There's no doubt that clever software can make assessment a lot easier, and a lot faster to do. But if you don't know what's going on under the hood, you can't really make a reasonable judgement as to its accuracy.
This was brought home to me a few years ago. I was inspecting a school's ICT, and one of the teachers said to me:
“Hey, Terry, look at these graphs. I assessed my class at the start of term, and then assessed them again last week.”
This is what he showed me:
I thanked him, and then gingerly asked him what exactly the graph was measuring. He replied:
“Who cares? It’s gone up, hasn’t it?!”
Read more.
cross-posted at www.ictineducation.org
Terry Freedman is an independent educational ICT consultant with over 35 years of experience in education. He publishes the ICT in Education website and the newsletter “Digital Education."
