I pondered for a long while to come up with a real educational need or opportunity. Many suggested I simply make something up. However, if I am going to put hard work into something, I want myself and my students to benefit from it. If its worth doing, it’s worth doing well, right?!
A real problem that exists in our school, in absenteeism. Students miss a lot of school for many reasons and often fail to make up their work. Especially with extended absents, for illness or vacation, parents often want to have work left in the office to pick up for their child. However, I often find that that work never returns to me and the temporarily excused grade turns into a goose egg, which is a huge detriment to a student’s final score in the class… especially a ten or twenty week course!
There was much talk near the end of our school year about the power of zero! In sum, it says that when a student does nothing on a project or assignment, turns in absolutely nothing, to adjust their grade to a 60% instead of a zero because a zero is not fair and is sixty percent away from the nearest grade. It is extremely difficult, even for a great student, to work back up to earning a satisfactory grade. The debate really seemed to divide our staff. While I understand wanting to accommodate for students, and being fair, too much inside me doesn’t think that it best prepares students for their future. My goal, as a Life Skills educator, is to best prepare students for their future! At any rate, I think that for the case of absenteeism, students need the teaching/learning opportunity, not just the work/assignment. Afterall, assignments are guided practice to give us teachers a gauge at our students learning and our teaching to prepare them for formative assessments. Zhao says that, “Teachers’ technology knowledge consists of three elements: a0 knowledge of problems that can be solved by technology, b) knowledge of a technology that can solve their problems, and c) knowledge of how technology can solve their problems. Teachers who are sufficiently equipped with this knowledge should be able to decide when to use the technology and when not to.”
I believe that this is a time when technology would be highly appropriate to solve the problem. For CEP820: Teaching K-12 Students Online, I created a website for my 7th grade: Life and Living class. It is a place I can send these absent students to review lessons they’ve missed. I think that this techquest is also an opportunity for me to add to what I’ve already done so that it is truly useful to me as an educator.
Zhao points out the increase of schools connected to the internet, and I’d be willing to guess the same of homes connected to the internet. This is a plausible expectation to help students learn what they missed and actually be able to complete work… not just do the work. I could add screencasts, and my last unit on for students to complete at home.
I have access via the web, to some of my past students and surely they would agree to help me out, as if they were absent students. My project addresses the four common places of education as follows: I am teaching, ex-students are learning, the subject matter would be my 7th grade curriculum, and the setting would be the web/internet.
Clearly, I am open to ideas other than adding to my current site, such as an interactive blog or something I may not even be considering. At any rate, I’m all “ears”!
Absenteeism and learning(or lack of), a problem that does create many issues, including the assessing and understanding of information. I like the idea of students being able to go to your site and learn, listen and see and respond what they missed before they tackle and just get the work done. There are many types of learners and just finishing the assignments (the end project)does not always a learner to understand what he/she was supposed to grasp.
ReplyDeleteYou have the 7th grade curriculum as your subject matter. Is this a 9 weeks course? Are the outline units/lessons of it done and you would be enhancing it? It just seems like a lot of material if you are tackling it all for this Techquest assignment.
I used to think that it was not fair for all students to have it on-line, but students are very resourceful and seem to always have a relative, friend or neighbor to gain access to the Internet. I think it is a great resource for you to use for your absenteeism problem.
Another question I have is would you also allow students who not absent the ability to do it only on-line? How would it be set up?
I would love to see what you have done so far!:)
Wow, what a great problem to address! And your solution sounds very in-depth and certainly worth-while! I am not quite at your level of experience in terms of using the internet to teach, so at first I was afraid your solution sounded too lofty. And for me to attempt, it would be. But it sounds like you have the skills to back this up and are ready to take things to the next level. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteOne suggestion might be to have some type of quiz segment in place for those who do need to make things up after an absence; an ungraded quiz that must be completed to prove their effort. I enjoy the ungraded quizzes we take at the end of each session in our online MSU classes. I enjoy the no-pressure attitude that still allows me to assess myself and highlight the extra important points of the session we just completed. Sometimes it requires me to go back and pay better attention to certain topics. A very good thing!
I am curious—do you think having this system in place might actually help reduce the number of absences? If students know they are going to be accountable for what they miss, do you think they’ll try harder to be in class every day? I believe your approach could have this positive effect!
Love your philosophy! If it's worth doing - It's worth doing well! Homework is school work - to go! Plus, it is one Marzano's 9 strategies that have the power to impact student achievement levels. Emily and Sheila have raised some interesting questions, so I will just add a few thoughts to what they have already written. Does your school district have access to a Learning Management System similar to Angel? Blackboard (fee) and Moodle (free) come to mind. Plus, there's RCampus at http://www.rcampus.com/ that's also free. These management systems can be used to post course materials, class announcements, blog and discussion forums, etc - they even have a built in quiz feature. An LMS will be more versatile than a web site - and it's something you might want to consider investigating. I'm not sure if RCampus has a quiz building tool - you'll have to check it out and fill me in=8-).
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