Free tool lets students participate during class

I read an article today from eschool news regarding a new tool released by Microsoft. Here's the URL for the article: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/04/30/free-tool-lets-students-participate-during-class/ It was interesting to read the rationale and the specifics. A few thoughts come to mind.

There are so many Web 2.0 tools that teachers easily become overwhelmed. Many have really neat whistles and bells that make them really attractive. Many of the tools do the same sorts of things with some different details. How do we help teachers decide which Web 2.0 tool is the best for what they're trying to accomplish? I think there are two important considerations - what are the curricular objectives and who is your audience? Once those questions are answered teachers can start to whittle down the choices or even offer students a large menu of choices, continually bearing in mind the answers to the two questions. Have students demonstrated deep understanding of the content and have they chosen a tool that is appropriate for their audience?

The large array of options available to teachers are very attractive but present some obstacles. Is access to the tool blocked by our internet filter and if it is, why? Does each student need to create an account to use the tool? How can the accounts be managed?

The next aspect of this article that caught my attention is that it's all about data capturing. I think the catch phrase that I've heard most this year in education is data driven decision making. Making decisions based on data is something new - we all do it every day both formally and informally. The best decisions are based on good data. What concerns me is that we are putting all our eggs in the standardized, multiple choice basket when it comes to data collection. This format is certainly one of many ways of gathering data but to place so many important decisions in the lap of this data collection is frightening. MicroSoft has jumped on the band-wagon to give us a new tool to gather this same sort of data.

The final thing that torqued my rotors is that Microsoft releases this incredible new educational tool and it's only for Windows. What are they thinking? We are fortunate to have other tools for taking this little snapshots within our SCASD technology arsenal.