This new curriculum idea of #digitalstudies seems to be gaining a small amount of momentum at the moment. In developing the definitions for the four strands I have been thinking about what is going to underpin all of these strands and allow pupils to bring together what they have been able to do.
The obvious answer to this is blogging. Blogging I see as a very effective personal analysis tool for reflecting on learning which is taking place. The obvious example is this very blogpost itself as I am using it to reflect on the work I have done.
The less obvious answer is how to assess what a pupil has written. Starting this year I asked pupils from year 8 upwards to create individual blogs for uploading their work. Every post which a pupil makes is commented on by me often in great detail. However I have been thinking that despite the detail I provide the pupils need to be shown a clear ‘path’ for how to improve their own blogs. I also about the same time I was considering this went on an exam board course for ICT (don’t worry I wasn’t shown any answers) during which we discussed the longer ‘essay’ questions at the end of the exam. I reckon looking at my pupils they do struggle to write these essay questions.
When I looked at the markscheme for the essay questions I saw that they also used a fairly familiar levelling system for identifying how well a pupil has written an essay question. I thought why not use similar levels for assessing how a pupil writes a blog. This would allow me to very quickly identify how well a pupil writes as well as give them a structure for how to improve as well.
The following Google Docs link will take you to my first version of a blog assessment rubric which I will be introducing at school soon. Feel free to add, edit and make a copy of this.
@wmchamberlainApologies for delay in response – mad end to term before christmas!Thank you for the detailed response! I like your point about blogs being conversations and I think one could extend it to say that a blog allows a pupil to have a ‘conversation’ with their learning. Yes it can be very difficult to assess it but I think by applying a similar assessment methodology to how their essays are assessed in exams it gives them an opportunity to practice critical writing skills which I think are being neglected (I blame twitter and FB).I see your point about rubrics being too general or too specific. I think I wanted to like you not giving letter grades shy away from saying to a pupil ‘You got 6/10′ for that blog as it doesn’t really mean that much and could mean something different to another teacher. By applying defined levels I think it could give a more consistent approach to marking blog posts which would also allow for some flexibility. I hope to also add some exemplars as well.thanks for the feedback!Brian
I appreciate your effort in trying to find a way to make students think critically about the conversations they are having online. (I believe that blog posts and comments are conversations.) It can be very difficult to assess the work they (students) do on their blogs for a variety of reasons. The problem with rubrics in general is that they are either too general , which makes them hard to follow, or too specific which makes the work too guided. I can tell from the one you created you prefer to let them have more free reign. I teach junior high students and generally I look at the individual posts and evaluate them according to what I know that student is capable of. I try to offer suggestions or praise where needed and sometimes a rejection of the work because they did not do good enough work. It is a pretty difficult line to walk (which is why I don’t give letter grades.)Thanks for sharing your thoughts.