Do I know you?

I have been listening to a podcast for at least 5 years called The Instance. I have to admit that I am a long-time player of World of Warcraft, which is the topic of the podcast. Given my job, it allows me to connect with the gamer community at the school. Also given my job, I am usually spending my discretionary time grading instead of playing. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about were the hosts of the show: Scott Johnson, Turpster, and "Dills" Gregory. These guys have been a small part of my life for a long time. They are my friends, right. Right?!? Wait a second, they have no idea who I am and now I feel like some weird stalker person.

Example number two: Frank Noschese (@fnoschese)
I have little idea who he is, and he probably has no idea who I am. (But we are following each other on Twitter.) I was about to tell my wife tonight that a guy I know is at the White House getting recognized for being an influential teacher. "Some Guy I know" I had to catch myself and remember that he was just a name on an email in the Modeling Physics listserve before last week.

Social media is pretty strange. With Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs I feel like I have so many "Friends". It is amazing that when you put yourself out there for the public to see someone might actually look at you.

I have to think on how these experiences I have had relate to my students. A solid 75% (made up stat) are tied into Facebook and an increasing number are using Twitter. How many of them feel totally connected to the people they are following? What happens when that person you have a connection with suddenly makes a public statement that betrays your trust in them even though they have no idea their impact? What ever happened to a couple of people talking behind your back? Now they just Tweet it out for all to see.

I experienced this in real-time when my very social conceptual physics class had a very difficult time focusing. It seems that right before class the Twitterverse exploded with a scandal involving people in my class cheating with other people in class while still dating someone...you get the picture. Let's just say having "difficulty focusing" was a bit of an understatement :)

So I guess I am putting myself out into the public. Hello to anyone who just happens to be looking. I don't know you, but I bet we could be friends.

Standards Based Growth Hormone

I have been combing the SBG blogs for over a week straight trying to get a foundation of knowledge. I am hoping to gleen some insight from those who have come before. Find those nuggets of information that will help me from falling in the same pits that they did. Don't misunderstand though. I am not looking for the short way out. I am not a person that cut-and-pastes my way to a new grading system. (On the other hand, I have no problem lifting project and assessment ideas from people.) I know this will take a lot of time and the process of determining my standards/skills and adjusting all of my assessments is where my growth occurs.

Unfortunately, I am running into a few problems as I grow:

1. Holy crap, there are a ton of people out there with blogs about SBG. I keep getting linked from one resource to another, to another, to ... I feel like my brain is on Standards Based Growth Hormone.

2. I feel the need to read EVERYTHING I can before I get to the process of getting this stuff on paper. After a week, I need to understand there will be a few pitfalls, and I just need to suck it up. Much like I expect my kids to be ok with failures, I need to model that behavior.

3. So many of the blogs I am reading describe the journey of a few people who hooked up and comment on each others blogs. The community and their conversations is amazing. Or should I says WAS amazing. All of these great things happened in 2010. The more recent posts are of a higher order of discussion. There are mentions of people adjusting their styles and practices, but without a lot of details. I am left wondering how their policies and processes have iterated over time.


Ok, I just decided. Tomorrow is my last day to do research. On Tuesday, I am heding to my classroom, pulling out the physics objectives for my Modeling Physics curriculum, and diving in to make my own set of skills. I did run across a post by Riley Lark @rileylark "How to create a skills list" which has a list of questions I can ask myself as I am coming up with my standards/skills.

After the standards, I am going to have to nail down my ideas on keeping track of all this. ActiveGrade? Blue Harvest? Frank Noschese's spreadsheet? Something I create or find on another blog? Some many questions...

Cheating on Homework...Just stop grading it!

I just read this amazing study done with MIT Calculus-Based Physics classes.
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.6.010104

The basics are that students using the Pearson online system, MasteringPhysics, were assigned problems. The system measures how long it takes for a student to answer the problem, and they decided students who answered in less time than it takes to read the problem were copying from someone else. They coupled this with some qualitative information from surveys.

