Blogging assessment
After reading the homework articles, i’m intrigued about the benefits and drawbacks of insisting students use blogs to reflect on their studies. Would it work? Would it simply become another fad that seems like a good idea initially until the novelty wares off. I like the idea of getting students to reflect, but how do/could we assess this? What rubric could we use? Are we killing the idea of blogging by using it as an assessment tool? Knowing many of our students, unless an assessment counts towards a final grade, the amount of effort they put into it might be affected. Any thoughts?
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Jon,
In my opinion the novelty of blogging is the fact that your having a delayed dialogue that could increase your web of like minded people in regards to a particular topic. Your developing your network or your topical collective intelligence. My dad started a blog on educational issues and we have both been shocked by some of the “high-up” people that have responded. People working for the New York Times, Senators, ect.
Also, just an idea, but students reflecting could be more of a participatory thing. Each student might be required to respond to twice or three times as many posts as they write. Posts they write you could grade with the rubrics you use now to assess student writing. Numerous rubrics can be found for assessing all sorts of things on Google.
By keeping things open ended it will be interesting to see the randomness of what students really think and choose to dialogue about.
In regards to you last question: Are we killing the idea of blogging by using it as an assessment tool?
It’s an interesting point that I’ve thought a little about. In my mind Web 2.0 is useful in many ways. The main focus of web 2.0 is increasing collaboration and connectedness of like minded groups of people. But as a teacher I’ve thought about using web 2.0 tools as a way to make things easier as a teacher by creating technology platforms to accomplish things like assignment tracking, handing in assignments, portfolios, consolidating my work.
For instance I’ve thought a lot about have each student have a blog, and then subscribing to each students blog on an appropriately named Netvibes tab (Ex: English 9 Block B). This would be my custom web 2.0 architecture to have student assignments never lost and automatically handed in. Plus if students wrote drafts they would always be saved and you could see a progression.
Just my 2 cents.
We use blogging for reflections in ToK. The kids write their reflections every two weeks in response to a set question. After reflecting on today’s session it could be that we are doint something which is not actually in the spirit of blogging. Sure the kids make a better job of it than they did when we had them do it on paper but we haven’t succeeded in getting any conversations going. As for assessment we don’t have a rubric for it, one comment of around 300 words is the expectation and they get a completion mark. It’s a better method than theprevious one but I’m stilll not convinced it works. Thoughts?
My concern relates to the culture and the fact that many students first reaction will likely be ‘is it graded’? I have been thinking about perhaps including this as part of an assessment next academic year – focusing on their reflections. Although i haven’t thought about this in detail, i envisage it being like a journal where they can reflect on their learning – but i am concerned about the quality of their participation as this would be more of a partcipation grade….
You’re right – this can be tricky. It is important to give a lot of leeway when it comes to content, since I think this is implied in the idea of a journal. Perhaps have the students help make the rubric, once they have a sense of what you want to achieve with it? You wouldn’t have to start from scratch of course – look at other rubrics and have the students try to use them once they’ve blogged a bit (which we’ll do during the session today!)
mmmm, interesting points Jon. Our students are definetly grade driven and i am still juggling with the idea of how would I use it in class to enhance learning. I remember when I started teaching last millenium, I thought having coloured chalk was high tech. But eventually I used the coloured chalk to assist my teaching and student learning. I was quiet impressed with my little step. Most times when something new comes into the scence it has taken me a while to get use to the technology and work out a way that I can use it in class. I see blogging as a tool that I need to seriously look at a way of enhancing student learning. It will hopefully be another tool that I can use. I have always said, not matter what the technology is, (yes, even my coloured chalk) that nothing will replace a confident supportive teacher in front of a class.
Several months ago, my colleague and I decided to share a class blog. We thought a blog would be a good tool for writing. Although we had a few concerns such as, how are we going use the blog? How would we edit their writing? How would we give meaningful feedback without losing the momentum of having students just write? How would we assess their writing? Despite our concerns, we decided to start the blog. Several months in to it, we are still ironing out the details. It is not perfect, but students do like using a blog. They like reading and commenting on each other’s work, and some really do appreciate it as a learning tool. After reading the article “Thoughts on Assessment” by Konard Glogowski, I am not so worried about assessing everthing students post. I am hoping that students will take some ownership of the site, and decide how they will use the blog to become better writers and editors. It is a work in progress- I will keep you posted as the site progresses.
I have attached the link to the article mentioned above- it’s worth taking a look at.
http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2009/02/20/thoughts-on-assessment/