Portfolio Assessment

At the end of the school year, the last thing I want to do is have an extensive final exam to grade. My solution in the past has been a multiple choice true-false Scantron test. Quick and dirty. This year I was ruminating of the challenge of making a review that wasn’t boring worksheets that the students don’t want to do, especially the students that are exempt from finals. Does it have to be that way? What if they had a portfolio for a final exam?

I had another issue earlier that a portfolio might solve. I gave my students a writing assignment. I made extensive editing marks on it as part of their grade. How do I make the grade a final grade and still have them learn from their mistakes? I don’t want to allow them to re-write for a higher grade. I could insert an editing step before the final, but if I’m going to add that amount of work, the assignment would be worth a test grade vice quiz grade. What if they had a six weeks test grade that was a portfolio? The portfolio would include the first graded paper with a corrected form.

Time would have to be allowed for corrections and computer time, especially if this is coupled with my earlier thoughts about students typing their papers. This might be a problem. Could I weasel out some slower computers, two or three, to put on the back wall of my room? Not internet connected, but loaded with Power Point and Word. Our school does not have wireless service.

Another challenge will be the rubric for portfolio assessment. I have to get my head around that and look over some alternatives.

If I implement all of these ideas next year as an integrated whole, my life might be easier. Or not. It will certainly be more interesting.

Integrating Technology in Group Projects- Skits & Dialogs

Scripts should be typed up. Allow time for typing and backgrounds

· One day in the lab or with a portable lab for rough drafts.

· Two days for backgrounds and go over the rough script line by line with the group.

· One day for typing final draft and begin memorizing.

Students, especially freshmen don’t know how to memorize and to work at it over time. Create some incentive for them to study over time.

Tech Support in Skits

Smart board can be used as background for student presentations, skits, and dialogs. In my Spanish class, students downloaded images from the web for backgrounds for their skits to enhance the story. Some also used a notebook page to draw on as part of their story or drew a quick background of a window etc. Some used Power Point for video and audio clips to enhance their production.

It was informal, but effective. In the future, I would make it part of their project and include a technology rubric and assessment.

Group Projects in School- Thoughts

Have a schedule of milestones for the students and remind them every day. Have a firm deadline where the students know they have to be finished. This will help them keep on task.

Be prepared for chaos. Not all students will be working. Not all students will participate at the same level. The class will be noisier than usual and there will be “down time” while the students socialize (and maybe brainstorm). Allow for this, but your schedule will help keep this to a minimum.

Have students type up assignments. Handwriting from students is uneven and will low down the evaluation process. Always specify professional style fonts and letter size. Double space to allow for editing.

Technology is often limited. There may be whole computer labs, but table space in labs might be limited. There may be a way for students to type projects one by one on your teacher computer or the one or two computers in the library. For control, send them to the library one at a time and not as a group.

If there is too much down time, I would recommend a bookshelf of interesting books and magazines (maybe a cart of an assortment of library books for in class reading. Be sure to count the books in before letting the class leave.) or that students study some other class. You can mandate that students study or read quietly as others are working.

Have a folder for the students to keep their rough drafts in. If a key student takes home the project, and forgets it the next day or is absent, then the group is frozen until the get back. If there are enough computers, then make sure projects are saved in a readily recognizable folder.

Graphic Arts in High School Students

As I’ve gotten to know my students better this year, I notice that a large proportion of them have talents in graphic arts. I’m not talking about students in art classes. We have a lot of interest in photography. Some students carry cameras with them as a matter of course. When the local paper had a photo contest, I passed out thirty or forty flyers to students in my classes who expressed interest (out of 125 students). In our down time when students are waiting for other students to finish their assignments in class, I notice about 10- 15% of my students are sketching either on blank paper or in sketch books. I get review sheets and handouts that students fill out while watching a video that have very well done drawings. I’ve even had one student that cut out her drawings from a review sheet so that she could put it in her sketch book! I’ve observed some students that I wouldn’t even suspect of being artistically inclined making nicer drawings than I did at their age.

