Schools like High Tech High in San Diego and Brightworks in San Francisco are leveraging the power of assessments, using digital portfolios to reflect students' work — blog posts, essays, podcasts, presentations.
These goals are best measured through real student work collected in digital portfolios that include project and problem-solving results, persuasive essays, self-reflections and results from open-ended tasks.
The iPads cost $750 apiece, and they are to be used in class and at home during the school year to replace textbooks, allow students to correspond with teachers and turn in papers and homework assignments, and preserve a record of student work in digital portfolios.
But what gets tested is what gets taught, and so we need 'Accountability 2.0.' All students should have digital portfolios to show evidence of mastery of skills like critical thinking and communication, which they build up right through K-12 and postsecondary.
The researchers believed that this may be efficiently and effectively accomplished using the approach used in this study to the online scoring of digital portfolios.
