools they could easily fall behind in their strength if all of their development was in the area of Web 2.0 tools.  Technology is always changing and advancing and it is important for educators to seek professional development in all areas of technology development not just their weaknesses.  What is a strength today may be a weakness tomorrow.