Chap 14

It seems to me much of the chapter was more or less common sense: some do's and don'ts for people to go by. For myself, I cannot envision a scenario when I think Grading truly on a curve is beneficial. It drags all but one person down, those at the top are ok but everyone else suffers. I can see certain times when I may use a ugly step child of the system but never on a regular basis and never unless there are circumstances when I feel like the class as a whole did not get what I was teaching. IE... it was my lack of teaching that led to this. i plan to use a mastery approach and help each student strive to pick up as much info as possible, I also believe performance testing is the best method but only when it is applicable and valid. Much of History is by its very nature just facts needed to advance on down the road and understand the later concept so performance evaluations would be hard to justify. that being said, civic responsibilities and such would be easy to judge based on a performance type assessment.

I'm thinking of my school days here and it seems not much of what we studied prepared me for life. Most of my tests were multiple choice and none required me to actually be able to apply my knowledge. I hope to have a class that prepares students for life as well as give them practical experience with civic operations (elections, volunteer involvement, court system...ect)


As much as I hate to say it, I've changed my views on alot of things in the time I've been in this class, i can see how a softer approach can sometimes be the right approach and how my natural tendency to say "toughen up, stick it out" may only make things worse. I also recognize many if not most are not like me, i am a very competitive person, telling me I can't do something only makes me work harder to prove you wrong. I'm likely to cut off my leg if you tell me I can't just to prove a point. Now i realize I cannot expect that attidude from my students, I've gotta beat it into them. LoL



Good stuf on the boards this week, i think Katrina made a good point about testing, I always like building up to a test rather than testing each chapter or week. A lot of time I understand things better if I can build on them in subsequent chapters rather than testing the basic principles each time.

3. The question for this week is: Choose one of the following general education blogs to read for the week

* http://www.k12opened.com/blog/
I chose this one as a reason ot not choose the other. Sorry but both were a little irrelevant ot me this week. i did like the others use of new and expanding technology but it just didn't really apply, perhaps that is a fault of my own rather than that of the blogger.
* Would a blog like this one help you with your teaching?
No I don't really think so, I can see a couple of points, and that they are very passionate about open source education but for the most part I can't see how it changes anything.
* Would you be able to get ideas for teaching from this blog? How? Why? Explain.
No, I wish their were but it seems for the most part to just be a rant on her favorite subject.
* Did you learn something new from the blogger? What and why did it strike you as memorable?
The only thing I think she really brought up that caught my eye was the licensing question in terms of cut and pasting a pic into a project or paper.
* Would you want to create a site like this for others? Why or why not?
No, unless I had something I beleved very strongly about, to me it comes off like she's just on her high horse about something and in general no one cares, which drives her to blog more for some reason. She has less comments on this bolg than I do on mine, if that says anything, it says No one cares.