Starting digital assessment from primary school

Digital competence is a transversal skill that you can develop in the context of any subject and formatively assess throughout the semester.

Summary

 In today’s world where digital literacy becomes more and more important, students need to start early with acquiring digital skills. Teacher Mario and his colleagues focused on some basic ICT skills that all students should acquire. Now all students in their school in La Rioja are doing regular self-assessment of their digital skills through online quizzes throughout the semester. The skills cover a wide range of topics, from 3D printing and programming to computer hardware. All teachers monitor students’ progress in digital skills and take their skills into account when they make their final graded assessment at the end of a semester. This is a whole-school framework that teachers can relatively easily establish in their own school, especially if they are looking to promote student self-assessment and collaboration among teacher colleagues.

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Keywords

STEAM, 3D printing, programming, self-assessment, collaboration, digital competences

Quick reference
Objectives
Have students acquire digital competences and do self-assessment and reflection on their digital skills
Country
Spain
Subject
Informatics, Mathematics, Science
Prerequisites
1 computer or tablet/student
Implementation level
Advanced
Target group age
6 – 14
Duration
Up to a whole semester

Context

To prepare students to the digitalised world of today, teachers must help them become digitally competent. This requires teachers to continuously update and diversify their digital competences as well. However, this is just one side of the issue. 

Although students of today are born to a more digitalised world than their teachers, this does not mean that they can easily excel at digital skills. “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree” or “you cannot teach an old dog new tricks”. It is very important to develop digital skills from an early age. That is why, teacher Mario Santamaría Baños and his colleagues in the school CEIP Obispo Blanco Nájera have designed a framework to challenge students to demonstrate their digital skills throughout the semester. 
The challenges are based on the basic digital competence that a student must get at the end of Primary school/early secondary school in mathematics and science.

Therefore, teachers consider the digital skills assessed throughout a science or mathematics class when they make the final summative assessment at the end of a semester.

Mario and his colleagues made a Digital Plan that comprises students from 3 to 12 years, in which it is intended for them to achieve a digital competence according to the needs of today’s society and the requirement of the transition to their new educational stage: 12-16 years at secondary school.

Throughout the school year, students have a weekly hour of ICT. This subject does not exist as such, it is included within other subjects. Teachers use various assessment tools to check if students have gained the knowledge they specified at school, based on the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators, but adapted to the digital competence of students. 

These lessons are based on solving challenges and last 4 to 6 sessions, depending on the difficulty of the challenge. They need to reach a certain achievement level with each challenge, either with the help of teachers or peers, or without any help. They also include students with special educational needs in this process. “Our school supports inclusion, non-discrimination and individualisation.” explains teacher Mario. Regarding students who exceed or can add more on the minimum required, teachers provide additional tasks or ask them to help other classmates with difficulties. 

The school uses many other apps including Google Forms, ClassDojo (alternatively Navio, (with tutorials in English and Spanish), Edpuzzle, Socrative and Plickers. To understand their own progress, students perform a digital assessment at the end of each challenge. For instance, they perform a Kahoot assessment after computational thinking work with the Tynker platform’s drone programming (see Figure 1). Another example is a 3D Printing assessment (see Figure 2) and hardware in informatics.
ClassDojo is used daily to keep students engaged by monitoring actions like helping classmates, active listening, individual and group work. In this tool students have “avatars” (online personas) that receive skill points for positive behaviour like good teamwork or good peer help (see this tutorial for more information). Teachers observe students for these actions and grant points on the ClassDojo classroom environment. 
If you would like to know more about a specific type of lesson, see Mario’s 3D printing design lesson explained in more detail below.

Figure 1 Quiz questions related to Tynker. This incorporates elements of programming with blocks, as well as coordinate geometry in mathematics.

Figure 2 3D printing digital formative assessment questions (e.g. Which file format is more common to download the 3D designs to be able to print them?)

The Activity

One objective in the school digital plan for 6th grade (12 years) students is to teach 3D design. These are students who have been already familiarised with tools such as Paint and Scratch. Before seeing what is done in a class, it is necessary to go back to previous sessions, because in a single session it is difficult to explain and practice 3D design and printing.

Teacher Mario begins the first session by providing information on a rubric for what is expected from students. The class talks about what 3D printing is, where it comes from and what it is for, what uses it has for society and other characteristics typical of printer components and printing materials.

