The graphic below comes from the Ontario Curriculum Unit Planner. It outlines the process of assessment as it applies to the new Ontario Curriculum. Along with references to the Policy Documents, you'll notice the Resources section to the right.
All good curriculum is derived from first taking a look at the Curriculum Expectations. From there, if you follow the arrows, levels of Achievement lead to Assessments which lead to Evaluation and ultimately to Reporting.
Source: Ontario Curriculum Unit Planner, Copyright 2001, Queen's Printer for Ontario
It is the hope that computer technology and appropriate software is used in this process. We all have our favourites when it comes to software. But, as you decide which software is appropriate, it would be nice to refer to software via expectations.
A new feature at the OSAPAC website now allows this. There has always been a feature in various formats to take a piece of software and look up what expectations can be addressed by the use of the software. However, that approach isn't necessarily consistent with the approach in the diagram above.
You should start with the Curriculum Expectations and develop your activities and assessments from that.
Currently active for Grades K-8, is the ability to do exactly that. Visit the OSAPAC website (http://www.osapac.org) and select the Software button. The very first option lets you search through the licensed software in one of two ways.
The first option is the traditional "Enter a Piece of Software and we'll see what can be done" approach. This is as functional and appropriate as it ever was.
The second option is even more helpful in terms of Curriculum Design. In this case, you ask the search engine to work its way through all of the expectations looking for your keyword. The results are the names of the actual pieces of software that can be used to help students meet these expectations.
In the example above, I was interested in determining what software would be suitable for the topic of "food webs" from the Intermediate Science curriculum. I enter "web" as my search word, change the Grade level to 7-8 and ask for the results. There they are.
What's even more powerful is that the search results may lead you to software titles that you have forgotten or didn't know were available in the first place!
As with most searching routines, it's extremely important to ensure that your search words are precise. In this case, I also ended up with some results about "websites" as well.
Good luck and happy searching.
Again, this year, the cover for GEC Computers in the Classroom appears on iTeachnet. It's a great place to visit!
