Educational reflections

Back in 1994, our district adopted an online grading program called Making the Grade. Believe it or not, I was one of the first in the building to use it both at school and at home. What a miracle it was! Correct the papers, enter the grades, and voila!!!the program computed the average. I thought I’d found a miracle drug. I could not understand why everyone didn’t use it. It printed out grade average sheets for parents when they needed them. No longer did I have to write out missing work lists; these sheets showed missing work. We still had to “bubble in” grades at midterm and end-of-quarter. When the program came out just a few years ago where the district office “harvested” grades from the online program, that was when those few holdouts who still used gradebooks had to finally put them away and move into the 21st century. It was not easy for them as it will not be easy for them to learn to put learning into the the present century. Short of a mandate from the President, they will be most likely to stay put right where they are.

Rubrics are important to the scoring process:

I have used rubrics for many years. The reason that I began to use them on a regular basis was an interesting one. There was a time that, as a language arts/ reading teacher, I would read a paper written by a students and grade it according to the criteria that I had in my mind. I guess I thought that students could read my mind. One year when I was teaching 6th grade, I was on a 4-person academic team where we all taught English. We would plan our lessons together and the time would come when the science and math teachers would ask, “How should we grade this?” That’s when we started to develop rubrics for all assignments. We became known as the rubric “queens.” After that expecience, I used rubrics continuously for almost all assignments so that the students knew exactly what the expectations were for their papers and projects.

Taking these ideas for pen and papers assignments, teachers can add their expectations for technology assignments. They can include adding critical thinking, productivity, and/or self-direction assessment, just to name a few. These have always been important to the learning process, but when technology is added to the “mix,” it is important for students to understand that these parts of the process will also be graded along with the core subject assessment.

http://hickstro.org/  Digital Writing, Digital Teaching, “Smile Teacher, You’re on YouTube”       Since this is such a popular topic in the read/write web world these days, I felt it very pertinent to what we are dealing with in our weekly module. There was an article in the Asheville Citizen Times a month or so ago about a former Asheville teacher who ended up on YouTube. This author reiterated some of the feelings that i had when I read the article in the paper.                        

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/   2cents Worth,   “In the News This Morning-Google and LIFE”  This site interested me simply because it was written by the author of our text. But when I read about the fact that Google has ALL the pictures from LIFE magazine that have ever been published, I loved that. Since I grew up with LIFE and Saturday Evening Post magazines, I found it quite intriguing so I chose to respond to it.

11/19/08

I have taken many classes during my years of education, from 1st grade onward. I’ve had some tough ones in college. The two that are most memorable were during my first quarter at Western Illinois University in Macomb, IL: British Literature I and Psychology 100.  I had never taken Brit Lit before and when I was tested on Beowulf written in Old English, I failed the first test (not good). I had never taken psychology before so everything in that class, too, was new and I failed the first test in that class, also (again, not good). I did end up with a C in both classes, but it certainly did not get my grade point average off to a very good start.

After I graduated and started to teach, I took many different classes before gettting my master’s degree. The very first PLS class that I ever took was Project Teach(back in 1984.) Up to that point in my life, Project Teach was the hardest class I ever took for various reasons but mostly because of my personality. But I learned a lot from that class. Fast forward to fall of ’08, and I decided to sign up for Developing 21st Century Literacy Skills. OH MY GOODNESS!!!!! I nearly gave up after week 1, but I was too stubborn to do so.

11/20/08

I was totally out of my league with the technology that this class was asking me to do. I am so thankful that I have friends and family who are willing to help me out. First came the Venn diagram that we had to construct during that first week. I wasn’t very impressed with the site that was offered, crappygraphs.com so with the help of my older daughter, I made my own. Then came the googledocs.com where we could make documents, presentations, or spreadsheets. I had never made a powerpoint presentaion in my life so I decided to put all my information into slides. I had way too many words, but it was a start for me.

All of the creations that I have posted throughout this class have been a first for me: my risk-taking powerpoint; my multimedia ad for a 21st century school; my digital story and the annotations on the wikispaces, and this week’s read/write site on the wikispace and this blog. My “digital native” daughters smile at my acheivements as I finish them each week, but I am so proud of the finished products. Luckily for me, too, that I have such a knowledgeable group member in Laura who has walked me through more than one assignment.

Will I continue to blog? I don’t know at this point, but I do know that I will use many of the other aspects of technology that I have gathered during this course. I will admit to all who are reading this that I have learned more from this course than most other courses that I have taken.  I will continue to be a “digital immigrant,” but a much more informed one who can use many of the technology skills that the “natives” use.

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