The teacher starts with a presentation built with Genially to explain the REP-RAP movement and the concept of rapid replication. The teacher then asks when the 3D printing movement started. The entire “theory” is supported by a digital presentation on this blog that each student can watch on the computer after searching the Internet (improving information and computer literacy).

Figure 3 3D-printed heart (left) and button for 3-year-old students

Occasionally, students have heard about some uses of 3D printing, especially medical ones such as bioprinting or robotic arms and hands. But when they are asked what they would do if they had a 3D printer, they usually talk about making key chains and figurines. It is important to explain that it can also help with concrete and everyday activities: for instance, bringing knowledge through touch to blind people (e.g. printing a heart), (see Figure 3), creating pieces that we have lost from a boardgame (e.g. a chess bishop), technical aids for the elderly or people with reduced mobility (e.g. door handle adapters), or creating pieces that have broken at home (e.g. a drawer handle or the handle of a saucepan). Mario brings some example products, demonstrates the school’s 3D printer (Creality Ender 3 PRO) and gets to know its components and functioning.

In the second session, the class starts looking at industrial and architectural examples and get to know some of the 3D design communities that exist. Teacher Mario says “At these ages, it is good for them to know what others are doing, start being consumers of designs, as well as to progress, improve or invent new designs and stop being consumers to start being creators”. 

Mario then presents them with a series of challenges to train them on their 3D design goal: to create buttons for the 3-year-old students who will start school next year.
Teacher Mario has created a virtual class in Tinkercad to monitor and help students if necessary. Once logged in, the teacher presents the platform: views, movement and work plane, the basic forms and finally, how and in what format we can export the created object.

The first challenge is to build a house (see Figure 4). Students learn the basic concepts and are guided in the creation of the first design that can attend to students who may present difficulties or who have functional diversity. It is a personalised accompaniment and monitoring process, which then continues in an individualised way. Then the students continue developing their creativity according to their interests and/or abilities.

Figure 4 The class is designing a house on Tinkercad.

Before starting the task, the teacher asks: "How can you make the walls of a house with 3D objects?" The typical answer is to create walls one by one with rectangular blocks. Once they have done that process, teacher Mario shows them how they can hollow out objects in Tinkercad, which reduces the number of design steps. Students realise that this process is much faster, and the result is better. They continue emptying a pyramidal object –the roof– and creating holes to make doors and windows.

After doing this activity, the teacher can suggest improving or rebuilding a house. This new creation should be a creative one, for example, instead of a square building, they could design one with a swimming pool or with dozens of windows.

The next challenge is freehand designing 3D objects using scribble; an excellent idea to personalise the final product. It also deepens the knowledge of forms: characters, numbers and texts, connectors, etc.

To finish the 3D creation objective, students design a button. It is a tradition at their school that 3-year-old children entering the centre for the first time wear a distinctive red button for class A and blue for class B. Parents usually buy these buttons at stores, but now the school gives them one. The buttons that are given away are printed by the school based on the designs made by the 6th grade students. It is a way for the 6th-grade students –who leave school to go to secondary education– to leave their legacy in those buttons and pass the baton to the youngest of the school. Families welcome this as a great initiative and 6th grade students work with a high degree of motivation.
To finish, and once the buttons are printed, the degree of knowledge is assessed with the Kahoot evaluation tool. There are 17 questions that join the previous objective on computational thinking (Tynker and its programming with drones) and 3D design.

Figure 5 Formative assessment of 3D printing knowledge with Kahoot.

Any student who answers more than half of the questions correctly is given a badge that will be attached to their digital passport, showing individual progress throughout the year (Figure 6). The assessment generates feedback in a short time, helping students to revisit their answers and correct their understanding. The assessment activities are performed by different teachers in different sessions in the classroom. 

Figure 6 Badges that students receive for correctly completing more than half of the quiz.

All the online quizzes, as well as the instructions for other can be delivered online via any learning management system. Task instructions can be delivered via video conferencing.

Outcomes and lessons learned

Students are clearly motivated. “In turn, seeing that the students learn and move forward, I also become more motivated” says Mario. Other teachers also say that the effort is worthwhile, as they can perceive the same thing teacher Mario does. After all, teachers need to invest time in finding these apps and learning how to use them, then prepare material. There is a shortage of time and no external training opportunity in teacher Mario’s school, therefore it all rests on teachers.