Not so much as a "final exam" but to see what they know and what I need
to teach better.
I based it on a combination of the ISTE standards, skills specific to
the technology at the school, and software tools I wanted to make sure
they knew at the time.
I actually gave the students a copy of the practical test at least two
weeks before since I was evaluating skills taught over three years. I
gave them the opportunity to learn the skills on their own or come to me
for help during this time. They still had to do all the actual skills
on the day of the test, but they knew exactly what I was going to ask
them to do.
The test had three parts:
1. Classroom discussion - one class period around topics such as media,
social networking, ethics, copyright, etc.
2. Written test - one class period relating to terms I wanted them to
know and a couple of essay questions (for 5th and 8th) relating to
ethics, copyright, using computer in society, etc.
3. Practical / hands on - 2.5 hours and had to be done in one sitting
(so I arranged with the middle school to take them in small groups of
6-8 over a period of two weeks). Students were allowed to use anything
except me and each other to figure it out. (They could use built in
help, websites, etc.) I had them do 6-8 tasks including a formatted
Word document, spreadsheet, small database, create a 2-page website,
create a multi-media presentation, use a drawing program, and take a
keyboarding test. This was a few years ago, so I would now do much more
online using Web 2.0 tools like Google Docs for this portion.
Everything was evaluated on a rubric with only two choices: mastered or
not mastered. However, you could have a "working on mastery" category
too. I sent the results of the 8th grade exam to their high schools and
included a copy in their cumulative folder.
Renee Ramig
Seven Hills School
-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for independent school educators
[mailto:ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Bernadette Roche
Sent: Friday, May 08, 2009 9:47 AM
To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Final "exam"
For those of you who teach and work with 8th graders that move on to
another school for high school -
Next year we are adding 8th grade. I've been tasked with the job of
creating an "exam" for each semester in technology (it is separate
class). This goes against my every fiber, but I thought I would try.
It doesn't have to be a paper/pencil test per se, but could be a project
or a set of skills to demonstrate during the last couple weeks of the
semester. At this point, I can't even begin to visualize what this
would look like nor would I know what the essential skills are that they
need to move on to high school.
Does anyone else do this? Any suggestions?
Bernadette Roche'
Director of Technology
Oakhill Day School
bernadette.roche@oakhilldayschool.org
www.oakhilldayschool.org
816.436.6228
=20
[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons,
attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=3DISED-L
[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=3DISED-L
