By Ingrid Padgett, CEI’s Strategic Initiatives Associate.
How is your school handling technology, personalizing instruction, and innovating in the digital age? As a part of our ongoing efforts to research and share the most effective ways to infuse 21st century learning strategies into classrooms, schools, and school districts, the Center for Educational Improvement (CEI) released a technology rubric last month on our website. With constructive criterion-based feedback, our developers can review existing instructional materials to determine revision needs and identify exemplars/models for teacher use within and across states. The goal of this work is to define authentic assessment approaches that clarify, communicate, and assess expectations that correspond with real world experiences.
We are pleased to report that with input from school administrators, school technology coordinators, tech savvy teachers, and learning specialists in 15 states, CEI is moving the needle forward. We are extremely thankful for our stage 1 respondents who took time during this busy season to support us. The power of the rubric is in the feedback it provides curriculum developers and the productive conversations educators have while evaluating materials. CEI’s Technology Rubric Review Process provided participants with the chance to grade our work, using a scale of 1 ‘“ 5 (with one being the lowest score) on content, usefulness, clarity, and format.
Our overall grade was just under four (3.875) ‘“ a number that indicates we are well on our way to finalizing a standard for guiding and measuring technology use in schools and improving the technology quotient of schools nationally and globally.
Our next step is to work with a team of volunteer school administration and teachers, utilizing the scores and feedback we received, to develop a final rubric that will earn the CEI ‘stamp of approval.’ Stay tuned for more updates on this work and visit our Technology Section to stay abreast of our technology intiatives.