District/School Administration PK-16 Program Support Educational Technology
Technology Toolkit

Africa
Manchester-Essex Regional School District

Evidence of Effectiveness

Instructional objective: The students will be able to determine, through research and comparison, which African countries are developed and which are developing.

Evaluation: The PowerPoint presentations and spreadsheets were graded first as rough copy outlines and later as finished products. The teacher informally assessed each student's ability to judge which stage of development a country was in and use data to argue the case for the country he or she studied. The teacher also evaluated each student's ability to collect data on a specific country, add the data to a spreadsheet, and sort the data across several fields.

Student improvement: The use of technology for this unit allowed students to produce higher quality work in a shorter period of time. Having computers available at virtually any time allowed the students to work on their projects during periods of down time. The fact that the projects would be presented to the class motivated the students to do their most careful work. Some of the PowerPoint presentations were shared with parents as well. Having the ability to burn CDs and take digital pictures allowed us to share a lot of what the kids did with their parents.

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