21st Century Education & Learning Programs & Web 2.0 and Education 26 Sep 2005 12:24 am
Blogging as assesment
Well I have started the final term here for 2005. I have started writing an assessment piece for my students (year 7 which is 12 -13yrs old) that involves them maintaining a blog for a number of weeks. I have placed the rough assessment sheet online for you all to look at and comment on. I am particularly after feedback on what my assessment criteria should be. I would love to get feedback and thoughts from as many different people as possible? It is getting late and I am a tad brain dead…. Need some ideas here!!!!!!! View the rough assessment.
on 26 Sep 2005 at 12:52 am 1.Jo McLeay said …
Brett,
Hi,
it is an interesting idea to assess the blogs. I guess there would be two schools of thought on that. I decided to have the students use the blogs to help with their metacognition and didn’t assess them. Instead I assessed another piece of work. But if you want to assess the blogs why not open it up to the students to work out how they should be assessed. You might be surprised what they come up with. When I did this I had to keep saying but how am I going to evaluate that? I also incorporated some self assesment. Here are some other people talking about a similar thing:
http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/remote_access/2005/09/is_msnish_a_lan.html#comments
btw my students are in Year 9 and 10 so that might make a difference
I posted about it here: http://theopenclassroom.blogspot.com/2005/08/good-day-at-chalkface.html and on the next day as well
anyway cheers
Hope these are helpful comments.
Love your work
Jo
on 26 Sep 2005 at 6:32 pm 2.Danny Maas said …
Hi Brett,
This is a great idea and I’m glad to see that you are using the blog to assess their understanding of the issues presented in your classroom. As the previous poster suggested, I’d set the criteria with the kids before you begin. In class, give an overview of the blogging assignment. Afterward, pose the question “What do you think would make a great blog for this class?” On the board or overhead, list any/all suggestions made by kids. After a dozen or so criteria, work with the kids to categorize their criteria under different headings based on their similarities. For example, suggestions “interesting blog topics”, “well-argued positions”, and “blog topics relate to class topics” might fall under the larger category of “Blog Content” (may be a bad example but you get the idea). What begins as a dozen or so specific criteria by kids ends up as 3 or 4 larger main criteria. From here, you can even crite up a rough rubric on the spot showing 3 or 4 levels of achievement or create a checklist of the 4 criteria with a description of each.
This may take an hour or so just to generate the criteria and rubric, but I strongly suggest that the kids will have a much greater idea of what is expected of them in doing so. After doing this project for the term, collect sample blog postings at different levels of achievement so kids can see exemplars of what to do (and what not to do) so your next-year students can actually see the difference between excellent blog postings and poor blog postings across your different criteria.
You’d be wise to take a few minutes yourself to generate a list of criteria that are important for you in this project, just in case the kids miss something and you want to throw in an extra criteria on the list. You’d be surprised, however, to see how accurate the kids will be in generating this list of criteria. In addition to the content/debate format criteria, I recommend including a section on ‘blogging etiquette’ or ‘appriopriateness’ or something relating to the fact that kids will be debating with each other without personally attacking each other or being rude.
I can’t wait to see how this shakes down Brett. I’ll be sure to stay tuned
A friend pointed out a great free blogging service that more teachers are using, called http://www.21publish.com . It would allow you to create a blog for each class, then allow you to create blogs within that class blog for each student. Students would log in, and you could set privileges as to who is able to both see blog postings and comment to postings. This would help to increase student privacy while still allowing them to post detailed entries. Like Blogger, it allows students to upload photos, create links, etc. Check it out.
All the best in this!
Danny Maas
TILT – Teachers Improving Learning with Technology
http://tilttv.blogspot.com
on 26 Sep 2005 at 11:25 pm 3.Jo McLeay said …
I’m on a roll now! Found this as well:
http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2005/06/12/48/
cheers
Jo
on 27 Sep 2005 at 2:31 am 4.David Warlick said …
I like the concept of using a blog as workspace for assessment. You still have to do the rubric. I like Jo’s suggestion about having students contribute to the assessment standards. There is a school in NYC, where all assignments must be turned in digitally. There, teachers assess work based on two criteria, Content (it’s accuracy, appropriateness to the assignment, and clarity), and presentation (compellingness of the argument). You might as students to rank each others blog arguments based on compellingness.
Just some ideas. A great concept.
– dave –
on 13 Feb 2008 at 12:16 pm 5.Eko Budi Rahardjo said …
I am an english teacher at National Plus School. I need the criteria of Debate Assessment. Would you like to help me ?
I look forward to having your reply soon.
Thanks
Mr. Budi