Many of the sketchers are interested in anime, Japanese style cartoons. Most of those artists are girls.

So I wonder, does this represent a trend in our society and how should the educational community respond?

Another trend I see is an interest in sudoku number puzzles. It requires a pretty abstract pattern analysis. Is this more of the graphic intelligence coming out?

Problem Solving among College graduates and the general population

America’s Most overrated Product: the Bachelor’s Degree

This article addresses, among other things, the decline in higher thinking skills and problem solving among college graduates. The author attributes it to the poor quality of higher education. Maybe. I have two things I think should be considered.

1. Maybe only a certain percentage of the general human population truly has the ability to think at a higher order? Maybe problem solving per se isn’t ubiquitous, but a certain talent or intelligence only developed in a limited number of people. There is a lot of anecdotal references to people in general where they don’t think, but react. Maybe people aren’t irrational or problem solving at a higher order as a rule, but that a certain percentage show the way to the rest, or that the rest just muddle along. This might be considered elitist, but what if it’s true? If it’s true then:
2. In the course of the study, is there a higher percentage of the population graduating from college? If that is true and if only a certain percentage of the general population can problem solve, then a higher number of college graduates wouldn’t be able to problem solve even if they had been to college. They’re just in that non problem solve portion of the population!

I agree with the author that college isn’t for everyone. I also agree that colleges need to evaluate their systems and our culture needs to re-asses our devaluation for blue collar work, but there may also be other reasons for the decline in cognitive ablates in college graduates.

Social Bookmarking

• Social Annotation: Seamless Integration of Social Bookmarking, Web Highlighter, Sticky-Note & Clipping - Annotated

  tags: 2.0, ed, tech, web

  • Picked this site up from Dr. Kevin Kelly. He has some intriguing utube video about education. He mentioned this application in discussing the making of his video “we are the machine.” May not be the exact correct name. Doing this on the fly. Head is buring ideas as 657 IPS (ideas per second)
    - post by byoung76

More Lessons Learned

• Google Docs spreadsheet now has a survey feature. Could be very handy in class or in other groups.

• If you’re in a group project where you are the recorder and have to take notes, especially where you have to post your notes to a wiki page, type your notes in the word processor you’re most familiar with and not the text editor of the wiki page. Once you’re done, copy your notes to the wiki page. It’s quicker and easier.

• This is also true if you’re writing to a blog like this. It’s always easier to use the text editor your most comfortable with.

