Assessment
The topic of assessment, determining what students have learned, could involve a wide variety of topics and issues. Our primary focus will be on assessment strategies for your classroom. The description of technology-enabled projects that result in products is likely the most unique emphasis. So, we will emphasize assessment techniques appropriate to the evaluation of student generated products.
Before we get to the topic of classroom assessment, we must briefly acknowledge a broader assessment issue. There is presently an intense national debate regarding the mandated assessment of student learning and the use of such assessment data to evaluate schools and teachers. This is a broad debate with many specific issues and a political subtext. The evaluation of schools or teachers is clearly not the focus of the resources you are now exploring. However, it seems that the openness of educators to proposals for how students might spend their time ends up being influenced by pressures exerted on schools and teachers. This is why this general issue is relevant here. Fair enough. Anyone associated with education must take seriously the goals of education and whether or not these goals are being met.
The pressure exerted through what has been described as high stakes testing seems to have had what we assume are unintended consequences that might be described as a narrowing of the curriculum and a focus that does not include important higher order skills. Schools and teachers appear to readjust the areas of the curriculum that are emphasized and the learning tasks assigned in reaction to the content areas and skills emphasized on the tests. For example, elementary school science, social studies, and the arts receive less attention. Extended writing and projects and even the use of computers are de-emphasized (see Darling-Hammond, 2010 for a summary). About all we can say about this situation is that it is disconcerting that some of activities we propose as useful in developing higher order thinking and deeper understanding are the activities that may decline in frequency as students are prepared for the examinations used to evaluate school performance. A process that addresses a subset of desired goals and diverts attention away from unexamined goals as a consequence is a flawed process.