Usually districts and state school boards make the decision about whether or note adaptive testing will be used. Adaptive testing is always technology based. Today we will dissect the concept for you...break it down into its parts then build it up into a unified picture for you at the end.

What's the difference between old paper and pencil testing and current adaptive testing? Standard tests have a question with an A B C D choice option. Usually a bubble sheet. Student has one chance of getting the right answer. Students can often use deductive reasoning to hone in on the most likely choice. The test is always the same for every person who uses it. If they wrote the test correctly the standard deviation is usually 80% on these traditional, pencil and paper, bubble sheet standardized assessments.

Today we're talking about upgrading and whether one should consider desktops or laptops. Right now we have super powerful and super cheap access to desktop machines. A nice HP desktop can be purchased for a mere $650 (minus monitor). This is pretty inexpensive for the power you're getting for that cost.

Then there is the laptop...we're dealing right now with MacBook Pros in some of our districts. It basically comes down to portability vs stationery and expensive vs inexpensive.

Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Holograms... These are all terms that we have used to describe the future. Well, the future is here! In this episode of The Modern Educator we talk about how products like Microsoft Hololens, Oculous Rift, and Google Cardboard would look like in today's classroom. Even a little bit of what it would look like in tomorrow's classroom.

Windows 8 and Surface tablets in the classroom