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Show Me What You Know — Alternate
Assessment for Students with Autism, Cognitive and Physical Disabilities
Presenter
#1
Jo
Meyer
Organization SoftTouch, Inc.
Omaha
NE
68130
USA
Day Phone: 402-334-8477
Fax: 402-334-8478
Email: roxanne@softtouch.com
Federal, state, and local laws may require students with disabilities to take
the standardized tests. Educators have to adapt tests so that students can be
tested. Test Me, Score is a new test making program
for students with more severe disabilities. Join this hands-on lab to learn how
to create and modify tests using images, movies, text and speech. Students can take
the tests with their preferred access device: mouse/joystick/head pointer,
single switch scanning, two switch step scanning, IntelliTools
keyboard or touch screen. When students take these tests, they can show what
they know.
Educators are accountable for student learning and achievement and must show
evidence of student achievement. Federal and state laws require schools to test
students at certain grade levels or intervals. Students with more severe
cognitive and physical disabilities may be required to take standardized tests.
However these students cannot take traditional tests. Educators have to figure
out how to create or adapt tests for students with more severe disabilities.
The
Test Me, Score Me, a new alternate assessment program, enables educators to
create multiple choice and yes/no tests for students with cognitive and
physical disabilities. Many students with more severe disabilities may be able
to identify a picture of their dog or house but not able to generalize the same
concept to photos or line drawings used in standardized tests.
Educators can create tests using items from their curriculum, their classrooms
and their communities. It is easy to create questions and answers with scanned
images, digital images, movies, text and speech. Students can take the tests on
the computer using an appropriate access device mouse/joystick/headpointer/trackball, single switch scanning, two-switch
step scanning, IntelliKeys keyboard and/or touch
screen.
Test Me, Score Me makes it easy to create one test, and then customize it for
different students and differential instruction. For example, for a science
unit, one test could ask students to identify animals by selecting a matching
picture or by selecting the name/text of the animal. Another student could
identify the animal by the environment. Another version of the test could ask
students to answer “What animal makes this sound?” and all the answers are
auditory. Educators can create one test, then modify
copies of the test to make these modifications.
Join this hands-on computer lab to learn how to create alternate assessments
for students with more severe disabilities. Learn how to customize how a test
for each student by selecting the number of possible answers (one to 5) for
every question, present the question and answers all at once or show one item
at a time to help the student focus. Take the test on the computer, view and
analyze test data. Learn how to share tests with other educators who also use
Test Me, Score Me.
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