Colegio Mirasur – Additio with Google for Education

School context:

5 years ago we felt the urge to promote a transformational change at both information management and students’ skills development levels. This made us think of the process of assessment in a very different way. Once seen as another aspect of learning, one can guess that the decisions we make about assessing probably turn into the most powerful determinant of how we teach and our students learn.

So we modified spaces, changed schedules, spent more time on planning and, above all, made the teachers fully cooperate to generate the most suitable learning environment. We adopted open and flexible technology, such as G Suite, but we couldn’t find the way to organize and revitalize assessment consistently with what we were doing.

Challenge:

Our goal, at this point, was to adapt the assessment to the learning and teaching model, so that it would guide improvement and allowed us to go beyond the mere acknowledgment of results. Each teacher had hitherto used their preferred solution to register and gather information in the assessment process, but we realized this was not enough.

Especially after reaching a consensus on assessment and developing tools such as rubrics and portfolios to proof the deepest learning, derived from learning projects. We needed a solution based on cooperation and cross-platform, so that all the teachers in a school, no matter the educational stage, provided support to the learning assessment focused on students.

A solution that shows benefits at a pedagogical level and stresses the integration between Google Classroom and Additio App.

At the school, we had a lab for educational innovation and proceeded to assess different solutions depending on the functional needs detected when analyzing the assessment process. We chose Additio App because it was the solution that got the highest score. That result motivated us to make a trial in which around 50% of teachers from different stages and levels took part.

We believe that a genuine assessment requires cooperation among teachers; and that the focus on the learning process must be inclusive and leave behind individualism. That’s the reason why Additio App fits into our culture, because it goes beyond a single teacher’s needs and places value on the teachers’ collaboration and the school’s vision.

Additio App, in combination with G Suite, lets us integrate all the tasks that we perform through Google Classroom in our assessment system, allowing to add rubrics and assess all the work we do with our students by standards and skills. With Additio’s school management system we can calculate the average grade in its gradebook and create reports in which we can see the progress and the skills evolution of our students and inform their families.

This school year we have adopted this solution for all teachers and education levels. Based on our experience, firstly we expected to support the development of the learning curriculum map with the design of standards and their link to the skills and subjects. Secondly, we expected to easily distribute assessment structures and tools previously agreed on. Thirdly, we expected the teachers to collaborate in the assessment of the learning groups going beyond individualism in the data logging. And finally, we hoped to be able to provide feedback to students that is focused on the development of their skills.

The educational change and transformation have to rely on technology that is easy to implement and understand by students and teachers. Additio integrates into the simplicity of G Suite through Classroom, which makes it easy to implement. Simply put: it works.

School leaders’ opinion

Miguel Ujeda, Innovation Manager

Assessing is something really complex. There are very few environments in which as many interactions, interests and expectations as in the classroom are produced. The amount of variables and factors that come into play in the learning process is huge. Therefore, it is required that teachers cooperate with one another and that tools that support this collaboration in a consistent way with what we seek as educators are available.

Vanessa Mendoza, Primary School Principal

Our teachers are very critical of the solutions we implement. Therefore, before making the decision to integrate Additio App, we decided that they would participate in a trial period, with a high percentage of teachers taking part in it.

Juana Corral, Secondary School Principal

When we launched the trial period with a few teachers, we were surprised to see that other teachers that hadn’t been initially invited to take part asked us to be able to use the app. That made us realize that a solution like this was indeed necessary.