The results are not too surprising. Students who copied got lower scores on the test questions that were similar to the homework problems. Students also copied more as the deadline for the assignment got closer. Interestingly, the amount of copying did not have a significant effect on the Mechanics Baseline Test learning differences.

I have been a stamp the work teacher for years. Students get a stamp for getting ALL of the problems done on the page. They may be wrong, but they must be done. This is to ensure that they are prepared to discuss the assignment, or at least follow the discussion. What about the kid who did as much of the assignment on his/her own, but didn't have time for the last few. Tough patooty. No Stamp For You!

What about the kid who copied it in the morning or five minutes before class from a buddy? They are rewarded with the full points. I justified it by saying they would lose points on the tests. I think I secretly wanted them to lose points on the tests as penance for their cheating. Jesus, what am I doing?

Homework is not graded anymore.

SBG, why not SBL?

When I am going to do something new or write something I want to be proud of, I spend an exorbitant amount of time researching it. My wife used to make fun of me for the hours I spent researching and outlining my grad papers. In my defense, when I started writing them, it typically only took an hour or two. As I prepare to get myself ready to use standards based grading, I have been reading a lot of great blogs. Like Think Thank Thunk and Action-Reaction. Three things have come up in my mind that I wanted to list:

1. These guys have been doing this since 2010. Why did I sit around for so long? Why am I one of the first teachers at my school to do this?

2. Thank goodness these guys did it before me and are now providing such a great resource.

3. The reason I am changing is because I want to switch from a grading focus to a learning focus. Why is it called Standards Based GRADING instead of Standards Based LEARNING?

Standard-Based Grading...seductive and frightening

After three years of hearing about SBG, reading about it, and researching it, I think I may have possibly made a decision. Boy, I sound pretty sure of myself. The fact is that I have always been uncomfortable about the traditional grading system. I was a victim of it when I went to school. I learned how to play the game, but did not always want to follow the rules. I demonstrated learning in the tests, but failed to produce completed work all the time. In college, I crammed for tests and then promptly forgot the material. This was sufficient until my Junior year of engineering when I was supposed to apply all of the lessons I "learned" the first two years. Man, I really played the game alright.

I have continued to perpetuate the traditional grading system as a teacher. Complete your homework before class so we can have a discussion about it. Take a test to show me you were paying attention and practices the problems we did in class. The homework is not busy work and it will help them understand. In order to get them to do it, it must be worth some points, yada yada yada.

I started hearing about standard based grading (aka objective based or proficiency based) 2-3 years ago and it has been calling my name ever since. It seems like a perfect match with the Modeling Instruction of Physics that I use in my classroom. It finally is a way of assessing students for what are supposed to learn in class instead of just getting points. I am so tired of the following things happening:

- I am so tired of kids asking me for a way to raise their grade with extra credit
- Feeling guilty about the student who has a 79.2% and a 92% average on tests.
- Feeling annoyed at the kid who has an 82% in the class and a 64% average on tests.
- Checking homework for completion because I do not have time to actually grade it all.
- Knowing students just copy their friends papers before class.

As I said, I have had SBG calling my name and stuck in my head for years, but I am scared. I am not scared of the student/Parent/staff reactions. I am already teaching in a fairly non-traditional, constructivist way. So, I have experience dealing with complaints and challenges to my teaching style. I am most frightened about the logistics of it. How do I find the time to determine the standards I want to use, to review and update my materials, to create many many versions of assessments for all the re-tests? How do I keep track of all of the information with 150 students and 40 standards (6000 items)? I know there are that many in a traditional system, but in most cases it is entered once and forgotten. In SBG every one of those 6000 is in flux all semester long.

Time is a precious commodity. I am in charge of a robotics team, a Cub Scout pack, sing in two choir, and have a family with two elementary boys and a full-time working spouse. When the heck am I going to be able to do it all???

It is time to find out. I am jumping in with both feet this year and looking towards working my tail off to figure it out. I hope the larger the risk, the greater the reward is going to come true.