Wireless Generation helping schools assess students, develop teaching plans

An announcement today from Wireless Generation reveals the growing role technology is playing in education. The company announced that it is providing professional services for schools that want to improve student performance, including the lowest-performing schools eligible for funding through the School Improvement Grants program.

The action plans that Wireless Generation makes to schools sometimes include a recommendation to use the company’s mCLASS offering, which uses wireless devices to help teachers with the process of assessing young students and developing customized teaching plans based on those assessments.

Assessing young children up to third grade typically takes the form of giving children tasks and “looking at their behavior and how they answer and solve problems,” said Andrea Reibel, vice president of corporate communications for Wireless Generation.

Teachers using the mCLASS offering use a Wi-Fi device to input information about a child’s performance in response to software prompts. “The teacher records the child’s answers and strategies used to answer a question,” Reibel said.

That information is then sent over an Internet connection to servers operated by Wireless Generation, and a program customized for that student (or a group of students with similar skill levels) is sent back to the teacher. For example, the program might advise the teacher that a student needs help with a skill taught on a certain page of a certain textbook.

After following a customized program for a period of time, students are re-assessed to gauge improvement and determine the direction of future teaching and learning. The mCLASS offering also aggregates assessment data on a school-wide or district-wide basis for use by administrators.

Wireless Generation worked with one state to help a group of low-performing schools to narrow the gap with their higher-performing peers by 35%, according to the company.

“Today’s release is a formal announcement of what we’ve been doing for awhile,” Reibel said.

Using technology to enhance education is gaining interest as a result of the broadband stimulus program, which helps fund connectivity to anchor institutions such as schools. Although the Wireless Generation program puts wireless devices in teachers’ hands, some other programs put the wireless devices in the hands of students.