Have variety without overdoing it. The Yahoo example in the lesson was a great example of too much information that confuses the viewer.

I would suggest looking at websites that you like, ones that feel easy to navigate. Look at what they do and use it as a guide when starting out.

Three click rule: If a user has to click on more than three links then they are most likely going to be frustrated and leave the site. Keep navigation simple!

In my classroom, this might be allowing students to choose themes or subjects for their final projects while using the techniques we are studying.  

This is very true.  As I attempt to make sense of this for my classroom, I am realizing the amount of prep work that is involved.  I realized I can continue to develop the resources that I make available to students, but I want it to be meaty to begin with.  

This quote really spoke to me.  This is often what an art room looks like.  To a degree it is already personalized, but it can be more personal for the students.  That is my goal. It is funny because so many times administrators assume I can do more because I 'just' give my students a project and they work on it all week, so of course I must have all kinds of time.  But really the classroom is constantly in motion, I just don't stand at the front and direct all the motion.  It really does take an understanding administrator for this to work well.  

With my limited experience with Symbaloo, I agree with the fact that it does seem easy add and customize content.  I think my students would find this to be a helpful tool.  I also like the idea of encouraging students to use it for tracking both personal and school related information.  

This is a good reminder.  Students need to take on a more active role, but there is always a good balance.  It probably shouldn't be all one way or all another way.  

Maybe the idea of grading needs to be evaluated.  Even standards based grading does the same thing.  

Key elements of self-assessment to keep in mind.  

This sets the tone for the class and helps to avoid some of the disadvantages discussed above.  

I have a lot of questions about his process.  Did he provide students with a rubric for grading? Were comments expected?  Maybe students didn't know what to comment on (organization, subject, editing, etc.)  There are a lot of variations that need to be considered.  Also, is this expectation set out at the beginning of the course?  

If students don't know what the learning targets are, how do they know what to focus on?  The rubric should give students a clear idea of the goals.  

It seems that some of these anecdotes show that the rubrics being used are missing categories to assess all the needed categories.  The first example is missing a component on being cohesive and this one is missing the creative component.   I have done this in the past, given a rubric and then realized it is missing something critical.  This is why rubric building takes so much time. 

This works for some subjects, but not all.  I don't know that I would give my students in drawing a written test.  The written test is a product in my case. 

I will be doing more of this.  I have been too dependent on the speaker note function of PPT.  

As technology in the classroom advances, this will be even easier to do.  Presentations done on a large screen TV versus a projector will make all the difference.  

This is a good reminder.  

This is a good correlation and great tip.  

This is good information and should be done during the 'analog' stage.

Good guideline for checking up on myself.

When creating presentations, remember this fact.  It doesn't mean the death of PPT, just reinforcing the fact that presenters need to look at the presentation differently.  

This is an interesting thought.  I wonder how well it would work with high school students?  It's nice that students would be able to focus on what is being said, but at the same time studies show that more information is remembered when actual writing (not typing) takes place.