Age-Appropriate Activities That Are Engaging and Hands-On for Students

techSteps is built on the National Education Technology Standards for Students (NETS*S) and supports the work of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. techSteps curriculum is a set of K–8 technology literacy standards and offers engaging activities that teach and assess technology and literacy in an integrated, 21st century context.

- Age-appropriate activities that are engaging and hands-on for students

- Activities that contain everything from instructions, templates, graphics, assessment rubrics and links to optional web resources

- Teacher-friendly materials with clear and easy instructions to learn new skills alongside of students

Demo Video- http://www.techsteps.com/public/demo.htm

1.  Go to www.techsteps.com

2.  Click Teacher Login and login as teacher

3.  Five areas to pay attention to.

4.  When you click on Core Projects select your grade level.

5.  Then find a project for your grade level. There are 6 per grade. You can choose a project from another grade level. If you do so you will not be able to go in and assess your students online in Tech Steps. And at this point Open Office projects are only available for grades 3, 4,7, and 8. These are the grades that are supposed to be officially assessing their students in TechSteps.

6.  Go through the Activity Book and follow the directions yourself so that you are familiar with it before doing project with your students.

Creating Assessment Groups in techSteps

To enter the assessment data for your students, which will contribute to their student technology profiles, you will need to create one or several assessment groups.

Here are the steps necessary for creating an assessment group within techSteps and entering the gathered data.

1.  Select the Assessment tab within the techSteps Website.

2.  Select the New Assessment Group link.

3.  Define your Assessment Group.

4.  Click the Continue button.

5.  Select the Open link to add projects for assessment and to add students to your group.

6.  Select the Add & Remove Projects link.

7.  Select the Add link next to each project you wish to assess.

8.  Select the Back button when finished adding projects for assessment.

9.  Select the Add Students link.
Select the students in your assessment group.

10.  Select the Add Selected Students link to return to your assessment group.

Your assessment group is now ready to have data entered against Student Literacy Profiles.

11.  To enter your assessment data, select the activity link at the top of the project column.

You will be able to enter your student data quickly with this whole group approach.

12.  Select the Edit Assessment link, then adjust the 0-10 skill scores for the student.

13.  If any individual assessment item was not relevant to the way you conducted the activity, enter NA for that item.

14.  Select the Update link to record the student score.

15.  Click the Close button to exit this view.

You will be able to enter comments and print the individual rubrics for students.

16.  Select the individual rubric link for the appropriate project and student.

You can now enter comments and print this rubric for your students.

17.  Click the Save button to save your comments or any changes you made in the rubrics.

[Type text]

Brevard Public Schools
Office of Educational Technology
July 15, 2010

http://techtraining.brevardschools.org