Blog Posting #1 – Technology Assessments

How does a school, district, or state know just where it stands on technology skills? It’s simple, they assess. They assess administrators, teachers, librarians, and students. They ask the same question in a multitude of different ways. Always hoping that, in the end, the data produced will reflect some measure of truth and accuracy. In order to make wise decisions we must know what skills are already strong and which ones need to be improved. Asking the ones who are working with the technology seems to be the most accurate and least expensive avenue.

Technology questionnaires, however, are often long and wordy. Teachers, at least the one’s that I eat lunch with, do not appreciate being asked to add another 20 minute task to their already overcrowded schedules. Therefore, they complete the survey (to keep the administration at bay) but do not take the assessments seriously and often answer at random.

The answer choices on the surveys sometime do not seem to fit. For instance the LoTi Digital-Age Questionnaire uses the following scale, "Never, At least once a year, At least once a semester, At least once a month, A few times a month, A least once a week, A few times a week, and At least once a day." Those answers seem to cover all situations, until you ask, “Does it mean once a day or does it really want to know if I do it every day that we use technology?” The surveyie, if there is such a word, then finds themselves second guessing and changing their answers. In reality, few teachers use technology every day. Some days are, as my department head says, “Sit and Git” days. Note taking on paper or reading from an old fashioned textbook one day a week would change my answer from “once a day” to “a few times a week”, thus decreasing the validity of the assessment.

My LoTi survey said that I “may not have the confidence or feel comfortable troubleshooting simple “technology” problems or glitches as they arise. At school, their use of computers may be limited to a grade book or attendance program.” I am one of a handful of people in my school that others come to when they need help troubleshooting technology issues. Because the survey results appear so far off in one area, at least in my mind, the validity of all of the results become suspect.

There are too many variables to have much confidence in the results obtained from these questionnaires.