We had the excellent opportunity to view and participate in a brand new online assessment tool : Spindle. One of the co-creators, Kristina Tzetzos, was wonderful enough to take the time to walk us through this exciting new tool.

Spindle works almost like a class social network, where kids share things they are working on, and things they want to get better at, with a quick write up about it, and a self-reflection wheels where they student selects where they think they are at in terms of the three of core competencies of the BC curriculum.

The whole goal of the project is to integrate assessment as learning into the classroom in a way that it is student directed and they continually post updates on themselves about where they are at and where they’re going. This free up some of the teachers time, and allows them to direct that time towards helping the students reach their goals.

Kristina also mentioned that the novelty of having it online removes some of the anxiety students have around feeling like self-assessments on paper are tests. It gets them to engage with it more frequently and have more fun with it as well.

Overall, Spindle is a fresh new and exciting way to integrate assessment as learning into your classroom, and while it is still under development, that just means it’s always improving, just like us!