Anne Fox :: Blog :: Self assessment of 21st century skills

As part of the EU VITAE project developing a train the trainers course for integrating ICT in teaching we have been looking not only at content and teaching approaches but also support tools. The idea is that the graduates of our course become mentors for their colleagues. I came across a very promising competence assessment and professional development tool at http://www.adultedonline.org/index.cfm (after reading this post from Christopher Sessums) which I think could be a very useful support tool for the course we are developing. This free tool is a self assessment tool to help teachers in adult education (our target group) assesss how far they have integrated ICT into their normal everyday practice. Not only that but it then uses the results to suggest appropriate professional development activities. Obviously it would be better for a European project such as VITAE to be able to have access to such tools in the language of the teachers. But another obvious extension would be for the tool to suggest that the person doing the self-assessment should be a mentor to their colleagues in those areas where the assessment shows they have a lot of expertise. This is especially relevant because two of the standard professional activities suggested by the tool are to find a 'tech buddy' or a mentor. That would therefore fit very well with the approach that this tool seems to be based on anyway.