Curriculum and personalizing learning - Teaching with Technologies: The Essential Guide - page 159

• facilitatetransitionbetweenphases,and
• besupportedbyprofessionalnetworksmanagedbytheprofessionincol-
laboration with the examination boards and university teachers to facilitate
sharing of good practice.
Some school computerized management systems already support customization
and allow schools and colleges to design the look and feel of the front page of their
onlinemanagementinformationsystem-thatis,theirownfront-ends.Moving
in the same direction, specifications for similar management systems of the future
include open Application Program Interfaces (APIs) so that schools and colleges
can create their own systems. Teachers should be empowered to structure data
reports that are useful for them so that schools and colleges can take advantage of
deeper professional insights. These systems should work on any kind of integrated
device, fixed or mobile. Sufficient storage area per teacher was reported as vital. A
development that the teachers expected to see more of in the future were appli-
cations like the Mentis verifier and Swift that display holistic management think-
ing .Theseempoweringprofessionalonlineschool/collegeimprovementsystems
support self-evaluation, school and college development plans and performance
management-allinone.Swift,forexample,connectsinformationanddocuments
across the system to aid school and college improvement and cut out duplicated
work.
In the area of accountability for e-safety , tools that educate learners in the proc-
esses are recommended. Schools should all have e-safety policies, which will focus
personalandsocialresponsibilityorundertakingpolicing(seealsoChapter7).Ways
effective technology-based tools and digital resources can be used to help practition-
ers to do specific tasks well with respect to accountability and monitoring are set out
in Table 8.1.
There are, however, risks accompanying the use of these technology tools:
• Previousreportsonlearnersmayadverselyinfluencecurrentresponsesto
learners and current reports.
• Ifreportsareopenthenitisdifficulttoincludecriticisms.
• Marketleadersinsoftwaredonotneedtoinnovateatthespeedthatschools
and colleges would wish.
• Therearedifferentapproachestoassessmentbetweenprimaryandsecond-
ary schools and colleges, so data may look as if it is transferable across the
academic year, but this is not always the case.
Increasingly, non-technology-based resources are being supplanted by technol-
ogy-based systems, because of the sheer volume of assessment information being
generated. However, digital systems are not always appropriate:
• Staggeredpagesinmarkbooksarehardtoreplicateelectronicallyandpaper-
based registers are still necessary where Management Information Systems
(MIS) do not support online registration.