Grading Made Easy!

Teachers lead such busy lives, the last thing they want to do is sit down and manually figure out grades! That is why people have invented programs such as Engrade, which is an online gradebook. Overall, I found this program to be user friendly. I liked how easy it was to get started. Even though I teach, I made up a fake class for purposes of this assignment. First, I typed in the students' names and their ID numbers. Once I chose an assignment, the program gave me a choice of how I wanted to point value to be distrubuted. I decided to make all of my assignments out of 100%, but I like how you are given the option to do what ever point value you want to. This is great, especially for an elementary school setting where many of the assignments are not graded on a scale out of 100. I also thought it was great how the program automatically gives you an average for each student, plus an average for your whole class on that particular assignment. This program does not only do grades, but it gives you a calendar for assignment due dates, and there is a spot where a teacher can type in comments about a particular student. This makes it easier when report cards come around! Students are also able to see their progress on this site, which is always a positive. I believe students should never be left in the dark when it comes to their progress.
For my suggestions, I recommend that the students' last names show up in full on the screen. Some student's names are cut off because they are too long. Also, I feel that there should be separate boxes to type into when you are setting up your class list. Right now, you have to do your own spacing with the names and ID numbers. It would be more convenient if the site did this for you. For example, have a box to type in the student's first name, a box for the last name, and a box for the ID number. The appearance of the website could also be more colorful, or maybe you should be given a choice of the template you want to use. Right now the site's appearance is very boring.
It would definitely be useful for classroom teachers because it saves time when trying to figure out averages. Plus, it monitors a student's progress overtime so you can see growth. Lastly, the comments section will be a big help for teachers to jot down any observations about the students and it will especially be helpful during report card time. As I mentioned above, parents and students will benefit from this site because a student will be able to check his/her progress on a daily basis. Therefore, he/she can make appropriate improvements where necessary.

This online quiz was made using the program Studiyo. I decided to make this quiz based on a science unit that I do with my fifth grade students called Microworlds. I thought that this quiz was very easy to make, and it wasn't time consuming at all. It tracks your score as you take the quiz, and at the end it even gives you a grade! I love the way it is interactive, and I feel that students will love to take it because it tells you if you are correct or incorrect right away. I also like the option this program gives you to add media, such as videos and pictures.

Working Hand-in-Hand!

Collaboration really is the key to success! When I was initially asked to think about the difference between cooperative learning and collaboration, I was stumped! Was there really a difference? I always figured educators used these words interchangeably. Well, after doing a bit of research, I am now more aware of the differences between the two. They both rely on the same principal idea of working together to achieve a common goal, but collaboration seems to take the process a step further. With cooperative learning, students are given defined roles and the process id very goal driven. Collaboration actually focuses more on the process. In a collaborative setting, everyone is equal, and everyone gains process in social skills development. There definitely needs to be positive interdependence between the group members, otherwise communication would fail and it would be very difficult for the final goal to be accomplished. Collaboration takes place every day in our schools! I would not be the educator that I am today if I wasn't able to collaborate with my colleagues to plan lessons, share resources, and have professional dialogue. However, a person must want to collaborate in order to be successful at it. Being that there are no defined roles, educators must be able to feel comfortable enough to lean on each other to make our schools the best they can be for our children.

We talked a lot about collaboration during our whole group class meeting last Monday. Dr. S shared many wonderful collaborative project sites with us. My group researched a collaborative project called the Horizon Project on Wikispaces. This is a collaborative project between classrooms in diverse geographical locations. It's based off the Flat Classroom Project, which is a global hands-on working together project for middle and high school students. It is based off the book The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. The project's main goal is to "flatten" or lower classroom walls so that instead of each class working in isolation, two or more classes are virtually joined to become one large classroom. This can be achieved through web 2.0 tools such as Wikispaces and Ning. I feel that this is an outstanding theory! Who do children learn best from? EACH OTHER! Why not allow them to collaborate and share ideas with each other?? Plus, it will also engage teachers in collaborative teaching, and hopefully eliminate some of the competitiveness that it out there!

A Journey Through The Underground Railroad