MTT Professional Reflections

• Make sure to use http:// vice ftp:// when posting something to your website. Remember: spelling counts!
• There are a lot of moving parts to a good online class. A teacher quoted in an NPR article (I can’t cite, but I could probably find it.) says that an online class takes about 50% more work for the teacher. Something to think about before jumping into the pond and saying, “Yes, I’ll do six new courses online.”
• It’s hard to shake off conventional teaching styles. When you’re in a time crunch and having issues with class management, (You feel out of control.) the natural tendency is to revert to your most basic training. The trick is to have your new teaching style so grooved and internalized that that is the style to default to. It takes a lot of time, patience and feed back to make such a primal change. Be patient with yourself.
• Assessment is one of the hardest aspects of a design plan for me to develop, especially rubrics for portfolios. I really need to sit down and evaluation chard copies of various rubrics available and come up with some ideas I can live with.
• Student centered learning requires a shift in thinking of the teacher. Unfortunately, the old teacher centered style tends to view students as cogs in a machine. It’s the machine that needs to operate. (Hence the discomfort of the teacher when he can’t manage and control the classroom environment above. I betray my basic tendency in these reflections, but I am changing.) One of the characters Granny Weatherwax in Terry Pratchett’s fantasy fiction Carpe Jugulum says, “Sin is treating people as things.” This seems to be a very humanistic definition of sin, and if it has any validity, it implies that, at least in one sense, teacher centered learning is sinful or dehumanizing. Students should be treated as we would want to be treated, with respect and with a recognition of our true worth and value.
• I realized another trait of the Digital Native that I don’t think has been documented yet, but it drives their teachers nuts. In the world of the Digital Native, there is no such thing as a final draft. Bill Gates and Windows is the epitome of this. They spend years putting out a product that when it is released it is buggy and under constant revision just to make it work as it should have in the first place. Our students always believe that they can retake a test or correct a paper for a better grade. To them there is no such thing a final product therefore, they don’t put their best effort into their work.
  A better role model of digital citizenship would be Google. While they are always improving, the products they put out are well crafted, well thought out, pretty much de-bugged and of superior quality. They always put out something that could be considered a final draft even if they improve it later.
• Google has a lot of handy tools that have been user tested before general distribution. Their implementation model is different from Microsoft. Google’s products are generally simple, flexible and bug free. It would pay to check out Google labs from time to time.
• When working with technology, allow plenty of time for glitches and in experience. Murphy’s Law will crop up. Have a back up plan. Rehearse and test as much of the technology that you can before introducing it in class.
• Rehearse and practice in the room where you will present the class. The software available in the computers might vary from lab to lab and you won’t know it until you try it. Don’t make assumptions that everything will work as you expect.
• PBwiki is more flexible than Wetpaint wiki. Wetpaint would be good for someone looking for a platform for a wiki that’s really quick and dirty or someone that isn’t very advanced in web applications. I would look at it if I were advising a teacher in elementary school to start a wiki. I think I might be great at that level of student sophistication, BUT I got very frustrated with it when I wanted to make some modifications to the location of pages in the hierarchy of pages and where I could put links, etc. I just couldn’t get there from here.
• PBWiki 2.0 is nice. I got used to the earlier version, but the new version is very user friendly and intuitive (in a different way from 1.0, but you get used to the new version quickly. I had to do some thinking when I went back to edit a wiki based on the older version.) from the older version. I originally started my e-portfolio in Wetpaint, but quickly moved over to PBwiki.
• It looks like wiki platforms like PBwiki could make the need to learn web authoring obsolete for the general public. My son who is graduating from A&M this May needs a web page for a project, but he’s a web user not a geek. I recommended that he use PBwiki for the basis of his web site rather than find someone to web master a new website for him, find a pay for a host server etc. I would recommend it to any casual user who needs a web site, but isn’t very versed in HTML or is time constrained. The only difference from using the wiki page as a web page rather than a wiki page would be to restrict the use of the editing password.
• You can use Google Docs presentation in a way similar to Wimba. This needs more practice.

1. 1. Make your presentation.
   2. Invite the audience.
   3. When they attend, that automatically sets them up in a text IM window. I don’t remember if audio/video is available, but I’ll bet it is. If not, you can use MS live messenger? for A/V interaction. As an alternative, you can use Skype for audio connection. (An online phone service. Free for computer to computer. Doc Bee’s idea.)

• Editing Google Docs.
  • Fortunately, it saves versions, but you have to be careful how many versions you need to go back to. Google doc only saves so many versions back.
  • If you’re in a group project I guess in theory everyone can work on the doc at the same time, but it gets messy and it is best to take turns in order for the system to keep up with modifications.
• Presentations made or saved in Google Docs can now be saved as Power Point presentations. This is a Big improvement.
• Use web based email or Google docs to store backups of important documents. The storage space is enormous and it adds an extra measure of protection.

Diigo & Education

Social Annotation: Seamless Integration of Social Bookmarking, Web Highlighter, Sticky-Note & Clipping Annotated

• Picked this site up from Dr. Kevin Kelly, Kansas SU. He has some intriguing utube video about education. He mentioned this application in discussing the making of his video “the machine is us/ing us.” Doing this on the fly. Head is burning ideas at 657 IPS (ideas per second)
  - post by byoung76