Needs Assessment
Upon reading through the San Leandro High School Technology Plan (Actually San Leandro USD). I noticed the plan was last updated in 2003. Much of the document was seemingly copy and pasted from other sources. Definitely did not seem a priority for the district. From my earlier discussions with some teachers I know from that site I knew that many of them had access to iPad carts, and there was an interest in using them for assessment. The district did have an online CMS called Aeries and when I read through the District-wide Technology plan, I noticed on page 20, they referred to an online assessment tool from Edu-soft. I considered using that for my PD, but as I was researching the tool, I found the following message in their web site:
"Please be advised HMH will be retiring the EduSoft Assessment Management System on June 30th, 2017” –source: edusoft.com
So their current online assessment tool was coming down this summer. I decided to put together a survey that would assess how many teachers from the group I had selected currently use the EduSoft assessment tool, whether they were aware it was being discontinued, and if they were interested in transitioning to a separate tool. After some research, I determined that Google Forms would be a good possible assessment substitute, based on the following criteria: It was part of the Google Suite of products, so readily accessible and free to use, It could serve as a doorway to using Google classroom, a powerful tool for collaboration online, and assessment and analysis could be automated by use of the third party (fourth party?) tool Flubaroo
I prepared a survey for the teachers to assess use of online assessment and interest in transitioning to Google Forms. Since I did not know the level of use of Google products, I decided not to use Google Forms for the survey. I instead prepared a PHP form on a website that would have the results emailed directly to me. I used the tool at JotForms.com to make the form, and I would code the PHP programming to collect the results.