Review: Teacher Grade Reporting Programs

 In researching programs and applications for tracking assessments, I discovered a wealth of unexpected information.  I was anticipating programs for keeping track of students’ grades.  What amazes me are the programs, such as Socrato for assessing individual strengths and weaknesses in students; Nearpod, A+ Spelling Tests, Socrative, and others for creating assessments; My Class Talk for assessing student participation levels; Too Noisy, assesses classroom noise; Class Dojo and Teacher’s Class Behavior Pro for assessing classroom behavior; and Teacher Kit which tracks attendance, seating, behavior and grades.  There seems to be no end to the means of assessment tracking programs or apps.

 Programs for assessing student grades include programs for recording grades and programs for analyzing assessment data. Programs are available for school wide or individual teachers.  Things to consider in programs are compatibility with computer software and school requirements

Individual Teacher Grade Recording Systems:

·         Excel Elementary Gradebook

http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/excel-gradebook.html

Excel Elementary Gradebook is a free program for recording student grades.  What I like about this program is that it is free and it is in the familiar format of excel. 

·         Thinkwave

http://www.thinkwave.com/educator.html

Thinkwave offers a free, ad supported version on a premium version for $49.95. This software provides a method of collecting student homework online, blogging software to keep in touch with students and parents, access is available from anywhere, and the program will run with Windows or Mac interfaces. 

·         My Gradebook

http://www.mygradebook.com/

My Grade book provides service for a license fee of $29.95 after a 30 day free trial period.  This program offers optional student/parent access to grades, attendance chart tracking, a seating chart creator, accessibility from any computer, report generator, capability for multiple types of reports, and an online quiz generator; program runs from a web browser interface. 

It is difficult to determine which program would best serve the need of a classroom without knowing the dynamics, or needs and without knowing district or school requirements for grading procedures.  It would also make a better review if there was opportunity to actually try the programs to see how they work.  With that said I would have to say that my favorite program of the three is My Gradebook based on the value of the program versus the features.  

Alice

   Alice was a project that I really struggled with.  While I relish the thought of creating a game to engage students educationally in a fun way, I found the components very confusing.  I am obviously not used to thinking in the way of a programmer.  I can see where Alice would be a good start to learning a programming language.  Having a son who is a computer science major and has studied a various programming languages, I now have an entirely new appreciation for his education.  While I would like to learn more on this subject and maybe work a little more with Alice, I think having more time to learn about how the program works would be beneficial.  The program that I created is a very simple game for children who are learning their color words.  Students are asked to click on a certain colored block.  When they succeed they are complimented on their work and a treasure chest appears.  Ideally this game would extend to multiple colors and the treasure chest would open at the end to reveal a message.  This would involve quite a bit more time than I had available for this project and exploration of a semesters worth of tutorials.

Cyberbullying

   Cyber-bullying is a form of bullying which takes place on the internet from phones, chat rooms and social media programs on a variety devices.  The difference from this form of bullying and what has long been the typical school bullying is that there is a sense of anonymity to the cyber-bullying.  Students can say mean and hurtful things to others without them knowing the identity of the perpetrator.   This often takes place outside of school hours and off school property so that schools are unable to punish the bullies.  However the effects of this type of bullying can often be seen in the actions and reactions from it that take place at school.
   In writing a group essay on this subject I found the use of diigo a handy tool to find research sites that were collected in a diigo group page.  All the group members read articles, highlighted important facts, and posted notes of interest.  After looking at the notes, we chose a topic for each person to write about.  Each person in the group wrote a paragraph about their topic using Google Docs.  The thesis and introductory paragraph were written and when all the paragraphs were completed a conclusion was added.  We used the power point in Google Docs to assemble a presentation of the topics in our essay.  This was a pleasant way to work on this project with everyone in the group doing their own part.  The final outcome was a nice essay and presentation which highlighted the topics we had chosen to discuss.
   I enjoyed listening to each groups presentation.  I discovered that there is much to learn on this subject.  It was very informative.  Each group focused on different aspects of cyber-bullying and had valuable additional information to share on the subject.  Two groups chose to share a video clip of a movie about cyber-bullying.  This video was a heart wrenching display of the affects of cyber-bullying.  It really hit home to me and brought to mind traumatizing events in my own life.   The question of why the victim did not get outside help before reaching the point of wanting to end it all is painfully clear to me.  It seems so simple to reach for help.  The problem is that where this help should be, is often not where it can be found.  Students have often responded when I questioned them about why they hit another student instead of telling the teacher, that the teacher does not do anything.  It is often difficult to tell which party is telling the truth and the victim at times ends up in more trouble for trying to reach out for help.
  For my own part in this assignment I focused on the positive aspects of finding ways to deal with this problem.  I looked at means that both students and teacher/administrators can use to achieving a more positive environment within schools to combat cyber-bullying.  This will certainly not bring an end to this terrible foe, but perhaps it can bring the kind word or deed, just in time, for those who need it most.

