It is also so important that the teacher model vulnerability and being open to feedback as well. I have also found that making the feedback ungraded helps quite a bit. Students don't tend to like giving each other grades.

This all sounds great, but is this task going to be graded? Many teachers are in buildings in which only the academic standards are assessed. I have many students that would benefit from these types of tasks that would simply skip them while working on an assessment. Sadly, these are often the exact students that need to do them the most.

We are not allowed to have students give grades to one another, at least any that are binding. This does not mean that students cannot assess one another, and I have found that students tend to be more motivated if they must present/show their work to their peers.

I think we have to realize that there is often a lot of knowledge that educators assume kids have, but do not. This is especially prevalent in students from diverse and less privileged backgrounds. Rubrics can help with this, but we may need to expand on the terminology used in the rubrics with many students.

I have served as a reader for AP, grading essays that students wrote for AP exams. It is interesting to note that their rubrics are not fully-formed until after they receive student work. A first draft is made before, but it is then revised after they receive the essays. I think this is generally good practice, but I wonder if there is an even better way to create these rubrics.

Using an LMS such as Moodle can be helpful in not only scoring assessments, but helping to organize the data and determining which items students need further instruction with.

Using an LMS such as Moodle can be helpful not only for scoring assessments but for organizing the data so the teacher can make sense of it and help students accordingly.

I think that while professional development on pedagogy is important, sometimes our training on knowledge of the content gets overshadowed. This is too bad because the more I have learned about my content, I have been able to come up with more creative ways to teach it!

I often wonder about the right amount of communication with students in an online setting. Obviously you want some, but can there be too much?

I sometimes wonder about the appropriate amount of communication in an online course. Obviously we want some, but we also want students to work on independent problem solving as well. For example, how often do I need to respond to discussion posts? There is no way I can respond to all of them in a meaningful way.