The document discusses curriculum evaluation and the use of technology in education. It explores how students are given technology but often don't know how to use it effectively due to a lack of practice and training from educators. While technology is meant to enhance learning, it is sometimes used simply to satisfy requirements rather than to develop students' skills. The document also examines formative assessment programs and how educators are working to incorporate lessons learned from such programs into online libraries to help shape instruction and assessment across different classrooms and schools.

1. Curriculum and Instruction Explored
By
Tracie Dixon

2. After researching, analyzing, and evaluating my
own selected curriculum, it really made me thing
about all that is taken into account when
devising a curriculum. The curriculum that I
evaluated used formative assessments and
technology. So, I chose to focus on the
technological aspect of curriculum design and
the formative assessment piece of curriculum
evaluation. In the article, “Digital Natives, Yet
Strangers to the Web”, 2015, by Alia Wong,
she states that while kids are equipped with
techology, they don't know how to use it

3. 
She also says that the reason why students
don't use it effectively and appropriately is
because educators don't know how to use the
technology themselves. They are considered to
be “dinosaurs”, and once they learn to use it
effectively the technology has changed. With all
the technology distributed through schools,
some educators feel that the technology is
taking away the learning process.

4. 
This article made me reflect on the evaluation
of the Achieve3000 program as well as other
lessons that I have taught. With the reading
program, students were typing their responses
to the before reading poll. The responses were
poorly typed because they'd never typed
before. However, as they continued to practice
typing their skills got better.

5. 
As I continue to think about it, I realized that
students get very little time or opportunity to
hone their typing skills or any other skill that is
considered basic when it comes to
keyboarding. Like the article says, they don't
know when to use technology. Even though
technology is to be implemented in classrooms,
it is replaced with expensive programs that
require some students to just click a button and
that satisifes the technology expectations of
the school.

6. 
Technology has now drifted to the Common
Core standards in the form of the Smarter
Balanced Assessments. Last year 46 educators
came together to contribute to a resources
digital library and take what they've learned
back home to other teachers who can do the
same. The teachers observed a videoed
lesson and evaluated it. The educators
evaluated a lesson to determine if a video was
a helpful resource to shape their ow lessons
and to assess how well students are learning.

7. 
The feedback from the lesson was used to create the
online library and also additional lessons for the now
Smarter Balanced Assessment. Schools are using it
for the formative and summative assessment. The
Smarter Balanced Assessments have open-ended
questions that students will have to answer on line.
This leads us back to the issue with the use of
technology. What if a student is a key pecker? With
budget cuts a possibility, what will become of
curriculum and assessments that require technology

8. Reference Page

Molinar, Michele. October 2014. Educators evaluate array of formative testing product.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/article/2014/10/22/09pl-formative.h34.html 34(9). 20-23

Wong, Alia. April 2015. Digital Natives, Yet Strangers to the Web.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/04/digital-natives-yet-strangers-to-the-web/390990
1-13.