Mass Amateurization

  Today the change in evaluation approach is referred to us mass amateurization, a term which implies a mass reach of student outputs.  The personal and group creative activities in school should aim at bridging the gap between amateur creators of outputs to professional creators of future outcomes and products in the real world.  This will entail inculcating adeptness among students among media along publishing, visual creation, audio-video recording, internet websites postings and multimedia productions.  The process does not entail the end of traditional report and essay writing, but the writing process will now have to assume the process of idea conception, planning, layout and graphics design, editing proofreading and publishing.  The use of desktop publishing software can make writing both easier as well as more exciting for learners.  The internet also offers avenues for publishing creative outputs and these are the websites, blogs, wikis, podcast and videos.  Relevance and engagement shall be carried both in the learning process, as well as in the evaluation schemes of new digital expressions in learning.

Evaluation of Technology Learning

     The standard student evaluation of learning must change. This is justified by the fact that not only has the new generation changed into digital learners, but the traditional world has metamorphosed into a digital world.  As efforts are exerted to go digital in instruction, we need to also go digital in learning assessment.  Assessment needs to conform, not with the literacy of the past century but the new literacy of the 21st century.  This is a literacy that uses digital tools in preparing students to face a high-tech world.  The comparison is made Swiss watch-makers which fail to adapt to digital watch-making. The Swiss watch lost its prime position in less than two years of neglect to the need to go digital.

      Teachers must adopt a new mind set both for instruction and evaluation.  Evaluation must be geared to assessment of essential knowledge and skills so that learners can function effectively, productively and creatively in a new world.  It must evaluative tools that measure the new basic skills of the 21st century digital culture, namely: solution fluency, information fluency, creative fluency, media fluency and digital citizenship.