I'm not sure, but I think everybody's checked out on me. Almost no use of out-of-class resources, disappointing quiz scores, even disappearing PLATO results. It's a week with few bright spots - except the AWESOME student projects for Speak. Geez, how'd I almost forget that? They did a really good job on the MovieMaker Projects, in spite of the many freezes and glitches that MovieMaker is prone to. Much better than in the past! Walter credits the improved machines and the streamlined directions (though few watch the video tutorials outside of class, they do keep their attention when you demo for the class). I think it's because I forced them to do the voice-over narration. In any case, they are certainly quite good, and I'm proud of the kids for that.
That said, the quizzes still stunk, and that's a problem. All of the other grammar work on parts of speech, phrases, and clauses, leads to the sentences. And they're struggling on sentences. So I need to come back with some lessons that hit the mark a bit better. And they need to study more. Scheeesh!
On a completely different note, the PLATO system runs much better thanks to some restructuring and increasing of bandwidth allocation! However, while we did run PLATO much more smoothly this week, for some reason the student use reports came back to me completely empty (for the most part). As though the students accomplished nothing and were hardly logged on. !?! So would I rather have them working uninterrupted but never find out what they accomplished, or have them frustrated and underproductive but know the details? Of course, knowing me as I do, I want both. So I'll have to follow up with PLATO and find out what happened.
On another completely different note, I'm encouraging the district to start experimenting with Sharepoint SLK and perhaps NOW it's going to click. Let's hope. There was a big school meeting this morning and, I think, the outcome was a push to lurch forwards. I mean that optimistically, but honestly. We went back around on the teacher interface and how to improve upon that (and why that would be a good thing to do not only aesthetically, but for morale as well). I suspect I'll get pegged to work on that because I'm a loud voice for having a much more polished interface for the working professionals here than the glued together "employee" tab that we've got now. Anyway, that led to questions about what advances are available for Sharepoint for the teachers. Hey, only about 27% are building active sites here! But, then again, how much can the Sharepoint sites accomplish? And who can access them? Lots of go-around about what remains public/what is private and how to do that. And the calendar as well as the public html embedded page within sharepoint... So, anyway, at least people are talking about sharepoint. For goodness sakes, if we're planning to make that our future, we better figure out how best to use it (and use the best version of it we can get).
This year I'll be running (once again) my surowicki (Wisdom of Crowds) test. Using the rubric evaluations of the students vs. my own impressions, I'll measure their grading of the student movie maker projects. I'd go through the mechanics here (conducting survey in sharepoint on 4 5-point scales, exporting results to excel, compiling the class score, comparing against my own score). But this year I though of something else. There is actually a way to measure teacher vs. student accuracy (students as a crowd, not individuals) in grading with a definitive RIGHT answer. I'm going to go over the writing scale with them and look at a few papers. Then, we'll all blindly grade a few essays. Since I can collect their feedback via sharepoint, I can measure my grades vs. theirs (as a whole). So long as I pick essays that have been scored already (say, the norm-referenced papers from some grading session, ACT, etc.), and assuming I don't cheat and look at the scores, then I should be able to test Surowicki's thesis while also getting valuable work done in the classroom. BTW, for those of you just tuning in, surowicki posits that a large enough group of ameteurs, when given enough information, will come to a more accurate assessment (solution, etc) than a professional. Sounds like fun.
Also, lots of new materials to design. And, of course, teaching high school and raising a family. Crazy.
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