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It consumed every evening and at least one day of the weekend. I had no life and the cycle repeated itself every week until the summer holidays. I hated marking. Oh, and by the way, it made no difference! I was ticking and flicking, leaving comments that were far too generic and the marking often went unnoticed or unacknowledged by the students. So, I've stopped. Or at least, I've stopped doing what I was doing. Now, my marking is less frequent but makes a much greater difference to the progress of my students.

"A strategy to support pupils improve their spelling strategies, by circling words which they think require attention. The Standards & Testing Agency have in some ways made the marking of spellings more problematic than it's ever been. They state quite clearly, that individual spellings should no longer be pointed out to children if you wish to mark it as an independent piece. This, coupled with Ofsted's move away from heavy amounts of marking needing to be seen in books, could make the marking of spelling seem tricky."

An Apple app which lets you quickly scan and mark paper-based quizzes using the special mark sheet and your mobile device. The children simply make a mark on their answer sheet to show their answer. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Planning+%26+Assessment

A superb assessment resource which allows you to gain real-time feed back through tests, quizzes and even allowing students to annotate a document that you upload. Set up your quiz/test using true/false statements, longer text answers or students can draw the answer. You can setup a marking key meaning that the site will mark the answers for you and give instant data on who is correct. Your student can either have there own free account or they can access the material using a link. The site works across a wide range of devices.

A superb assessment resource which allows you to gain real-time feed back through tests, quizzes and even allowing students to annotate a document that you upload. Set up your quiz/test using true/false statements, longer text answers or students can draw the answer. You can setup a marking key meaning that the site will mark the answers for you and give instant data on who is correct. Your student can either have there own free account or they can access the material using a link. The site works across a wide range of devices.

We can't fundamentally change our report cards in a truly meaningful way until we change what we consider important first. However, assessment itself is the greatest impediment to meaningful change in education. Standardized tests are about 'counting marks' NOT 'marking what counts'.

"As a PGCE Student going through two school placements in North Wales back in 2005, I found it hard to keep up with daily admin. Just planning lessons and trying to deliver stimulating content and keeping the students engaged throughout, was challenging enough. Marking: I dreaded it, and found it almost impossible to fit it into my weekly regimen of teaching, planning and completing assignments for university."

"As teachers, we are messing up our schedules and creating added stress because we do not ruthlessly prioritise enough. It's absolutely essential. All marking is important: every student must receive feedback and acknowledgement for their efforts. However, you may have to give your exam-preparation classes greater quality feedback that your younger classes at certain points in the year. You may also have to give it back in a more swift and timely manner too (e.g. when you've just finished the mock exams, or when you've had an end-of-unit test)."

You can mark and annotate youtube videos with a customized player to mark sections, etc. This embed plus tool is a fascinating one to use with students and in blog posts.

Marking your mark and personalising your class

I've always felt that I teach for free, but get paid to plan and mark (don't tell my Head that). They both seem so time-consuming and arduous, and yet with a little thought and organisation, you can produce marking and planning which is rich and highly beneficial, all in the same amount of time that you would normally spend! So, here's the set-up; I find I work best after school, undisturbed and at a class desk, but whatever works for you...

List of people who made their mark - this list and the people to watch in 2009 make interesting reading for ALL leaders and much of their work is influenced by their work in WEb 2.0 and social media.

So with the caveat that I am only halfway through Mark Bauerline's book The Dumbest Generation, I have some early impressions to throw out there. While I think there is some merit to this side of the debate (much like Keen's Cult of the Amateur) what really bothers me about this book so far is, as the title suggests, this sense that our kids are at fault. Let me put it plainly: our kids are not "dumb" nor is this generation "dumb" simply because they spend a lot of time in front of television screens and computers or because they haven't worked out for themselves how to get smarter using the Read/Write Web.

FACT: Students do not need marks to be motivated. Most of the best work I have ever seen came from students who were not worried about evaluative handcuffs.

Sharing and reviewing documents and presentations with others can be quite a pain. crocodoc was built to change that, alleviating the need to email attachments back and forth, print and pass around hard copies, or install expensive collaboration software.

Use tool to mark up and edit on-line pages and pdf files. Larry Ferlazzo highly recommends it, so I'm going to look at it.

And what counts as "writing," or "composition?" Is a tweet a text, or a piece of a larger text?3 Is a rambling audio podcast, recorded from the driver's seat of my car, a composition on par with a Master's thesis, or an essay? So long as a test or assessment or evaluation of a text occurs within a limited finition of what counts as writing, are these other forms valid? How do we who is a "good" writer? What is "good" writing?

This great maths site has an amazing collection of maths self-marking problem solving questions. Search by age level or topic. This covers both Primary and Secondary levels. Topics include numbers, geometry, algebra, data analysis, probability and more. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths

You'll notice new quick action buttons in Gmail as announced by Google on Wednesday. They want to make things more intuitive. Expect these changes to happen on a gradual basis but they are coming. Including the ability to RSVP more easily - a feature which I like as some stragglers still refuse to properly use Google Calendar or any online calendar at all. "When the situation calls for it, new quick action buttons will pop up in an email, letting you accomplish simple tasks without reaching for the keyboard. For event RSVPs, you can even mark your attendance from the main inbox view -- a preview with all the key details will pop up, letting you respond with a simple Yes, Maybe or No. "

Sandy McConnell has created a nice set of reflections for 2012, something I think all admins should want their teachers to do, where she shared her views, what she has done, and how she's improved. Such retrospection on a year is a powerful way to mark learning and remember. She's done so many things, but particularly I like how she didn't let the fact that she was temporarily laid off stop her from learning and moving forward. IF you're having a tough time, you might want to read what Sandy is and has done. She inspires me. Wow. I"ll link to all of her sets, because I"d like you to read them all.