Currently my students’ main collaborative tools for research recording, idea creation, project development and reflection are Mindmeister, Google Docs and their blogs. I use these tools for formative assessment while the student teams also use them to provide one another feedback. While these tools will continue to be a part of the learning environment in my new job next year as an IB History teacher, I started scratching my head thinking about how to use technology to support the grading of the 100+ mock IB History exams that my students will be writing next year. As I will be a novice IB teacher, I definitely would appreciate hearing from U Tech Tip readers about how you handle assessing mock exams like the IB. 
As for my current process of giving summative assessment, I find that with so much going into providing my students guidance as they create their projects that I am able to check off the criteria on provided rubric score sheets, add up the points and type a few comments. I then email students the rubrics making for a pretty timely method of grading their project and presentation work. Technology especially when using collaborative tools really can support and enhance student learning while providing an efficient way to provide assessment.
Teaching IB where I will be grading so many mock exams/essays with no lead up for formative assessment makes me think I will need to team up with students to create a rubric to guide their preparation for their exams and to then give them feedback via the rubric. I also see the need to provide more detailed insights within the paragraphs of their exams. As the students will be using paper and pens, I could set up a numbered comment key system which the students could refer to as a way for me to efficiently give them feedback while not having them try to read my terrible handwriting.
Yet, I think I can do much better by using technology. My plan is to use either GarageBand or Audacity to record myself reading each paper so that the students can hear the organization, sentence fluency, etc. of their writing. I would pause when needed to ask questions, give a few suggestions and prompt the student to reflect. Depending on the size of the audio files, I would either email or save the files to each student’s thumb drive for pick up.
The follow up to all of this would be a student reflection piece possibly in their blog doing a what they feel positive about, what they need to do to improve and what actions steps they plan to take before the real exams. The students would then read and comment on each other’s posts to expand the learning.
I mentioned this plan to Patrick Truchon, a colleague, who went out right away and did screencasts of student presentations (e.g., cartoons, Geometry Sketch Pad (GSP), Keynotes, etc.) where he recorded audio feedback as he manipulated each student’s work. Patrick said his using screencasts to give feedback really made sense for him and his students.
My question to U Tech Tips readers is how do you use technology to assess student learning especially for projects with limited formative assessment opportunities like IB mock exams?
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