April--Video+Reflections

Marzano at CUE Conference In his presentation at the CUE conference, Dr. Marzano spoke about the effect of interactive whiteboards and formative assessment, record keeping (through the use of digital data collection), and teacher feedback and interaction on student achieve. His research, examining other pieces of research, found that student achievement increased 17% with the use of interactive whiteboards in the classroom. Research has shown -3 to 20% gains in student achievement with teacher feedback. Negative gains were seen when feedback was simply noting if answers given were right or wrong and the most gains (20%) were seen when answers were explained or when students were allowed to reassess until answers were correct. Software programs allow teachers new methods for collecting and reporting information about student progress and achievement. When students become actively involved in tracking their achievement, they feel a great sense of ownership in their learning, and therefore, they experience greater success.

Dr. Marzano made five additional comments that are important to remember. First, research is only in its infancy on the use of technology and its impact on student achievement. Second, technology cannot be used all the time (just like any other educational practice). Third, with the increased use of technology to disseminate test data about student performance, it has been shown that using subscores to determine student placement in courses is not reliable. Fourth, technology is helping to inform research on education. And lastly, there is an art to teaching that can never be taken away or can never be replaced by the use of technology.

[|Marzano Video]