Q. What would you say is the most promising technology for teachers?
A. What technology does is it enables collecting a very rich set of information about student behaviors. So you have a digital curriculum that is designed to be highly interactive. As students interact, there's a time-stamped record of everything they're doing that lives on a server. And if you have a system that's set up to analyze that kind of information, it can provide very valuable diagnostic data for the teacher to personalize instruction. If I'm a teacher, and 70 percent of the class is benefiting from what I'm saying in class now—which is a pretty good number—then I'm losing the 15 percent at the top end who are bored, already know this stuff, and are just being warehoused. And I'm losing the 15 percent at the bottom end who have no clue what I'm talking about. That's a lot of people to lose.
Now I'm able to have different instructional streams, so instead of a one-size-fits-all strategy, I've got enrichment opportunities that the top group can participate in, and I've got remedial activities that the bottom group can participate in. And I still have activities for that big middle group, and they're all happening at the same time because of this digital teaching-platform idea.
Marsha Ratzel on 07 Aug 11"So suggests Dr. Dylan William in his excellent new book, Embedded Formative Assessment (published by Solution Tree Press, and recommended). A common use for diagnostic questions is to find out whether participants have understood your instruction - telling you whether you can go onto another topic or need to spend more time on this topic. And if participants get it wrong, you want to understand why they have done so in order to correct the misconception. Good diagnostic questions involve deep domain knowledge, as you have to understand why learners are likely to answer in a particular way"