Whyville

Whyville is a virtual world for students to explore and play in a safe online environment.  The first task when you establish an account is to earn your chat license.  In order to do this you must learn the rules for the site,  what is acceptable, what is not, and what to do when you encounter something that is not.  There are many different educational games and learning activities on the site.  Some of the games require multiple participants in order to succeed.  I played the Dragon game where students learn about the genetics required to create a dragon with certain characteristics in order to complete a specific task.  One of the tasks was to create a dragon with wings and arms to collect a coconut from a tree.  Another game I played was diving and identifying fish and plants.  This was a fun game that took me back to snorkeling when I was little.  Two other games I explored involved safety around town and energy consumption.  These games provide some great learning objectives for students.  Once we explored  Whyville and discovered what was available, we created a lesson plan that incorporated an activity on Whyville.  I chose to create a lesson using genetics which used lesson reinforced in the Dragon game.  I believe students would be more engaged in lessons which allow them to play a game.  Even one that involves learning.  It helps to make the learning fun.

Wikispaces

I used Wikipedia for many years as a reference before I learned more about the format and style of editing that takes place on the site.  Creating a Wiki was an experience that I was not previously familiar with.  The format allows for multiple pages and would be useful for a variety of projects as well as for portfolios.  It was not very difficult to create a page.  The learning curve was in discovering the method of adding images and links and in changing the color of fonts.  Once these methods were accomplished, however, the processes became much simpler. There are still areas that can be improved on, such as importing power points into a Wiki page.  Once we started our Wiki, we had to make a profile page to tell about ourselves.  We had specific information to include as well as optional information.  Throughout our class we have added pages to our Wiki for different projects we have completed.  When the class is over we will each have a display of the work completed in our Wiki.  

Diigo

I was not familiar with Diigo before taking this class.  Diigo is a great site that allows you to bookmark sites, highlight, or make notes about the site to view later or to share with a group for a group project.  I have to say that I really enjoy it. I am able to save websites to go back to look at later.  This is great for projects where I can look up websites, and make notes and they are all saved in one place under the name of the project for easy reference.  I have used this for my Concepts of Science Class to keep track of the websites we visited for class.  It was so much easier to go back to a site that I didn't have time to fully explore it the first time, and I will be able to make use of the sites from class when I am looking for ideas for my classroom.  We also used Diigo for doing research for the Cyberbulling paper.  We were able to share references with the group and make notes that the rest of the group could see.  It made it possible to divide the resources and quickly see the notes from different sites.  I think this would be an excellent tool for research papers.  I will definitely continue to use Diigo in the future.  

Multiple Intelligences

    How do we elicit  a passion for learning in children?  The way we learn, our interests, and the desire for intelligence, inspire us to seek knowledge.   Knowing what a child relates best to and how they learn can give us insight into creating an environment where students want to be involved in the learning process.  This is where Multiple Intelligences come in to play.  Every student is unique and has both strengths and weaknesses.  Our job as teachers is to encourage those strengths and shore up the weaknesses.  Denying an understanding of Multiple Intelligence sets up an environment somewhat like the cartoon below.

The interests and natural abilities of students play a vital role in their understanding of new concepts.  When students believe they are not capable of learning they stop trying. When students know that they are all intelligent in different ways and they have the opportunity to see other avenues of using what they enjoy to strengthen weak areas, it helps them to feel valuable.  Then they are empowered to work toward better understanding.  

   In class this week we looked a Multiple Intelligences.  We discussed how this can apply to the classroom.  We took an inventory of our own intelligences and plotted them on a chart with the rest of the class.  There was a wide variety of strengths and weaknesses. No two people had the same results.  We then created a graph which provided some interesting insight into the relationships between some of the intelligences. All of the intelligences are interconnected.   I discovered that there is a distinct correlation between music and language.  It will be interesting to see what the rest of the class discovered when we return next week.