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Contact: Dr. Patricia Vardin Summary: In response to a rapidly increasing need by educators to find ways to assess young children’s knowledge and skills in areas such as mathematics and literacy, without administering standardized paper and pencil tests, ChildChart , created by Dr. Patricia Vardin, Associate Professor and Chair of Early Childhood Education at Manhattaville College, is a revolutionary and innovative way to authentically monitor and track young children’s progress in the context of their daily classroom activities.
New York, NY. – January 8, 2005 - Educators are intensely engaged in searching for ways to reliably assess young children without the use of standardized pen and paper tests which often give unreliable results , take up too much of the teacher’s time and are expensive. ChildChart enables teachers and parents as well, to monitor and track the progress of their children easily and efficiently, creating accurate and up to date records on each child. By using a Palm Pilot which has been programmed with the ChildChart Assessment Program a teacher can observe , record and photograph a child’s performance of a skill or concept in the context of the child’s classroom activities. The teacher can enter the information in the Palm Pilot which can then be synchronized with information in the teacher’s Desktop, also programmed with ChildChart.. All the information the teacher’s records is placed directly in the appropriate child’s file and can later be reviewed and edited. “ I believe that ChildChart will revolutionize the way in which teachers keep records on young children,” says creator Dr. Patricia A. Vardin. She continues, “ Just in the course of doing an activity with a child, a teacher will be able to record the child’s achievement in words and photographs”. Dr. Vardin developed ChildChart technology with designer Tom Joyner and Palm Pilot programmer, Allan Bressler . Dr. Vardin says “I saw how frustrating it was for teachers who are trying to get good assessment notes on children, recording information with post-its and sticky notes all over the classroom, and not being sure of actually what to record! There had to be a better way in the 21st century “ she says “ and ChildChart is it!” Dr. Vardin has a doctorate from Columbia University, Teachers College and has taught, published and presented papers at numerous professional conferences. She is the creator of the newly developed Early Childhood Education model the “Comprehensive Curriculum”, a standards based, best practices model for educating preschool children, which opened at the St.Stephen’s of Hungary Catholic School in New York City in February and utilizes ChildChart in monitoring the children’s progress. |
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