Pre/Post Tests & Measurements

[Charmaine Henke]

I am at a loss - I was moved from the High School Media Center (after 20 years) down to the Elementary Media Centers 5 years ago.  Last year I was put in the Computer Lab as the new Elem Technology teacher and told to create a curriculum.  I see students in 2 buildings one semester and in the other 2 buildings 2nd semester. We "Specials" have to give grades for the first time and have to have measurable goals all of which are connected to our evaluations this year.  I have spent hours online trying to find an elementary pre and post tech test without luck.  Anyone giving those?  And what types of things are you measuring besides WPM?  Especially at the K-2 levels.  I also have Young 5's.

[Vicky S]

I'm lucky in that I don't have to grade in this manner. Here's how I'd approach it though. I'd create a checklist of measurable goals by grade level - your state or district might already have a technology skills checklist by grade. I found this for Michigan (that's where you're at right?) which is 2009 Technology Standards for K-2 in Michigan. It's not a detailed checklist and says by the end of grade 2 so you would have to work backwards for younger students but you could create a detailed checklist of items from this or look at Jacqui's Scope & Sequence and start from there.

As for assessments, the only online ones I've ever seen focus on end of 5th grade & end of 8th grade and not the younger grades. Especially for your young 5's, you'll have to use observation or pre & post work I would think since most of them would not be able to read & take a test of any kind plus I think technology skills are best measured when they're actually using the technology and not in a written test. So, you could have listed as a goal for Kindergarten students - Student will be able to access program from desktop using a mouse. You could create a rubric for this and then you could observe each student during the first couple of times in class for the beginning assessment and then during the last few classes for the ending assessment. If you have to have actual artifacts (beyond your observation), your pre-assessment could be a video you take of students attempting this during their first week of class & your post-assessment could be a video the last week of class.

As far as skills I would measure things like:

• Use of mouse: Click, Double-click, Click & Drag
• Keyboarding: NOT WPM but:
  • Kindergarten - Can see a written lower-case word & find corresponding key on keyboard, can correct mistakes using backspace key, can insert a space with the space key, can type a capital letter using the shift key, can find the period key, curved fingers
  • 1st Grade - Kindergarten skills plus uses left-hand for left-side of keyboard & right hand for right-side of keyboard,
  • 2nd Grade - Improvement on Kindergarten & 1st Grade skills plus finger placement on homerow, correct posture
• Check Jacqui's Scope & Sequence - it breaks down a lot of skills which could be measured using observation & rubrics or pre & post work samples.

[Vicky S]

If you're looking for an online technology assessment, here are a few that I've found (not used) but they're typically for upper elementary & middle school and most of them require a subscription:

• http://www.learning.com/techliteracy-assessment/ - Grades 3-8 $
• http://techliteracy.gstboces.org/ - Grade 8 $
• http://www.kto8.com/tech-assessment.php - Middle School $
• http://www.coloradotechliteracy.org/Home.html - 8th Grade (free, I believe)