#teaching theory

[chemistlock]

anybody here owns a car and wants to hit me with it? please come

[allofthemath]

Standards-Based Grading Links

In case you want to read real people talking about Standards-Based Grading instead of just my amateur summary.

Explanations from Teachers

http://mrsbmg.blogspot.com/2009/10/i-can-improve-my-grade-by-retaking-part.html

http://larkolicio.us/blog/?p=3

http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=346

http://www.mrmeyer.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/howmathmustassess.pdf

http://concurrencies.blogspot.com/2010/01/formative-assessing-to-extreme.html

http://www.asd4.org/schools/indiantrail/documents/SLP/2012-13/seven_reasons.pdf

http://assessmentforinstruction.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-are-we-grading-hopeful.html

From Educational Resources

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/oct08/vol66/num02/Seven_Reasons_for_Standards-Based_Grading.aspx

http://hepg.org/hel/article/545

http://academia.edu/1157096/Being_Fair_Teachers_Interpretations_of_Principles_for_Standards-Based_Grading

Papers

http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/fie/2012/1353/00/06462211-abs.html

Not many, as you can see. Looking for more!

[allofthemath]

Standards-Based Grading

I'm in the middle of reading everything I can get my hands on about standards-based grading. It seems really fantastic. The basic idea is: grades should mean something. They should reflect an understanding of the material. So instead of having a Chapter 2 test, all the material for the year is broken into learning objectives, and a quiz has one or two questions on each objective, and the quiz has no overall grade, but rather a score for each objective based on how well it has been learned. When it has been learned perfectly, no need to have it tested anymore on that student. When not, the student knows *exactly* what they need to work on, and can take another assessment testing that objective and have a higher score replace a lower score.

Teaching can be the same as always, except often SBG teachers don't grade homework so much as correct and give lots of feedback. Lots of feedback is crucial, so that there is much more formative assessment (assessment that helps kids understand where they are, where they should be and how to get from one to the other) than summative assessment (one-directional information from student to teacher about how much the student knows). 

It refocuses grades, makes assessment less stressful and more accurate, gives kids a much better sense of exactly what they have to learn and how they can do it and doesn't punish slow learners. 

Sounds amazing, right? The only drawbacks I see other than implementation difficulties are that it's hard to see how to bring other graded assignments into it, like projects, inquiry-based learning, and having test questions that ask them to explain and describe to me what's going on, all things I'm interested in trying

Have any of you heard of this before? What do you think about it?

[holtthink]

From the Blog Entry:

What should educators know about technology?

Let’s resist the answer “Nothing!” (and the answer “OMG, iPads!”) and the argument that ed-tech procurement decisions are made elsewhere. Indeed for decades now, that’s been the case. Education technology — both hardware and software — has been something appearing in schools without much input from teachers or students. But with the rise of consumer Web technologies and the ubiquity of personal computing devices (particularly mobile devices), that’s changing.

Below is a collection of resources to help educators learn more about (education) technology — the industry, its culture, its investors, its politics, and the code that runs all our shiny gadgets and applications.

[phdcat-blog]

PhD Cat says, 'When it comes to time to teach, I sits in my Queen chair. That way EVERYBODY knows I'm in charge. I'm in charge. And if I command a full-on invasion of the Mitzi cat next door, then by god all 1st years in POLI10601 WILL retaliate on Mitzland for playing with the bugs in MY garden! DEFEND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE MOTHERLAND!!' When you've gots to teach 18-year olds realism versus liberalism and you're hanging ons by the last thread of the yarn yourself, you've got to pull real-world examples from das cat butt. Yep, strangest PhD Cat yet. Both my grands are gone now, spent a week out of country for funeral. So I'm a little eccentric when I grieve. You've read what's coming to Mitzi. You want some of this?!

[igiveadamn-blog-blog]

Fascinating-looking blog posts from big names in the TEFL industry.  Lots of good stuff here.   Doesn't look like there's been a new post since 2009.

[igiveadamn-blog-blog]

"I seek the building blocks of the intelligences used by... sailors and surgeons and sorcerers."

A nice review of multiple intelligences "in capsule form" and long-form.  Implications for practical application are also discussed.  NB: "While multiple intelligences theory is consistent with much empirical evidence, it has not been subjected to strong experimental tests within psychology... Our hunches will have to be revised many times in ilght of actual classroom experience." (33)