The standards to determine Grade 8 technology proficiency in New Jersey were established by the New Jersey Department of Education and are based on the Core Curriculum Content Standards for technology education. Collectively, the standards are referred to as the New Jersey Technology Assessment for Proficiency Integration, or NJTAP-IN.
Using the NJTAP-IN rubric, the Technology Challenge established a 27-question NJTAP-IN Grade 8 Technology Challenge Assessment. Questions on this assessment represent a thorough and innovative approach to addressing the standards in the NJTAP-IN rubric. To help students prepare for the 27-question NJTAP-IN Assessment, there are several shorter Grade 8 Challenges of 10-11 questions each. These Challenges each focus on one technology component and include Internet, word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software.
The NJ TAP-IN Grade 8 Technology Challenge Assessment is available to schools through individual or school/district subscriptions. If your school already has a subscription to the Technology Challenge, the NJ TAP-IN Assessment is included and available to you.
Before You Begin
- As always, it is recommended that teachers test the Challenge on a student computer prior to administering the Challenge to students. Some school servers have stringent firewalls that may block attachment downloads or hyperlinks.
- Some schools have experienced problems accessing the site or the attachments when multiple students log on to the Technology Challenge. This could be a result of school system filtering. If you experience such an issue, contact your school or district IT department. Your proxy server/firewall/web filtering appliance settings will need to be changed to 'white list' both www.technologychallenge.com and www.technologychallenge.org.
- To answer the questions, students will need at least Microsoft Windows 2000 Suite which should include Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint. Earlier versions of Microsoft Windows as well as Windows 2007 may cause functionality issues.
- There are Access database questions that contain attached documents necessary in order to answer the questions. When opening the attachments, students may be asked if they wish to save the document or open the document. Students should be instructed to open the document without saving.
- The Challenge contains a mail merge question which requires students to save two Word documents to their computer and merge them. Teachers have the option of having the students save the documents to their desktops or server folders. For schools that don't permit their students to save downloaded documents, teachers may elect to save the documents to the school server and provide instructions to the students on retrieval. Students should be instructed not to save any changes to the two documents or to save the merged document.
- Many of the questions on the Comprehensive Assessment are derived from questions in other Grade 8 assessments. It is highly recommended that students prepare for the Comprehensive Assessment by first practicing with other Challenges.
- Many of the Challenges available through subscriptions contain links to websites outside of LearnDoEarn.org and TechnologyChallenge.org. When ordering Challenges, if any outside links are necessary, they will be listed in the Challenge description. Two of the questions on the Comprehensive Assessment contain links to external websites. It is recommended that the school's IT personnel allow students access to these sites through the school server:
Scoring
Based on common school grading policies where scores of 60% represent passing grades, the Technology Challenge recommends that scores of 60% or above on completed Challenges be considered proficient by NJTAP-IN standards. A score of 60% on the Technology Challenge will indicate "Below Average" performance, and should alert the student that he is not considered adequately prepared to use technology the way expected in high school, college and, eventually, the workforce.
Teachers are strongly urged to allow adequate time for students to complete all 27 questions in the NJ TAP-IN Assessment. It is suggested that students be given "time remaining" reminders during their assessment so that they budget their time appropriately.
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