Class Reflections

This week’s assignment was to design a rubric for a technology project…. a project which allows student to decide the technology which “best suits their learning style, the audience, and the content.” Sounds relatively easy but I found myself agonizing over all kinds of details and decisions. I discovered that I had to redefine parts of the lesson plan/project assignment as I designed my rubrics. Defining the assignment and developing a rubric seemed to work best when I constantly re-evaluated my assignment as I worked on the different parts of the rubrics. I began the assignment wanting to keep my rubric simple…easy for the student to follow. I wanted the rubric serve as a checklist for the student to follow as he/she planned, researched and developed his/her project. I also wanted the rubric to be simple so the student would be able to calculate his/her grade easily. I started with a simple list of project characteristics that could be evaluated by “yes” or “no” (1 point or 0 point). Eventually, I decided to go to the 4 point system. I tried to define each category in easily identifiable behaviors/actions…this was difficult. Needless to say I know I will certainly be modifying and adding to it as I find opportunities to use it. 

The Lesson Plan – Assign each student a different topic or part of the unit of study. For example,  in a history class studying World War II, students might be required to do the following project:

Students will research and collect information about the causes and events that led to American involvement in the World War II, including the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Each student will select a topic from a given list and use at least 3 appropriate resources from the web to summarize the important information for one of the following causes/events leading to the war:  Rise of dictatorships, United States isolationism, Facism/Nazism, National Socialism, Appeasement Policy, Treaty of Versailles, Axis Powers Alliance, Nationalism in Asia, Economic cycles of inflation/depression, Military aggression.Each student will work individually.Each student will be able to explain/ show evidence that their resources are authentic  and accurate.Each student will be required to present their summaries in any technology format that can be posted on Blackboard. (The teacher can post these projects on FCPS 24/7 as study guides.) Presentations will be restricted to 3 minutes or less. The project will be graded using this  Rubric . This rubric can be made available to students through their FCPS24/7 account in an excel spreadsheet. And it can be set up so the student can use the rubric to assist in the design of the project as well as to calculate the student’s own grade. My revised rubric http://sbtsclass07.edublogs.org/files/2007/11/my_rubric23.xls