An archived stack of papers: January 2008
After Day Three Of Finals
In a stack of papers called Grading.
- Jan
- 18
- 2008
Not many kids wrote papers that raised their F to a D-. It helped a small handful of students, but all were already only a few percentage points away from passing. No one managed to raise, say, a 22%/F to a D-. That’s what I was hoping for. There’s one student for whom the jury is still out, but I don’t think she’s going to make it. [Update: She made... read more
After Day Two Of Finals
In a stack of papers called Grading.
- Jan
- 17
- 2008
Two functions of grades came up in a discussion today. One is to accurately reflect a student’s ability. A second is to help students understand their ability. Initially, I said in no uncertain terms that the first trumps the second, all day, every day. It’s much more important that the grade be an accurate reflection of skill than a student be able to understand how he got that grade.... read more
After Day One Of Finals
In a stack of papers called Grading.
- Jan
- 16
- 2008
Grades are on my mind and weighing heavily.
My school uses School loop and I’ve been using their gradebook faithfully all semester long. I just realized that things aren’t organized in a way that lets me see patterns. Assignments are arranged by date and not by category. There’s no convenient report showing the percentage of students earning each grade. Even the breakdown of... read more
2007 In Review
In a stack of papers called Personal.
- Jan
- 12
- 2008
I spend a lot of time on teaching. From grading papers to puzzling out tomorrow’s lesson to just being at work, there’s not a lot of free time in my day. But there is some. How do I spend that time? And what do I have to show for 2007? When not standing in front of a group of students, I’m reading, writing, running, or watching.
Table Of Contents
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Why Can’t I Get This Right?
In a stack of papers called Grading.
- Jan
- 06
- 2008
Experimentation is the nature of any classroom. If you’re just doing the same things you’ve done for the last 10 years, you aren’t responding to the way students, education, and the world are changing. That said, I sometimes wish I’d just do the same thing I did last year because at least part of it was successful. This year, my experiment failed in a big way. Next semester will... read more
Swift And Scoble
In a stack of papers called Connections.
- Jan
- 02
- 2008
“A Modest Proposal” is the classic irony, where Jonathan Swift’s ridiculous answer to a problem pushes readers toward actual solutions. Robert Scoble’s “The RIAA is right” has the same idea, though with more complaints than answers to the... read more