[Sugar-devel] Assessment in Karma

[NoiseEHC]

>  - Automatic assessment is snake oil, Bryan is well intentioned but
> deeply wrong. See the earlier email at
> http://www.mail-archive.com/sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org/msg05584.html
>   
Or you are wrong. Since you did not define exactly what you have meant 
by assessment in your message, I assume that you were talking about 
something like automatic grading or creativity assessment versus 
something mechanical and mind-numbingly trivial. (Any other assumption 
makes your message meaningless in my eyes but correct me if I am 
wrong...)  Now I will not talk about that you have just presented us a 
false dichotomy since it is not too interesting (and can be that I just 
have misunderstand and misrepresented what you have been said).

What more interesting is that there is some research in Hungary [1] 
about the prerequisites of learning certain skills which are based on 
each other. (So for example reading fast - whole word reading - requires 
to be able to read words letter by letter which requires reading out 
certain letter combinations which requires knowing the letters which 
requires differentiating vowels and so on... Since I do not know these 
things in English I did not try to be precise in this example.) The 
point of this research is that it is clear now that if a child does not 
reach a certain threshold in those skills then he cannot progress in 
other skills (these are the critical skills).
Here lies the bane of the Hungarian education system that children go to 
school at the age of 6 and they can be +-2 year apart in mental and 
physical development. So some children are like 8 year olds and some are 
like 4 years olds. Unfortunately this mental/physical difference is 
usually totally different across subjects so for example if a child is 
totally lame in writing (because he cannot control his small muscles 
adequately) but is an ace in math then it is normal and repeating the 
class is not an option. In Hungary (and probably a lot of other 
countries) the problem is that teaching these basic skills goes 
according to the national curriculum and there are no tests which 
measure them so if a child is left behind then game over for him. For 
example if he cannot reach optimal or finishing level in reading then he 
will not learn from books normally since he cannot read fast enough. 
Because teaching of reading skills stops at grade 3 or so these children 
leave the elementary school at advanced, beginner or sometimes 
preparatory level (40% of people in Hungary!!!) and they grow into 
functionally illiterate adults who cannot learn anything from books or 
read newspapers (or watch films with subtitles so they cannot learn 
languages in that way).
Now there are some good news that there exist tests which can measure 
the level in those basic skills and these are low stake tests. Usually 
optimal level means >90% and finishing level is >80% (in some skills 
these are around 80% and 60% respectively). The problem is that 
measuring those takes a LOT of time and energy and no teacher wants to 
do that. Automatizing at least some of those tests are probably the 
biggest thing since sliced bread in education in my humble opinion.

So it will not help teachers giving a mark at all because you know ALL 
the children should pass those tests sooner or later. Of course it will 
not measure creativity either. What it should do is to measure some 
mechanical and mind-numbingly trivial skills what are not measured 
without computers because it is mind-numbingly boring for a teacher. Now 
the questions is: which basic skills can be measured with a computer and 
which cannot? Calling assessment snake oil because it cannot give marks 
automatically is at least strange to me...

[1]
http://www.staff.u-szeged.hu/~nagyjozs/#res

ps:
As the subject becomes more advanced it becomes much more painfully 
obvious that my native language is not English. I am sorry for that.

ps2:
Of course this is not the most important aspect of OLPC but giving these 
assessment tools to children in Ghana probably cannot hurt can it?