SBG Recording Methods: Wants VS Reality
October 10, 2012 1 Comment
Now that quarter 1 is over and I will be submitting student’s earned grades soon I wanted to give a little update on my SBG progress.
Below is my list of wants that I mentally made at the beginning of the year while getting ready for SBG:
- Use Blueharvest to keep students/parents updated on students progress towards meeting standards.
- Use Blueharvest to keep examples of students meeting standards (i.e. notebook pics, conversations, etc)
- Communicate with parents/students electronically about progress in class.
- Students specifically aware of standards being taught and assessed (more aware of their learning)
- Students correct own assessments (@fnoschese’s idea seen here)
Here is my reality check list:
- Most student’s can’t use Blueharvest because they don’t have email or computers at home.
- Computers in my classroom are broken and I don’t have enough for students to use within the 50 min time period of lesson/learning
- Student’s are really keen on taking pictures of their notebooks with an iPad, phone or other electronic device for evidence but I have no system in place in order to upload to Blueharvest or Threering.
- Parents don’t have email either and they don’t even have phones at home let alone internet to keep in contact about student progress.
- Students are VERY into their learning and are way more aware of what they are learning and the level at which they are learning a standard or benchmark.
- No way close to students correcting their own assessments.
- Not using enough assessments for students to show learning progress.
I feel like a failure! But seems like I set myself up for that. Look at that list of WANTS…I mean really! This is the first year I am doing this and I wanted to accomplish all that. After reading Frank’s Keep It Simple Post I wish I would have ran into this BEFORE my year started. So now I am reassessing my list to improve on the failures and I have come up with this:
- Use some form of progress tracking on paper (because my students don’t have access to technology they need)
- Give the option for students with technology to use Blueharvest (I have some students that really want to use it)
- Upload all evidence for students using Blueharvest or Threering (haven’t decided yet)
- Give a type of assessment (exit card, quiz, homework) once a week (no more than 3-5 questions) to give students more opportunities to display progress towards meeting standards.
- Take it one step at a time so I don’t feel like a failure.
Great plan. Thanks for sharing. My BlueHarvest reality isn’t as deep or authentic as I’d like, but with Frank’s Keep It Simple post in mind, I’m at least glad that students and I can easily sit down and talk about their progress towards the learning goals.
I like that BlueHarvest’s design is centered around feedback and dialog with students. ThreeRing does have the ability to easily upload evidence from a mobile device and associate it quickly with a student. A mash-up – via ifttt.com ? – would be awesome.