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Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Using Goobric to Support Student Self and Peer Assessment

Many APS Teachers have been using Doctopus and Goobric to digitally grade student assignments. Now Doctopus/Goobric support student self and peer assessment! Students will need the "Goobric for Students" Chrome extension for these features to work


It will only work on newly issued assignments or assignments that have had rubrics newly re-attached.  


Allows students to see rubric alert and button in Google Docs editor
Rubric-based assessment is designed to guide student learning and revision, and rubrics work best as an instructional tool when students are aware of their criteria while they are working, engaging with them regularly as a form of self-assessment and peer-assessment.

That is why Goobric for Students provides a pop-up reminder and a button in the Google Docs editor designed to encourage students to review the teacher's scoring rubric as they are creating or revising an assignment.





Save Time With Writing Feedback Using JoeZoo Express

Literacy skills are necessary components of any content area. They are often becoming a focus for students of all ages and all classes in schools. Research has shown that students with strong reading and writing skills are able close achievement gaps and have accelerated learning experiences. One of the essential components to becoming a successful reader/writer is good feedback. When students receive timely, actionable feedback on their writing, they are able to improve dramatically. 

Providing feedback for student writing can be overwhelming and time consuming, however, technology is quickly making it possible to provide students with almost instant feedback when it comes to the foundational skills necessary to become a great writer. JoeZoo Express is a great new tool that can save teachers large amounts of time in providing feedback to students and quickly get them moving forward. Take a look at this video to see an example of how it works.



Friday, January 15, 2016

Annotation, too, might change: My reflections on a recent annotation flash mob


This reflection is "cross-posted" here but it originated on my personal blog. Cross-posting is publishing a blog post in multiple places to reach a broader audience. -Joe Dillon

It wasn't until I became a teacher that I began to annotate texts with real purpose. The pressure of being prepared for class after class of energetic 12 year olds drove me to read professional literature and young adult literature with a new focus and purpose. At the same time I was learning about how annotation helped me develop my professional practice, I also learned how annotation could support my students in making meaning in the texts they encountered in my class. In teaching I learned the authentic value of talking back to a text with annotations.

My copy of Peter Johnston's Choice Words. I must've been thinking about lit circles this day.

Still, though we shared our annotations in discussion, the act of annotating was an independent act that we did alone, while we read silently. Even in guided reading settings, we'd annotate segments of text individually before talking through those texts one segment at a time. The Internet, with its interactive opportunities and Web 2.0 applications, suggest a more social approach, and present an opportunity for teachers and students alike to consider the possibilities for annotating together. In pairs, in interest-powered groups and yes, oh yes, in crowds.


My copy of The Literature Workshop, by Sheridan Blau

With those as yet undiscovered possibilities in mind, some colleagues and I convened online for an experimental "annotation flash mob." Using the tool hypothes.is, we marked up the text "Skills and Strategies | Annotating to Engage, Analyze, Connect and Create," by Jeremy Dean and Katherine Schulten.

Of the small mob that convened online, some talked in a Google Hangout (about 7 of us) and shared their screens to show us how they worked. Others (about 7 more), joined from points around the globe to mark up the text but didn't join the webinar. They dove into the article itself, jotting notes and responding to other annotation mobsters.



Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Formative Assessment Made Easy with Superquiz

Super Quiz is a great new formative assessment tool that has just been released.  Super Quiz is an Add-On for Google Sheets that quickly creates data and statistical displays of any student responses. Flubaroo has been another popular grading tool for Google Forms & Sheets for a long time and now there's another option that teachers can choose from. With Super Quiz, you don't need to wait for data on your students, you can instantly get breakdowns that will allow you to make quick instructional decisions and support struggling students.