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...