"Perhaps the most difficult aspect of project-based learning for me was figuring out how I was going to assess it. I'm sure some teachers love assessing and marking student work, but honestly, I'm uncomfortable with most grading and scoring. I appreciate feedback and I don't mind giving feedback, but I hate reducing it to a letter, number, or score. To me, it undervalues the learning."
"Ron Berger from Expeditionary Learning demostrates the transformational power of models, critique, and descriptive feedback to improve student work. Here he tells the story of Austin's Butterfly. 1st grade students at ANSER Charter School in Boise, ID, helped Austin take a scientific illustration of a butterfly through multiple drafts toward a high-quality final product."
"The author shares findings from her action research, focusing on the question, "How can I use critique to improve the quality of student feedback, student work and create a culture of collaboration?" "
"This chart is cross-posted on our new site at Personalize Learning.
After writing the post "Personalization is NOT Differentiating Instruction," I received some very interesting feedback and more hits than any other of my posts. I think I hit a nerve. :o
So Kathleen McClaskey and I did some research on what personalization is and the differences between differentiation and individualization. We found very little information on the differences. And what we did find, we disagreed with many of the points. That lead us to create this chart:"
"The feedback from teachers has been incredible to our top 10 twitter accounts for teachers. We would like to continue to provide great resources for teachers and educators, so we are continuing to add to our list."
"Publishing student thinking can be among the most powerful ways to improve learning.
There are a variety of reasons for this, but the biggest reason is that the "threat" of publishing moves the lodestone from the classroom to the "real world." This, of course, changes everything."
At P2PU, people work together to
learn a particular topic by completing tasks, assessing individual and group
work, and providing constructive feedback.
We need to develop more learning opportunities where students constitute the actual evaluators for the work itself. Imagine if students, teachers and others evaluate and provide feedback to determine the effectiveness of a student's creation: Develop an 60-second speech to be shared with the student council and three advertising posters to be copied and placed around school to decrease bullying. Your work will be evaluated according to our rubric by the students in our class, outside professionals and me - as the teacher. These are the experiences that push learning beyond a one-way conversation between student and teacher. They demystify the assessment process and allow each student to be a creator and simultaneous evaluator, providing multiple experiences for students to recognize and apply the criteria for quality"