Ed. Tech. 2: New Computerized Assessments for FriscoISD

In September, Frisco ISD implemented the use of iStation at the elementary level to offer assistance to teachers with the reading assessment process. iStation was the district's response to too much instructional time being taken away by the assessment/data collection process that formally happens three times each year. While gathering data is crucial and should be used to drive instruction, traditional reading assessments done by K-2 teachers especially are very time consuming. Before iStation, kindergarten teachers were required to administer the PAPI, Concepts about Print, Hearing and Recording Sounds, and a DRA on every student! No doubt a very stressful task for these teachers especially with students that have short attention spans and little experience with school and testing for that matter!

I would classify iStation as an Integrated Learning System (ILS). iStation offers a variety of instructional techniques designed around the five major components of reading instruction--phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Each student logs into a computer and lessons are downloaded. The program keeps records on what the students do during time spent on the system. Teachers are given progress reports on individual students as well as class summaries. For individual students, the program tracks the lessons and assessments that have been completed, questions missed on each lesson by numbers and percentages, time spent on each lesson and test, and pretest and post-test data. After completing assessments, which are downloaded at the beginning of every month, the iStation software assigns each student to a tier based on his/her performance. These tiers are useful to teachers as they group students into guided reading groups.

As the literacy facilitator on our campus, I had the opportunity to take each class of students through iStation for the beginning of the year assessments. I would have to say that a major advantage to using an ILS like iStation is the time-saving ability. On average, each class was through the assessment portion within 20 minutes! Teachers would never be able to complete a PAPI, CAP, HRSW, and DRA in 20 minutes on every student! Sometimes the DRA alone for one student can take 20 minutes! From my observation as well as the classroom teachers', the program seemed to accurately identify students' ability levels. Our district is planning to share iStation beginning of the year results with parents on Conference Day.