• Assessment: "the act of assessing; appraisal."
• Evaluate: "to examine and judge carefully; appraise."
• Appraise: "to estimate the quality, amount, size, and other features of; judge."
• Judge: "to form an opinion or estimation of after careful consideration."

The Educator forms a new understanding of assessment.... An assessment allows you to appraise something or estimate its features. With this information, you can form an opinion and make decisions. If there is one thing this educator knows well, it is the importance of decision making. Each year, this educator, like all others, is asked to make difficult choices regarding educational improvement. Information is vital in this decision-making process. An assessment is the key to gathering this information.

Jordan School District's Instructional Technology Strategic Plan includes seven goals. Goal 7 states that Jordan School District will "Conduct and utilize results of an annual evaluation of instructional technology integration. This study will measure levels of implementation, utilization, teacher training, community connections and hardware/software adequacy."

As schools purchase hardware and software and plan for technology staff development activities to move towards improved instruction, information about the school's present instructional computing practices is critical. An assessment can provide a data-driven foundation for instructional computing decision making, so schools should seriously consider how they could measure classroom technology use. The District has found an assessment tool that can help schools gather the information needed to make wise technology decisions to move towards school improvement. The assessment is called LoTi (Levels of Technology Implementation) and is available as an option for schools.

The road towards school improvement is difficult. It is covered with rocks that are not always clearly marked. Schools must be prepared to face this rocky road...

The education system today is faced with significant challenges. Schools must find their own roads toward solutions. But these roads are full of rocks; some small enough to cause minimal discomfort, but others are large and make the road seem impassable. Educators must identify which rocks should be ignored, cleared away, stepped over, avoided, or approached. Many of the rocks will only slow progress towards school improvement, but there are "big" rocks that need to be faced. These rocks are the means by which educators reach higher levels of improvement. These rocks must be identified and become instructional priorities. Schools need information to identify which rocks should be faced. An assessment is the key to this identification.

What do we appraise? Generally, only items of value are appraised. And what is the most valuable item in education? Our teachers. Teachers are the most valuable assets we have in the classroom. Teachers are the single most important factor in student achievement and are the key to effective use of technology in the schools.

Because teachers play such an important role in school improvement, a large focus of technology money and staff development time should be given to quality teaching...

Quality teaching is made possible only through quality teachers. Teachers who promote purposeful problem-solving, higher order thinking skills, standards-based instruction and inquiry-based learning are the key to high student achievement. These quality teachers are faced with the challenge to integrate technology in an exemplary manner that provides opportunities for students to think, reason, make informed decisions, and communicate information. The assessment tool used to evaluate a level of technology implementation should measure how technology is used to support such a classroom.

The primary emphasis of LoTi is to measure the degree to which technology is used to support a constructivist orientation to classroom pedagogy. It is important for schools to learn what LoTi is.