Predictive Assessments Can Lead to More Personalized Instruction

Educators have known for a while that personalized, one-on-one education is the way forward for the classroom. But the reality is, with large classrooms and tight schedules, giving this one-on-one teaching time can be a difficult thing to perfect. Technology has been bridging that gap, and what instructors are realizing is that personalized teaching can’t be seen as an added feature of the classroom; it needs to be integrated into the entire curriculum.

Where do educators start? How do you utilize software to personalize instruction in the classroom and turn data into a more predictive tool for assessment? To get some clarity, we turned to a leader in this space: Dallas-based Istation, which performs predictive assessment and adaptive curriculum for students and teachers alike via an online portal.

On today’s episode of the EdTech Podcast, host Daniel Litwin sat down with Istation’s DeAn Jeffrey, Strategic Professional Development Specialist, and Sarah Cude, Regional Professional Development Lead for the Southwest, to explore this topic more in-depth.

Local school districts and officials at the state level are encouraging their teachers to shift their mindset when it comes to using data, Jeffrey said. Istation provides precise and individualized data about students, so teachers can use that information to guide their decision making and classroom planning.

Both Cude and Jeffrey came to iStation after being longtime classroom teachers and using the predictive assessment tool in their respective school districts.

“Long gone are the days of solely standing in front of the classroom and lecturing to the whole class,” Cude said.

“We know that one-size-fits-all does not meet the needs of our children,” Jeffrey said, agreeing with Cude’s perspective.

She has seen the results of predictive assessments both as an administrator and as an Istation team member. When Jeffrey was a principal in Bells, Texas, her school saw great results incorporating predictive assessment into its curriculum.

“Using Istation with fidelity as one of our initiatives, we moved from being a good school with two distinctions to one of the top five [percent] performers in the state of Texas,” she said.

Deciding to use the software is only half the battle, though. Listen to Jeffrey and Cude break down the importance of predictive assessment in making more time for individual teaching, why getting the school and district administration to buy in to software like Istation’s is so critical to success, and what the future of the personalized classroom looks like.

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