The Changing Spaces of Reading and Writing

Assessment and blogs

by cteachr

The thought came to me last night that if I were to use a blog in my class, similar to this one, how would I go about assessing the work my students contributed?  I’ve used a wiki and found the rubric I had created for the assignment was easily transferrable.  Are there any thoughts on that?  Anyone use blogs in the high school classroom yet?

4 comments


1 Tracy Gidinski { 09.16.09 at 8:53 am }

Hi, Catherine,

I haven’t used blogging with high school students, but have with grades 6 and 7 students. Are you asking about a specific rubric to mark their writing, or are you asking about how to actually mark them? I don’t necessarily have a rubric that would be appropriate, but if you’re talking about letting them know their marks, you could do it in a comment. One way I mark with rubrics with my grade 11 students in the summer, so I don’t have to constantly print out paper, is I give students a hard copy of all rubrics at the start of the year, tell them what rubric I’m using, then just write a column of scores down the margin (on a paper copy) based on the layout of the rubric – it is their responsibility to refer to the rubric to see what the numbers mean. You could easily do the same in a blog comment – once they have the rubric (you could link it to a wiki), just write the numerical scores and any comments you want to make. It’s not necessarily private, however.

Is this what you were asking?


2 Catherine Gagnon { 09.16.09 at 1:31 pm }

Not exactly but I appreciate the ideas. I am asking what to mark in the blog. Can you tell me more about the activities you use in your 6/7 students? Or just tell me the link so I can see it for myself.

I don’t think putting marks on a blog would go over too well either. No privacy as you say.

C


3 Tracy Gidinski { 09.16.09 at 8:03 pm }

I see. I usually just use the personal impromptu performance standard rubric for most of their blogging at http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/perf_stands/writing_intro.pdf . You are most welcome to look at my blog! I had to remove some of the activities as I’ll be repeating them this year, so the last year’s stuff is a little sparse: http://www.classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=189635 The “K Alumni” section has all my ex-students’ blogs. We eventually moved to wikis later in the year too. Hope this helps at least a little.


4 Catherine Gagnon { 09.26.09 at 7:54 am }

Thanks Tracy. I am struck by the similarities of your blog to my blackboard course (I used to use that as a platform to teach partially online). My announcement section was very similar to yours. For instance, I used to leave work for the students if I was away for a day or two. I even signed it Mrs. G!

And funny that we both use an Avatar for our profiles. I think we are going to collaborate very well on our project.

C

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