Unlocking innovation: Tools featured for new assessment model

Coinciding with the launch of their 2023 Grantmaking & Impact Report, Overdeck Family Foundation, a national foundation focused on enhancing education, hosted Unlocking Innovation, Evidence, and Growth, an online panel conversation highlighting what they called ‘Bright Spots’ - accomplishments made over the past year by organizations they support. Tools Director of Technology Oliver Saunders Wilder appeared as a panelist in the Unlocking Innovation panel segment, which featured grantees who receive funding to develop a new approach to address unmet needs they’ve identified in their work. Saunders Wilder had the opportunity to discuss some of the learning and thinking behind the development of Tools’ innovation, a new eco-momentary assessment called SEED that Tools teachers are currently piloting in their classrooms.

SEED is an assessment of self-regulation development that captures children’s development across the year and provides teachers with guidance about how to support children’s self-regulation development based on where they are at each point across the year. SEED also provides families with actionable ways to support their children’s development in coordination with their children’s teachers. 

Saunders Wilder emphasized that at Tools we develop our technology in collaboration with our school partners, refining and designing what we create to meet the needs of teachers in Tools classrooms, and Tools families, too.  Overdeck Family Foundation has recognized how innovative this is. Teachers in the pilot study have too.

“I am really enjoying having this new assessment tool…It shows how students are growing [and] gives great feedback on how to gear learning.” - SEED pilot teacher

Stay tuned for opportunities for more Tools schools to get in on the action with SEED in the near future.