Norma 08 - Day 2

Plenary lecture - P. Drijvers
Title: "Tools and tests"

Drijvers starts off giving some introductory notes about the Freudenthal Institute.
"Tools" = technological tools in this connection.
Why use tools and tests? The teaching and learning should be reflected in the assessment, and assessment should be driven by teaching and learning.
What are we actually assessing? Tools skills or mathematical skills?

Tests with tools, why would we do it?

• Prepare students
• Allows for different types of questions
• Assessments should reflect learning
• etc.
  

Drijvers goes on to present some examples from other countries (France, Germany, etc.) of tasks where technological tools are involved. The use of tools in the tasks is often questionable (or non-existent). In some examples, graphing calculators are allowed, but the tasks do not indicate any usage of these tools. Drijvers also presents some examples that are interesting to discuss from the point of view of "realism" and "authenticity", and he takes up this discussion in a few cases. Ends the section of examples with an example from the Netherlands, and he makes a humorous comment about this being the perfect example of a really good task. In discussing this example, Drijvers continually come back to the issue that this is something that you can imagine. And in the Dutch vocabulary, "realism" means something that you can imagine. Within a Dutch context, a realistic task is therefore a task that the students can imagine.

He then brings the discussion to a meta-level, introducing concepts like artifacts and instruments, and goes on with a presentation of what is called instrumental genesis.

Conclusions so far:

• Assessment with technology is an issue in many countries
• Reasoning, interpretation and explanation is also asked about (not just ICT-output)
• Different ways of dealing with technology (discusses some trends)

Tools for digital assessments. Why digital assessment?
Discusses some of the limitations of software, types of feedback, etc.

All in all, an interesting presentation with several important issues being raised.