July, 2010
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The Softest Skill
[I was lucky enough to be asked to present at the Virtual Conference on Soft Skills by Riley Lark, here it goes!] I let Li know that I’m sitting in this cockroach-infested, asbestos-lined bathroom-cum-office, so that people who hate what I care about most can come down and attempt to put a Band-Aid on the [...]
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SBGradeBook: And the Beast Was Felled
Think of this as my free gift to the SBG (#sbar) community to help put my money where my mouth is. Oh, bright, shining day. Oh, glorious rapture beyond that ever known in the land of Assessia. Today is the day that the SBGradeBook v1.0 is released for your use this fall. No limits on [...]
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To Drop or Not to Drop?
It’s been a wacky week in the world of Cornally: hospitals, psychotically long programming assignments, thunderstorms with a bit of extra wrath, you know, Iowa on a good day. Also, I’ve been busy. The SBGradeBook fall-semester launch is mere days away! I’ve migrated to my own servers so that I can 99% insure your data’s [...]
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Mandelbrot Redux: Day 3
In our last installment, we left our heroes exploring The Mandelbrot set. Intrepid Student and his bumbling sidekick Kid Cornally weren’t just watching some fancy documentary and marveling at pretty pictures of fractals: They were getting their hands dirty eviscerating the code themselves. The graduation of the dreaded Seenyors has left Kid Cornally and Intrepid [...]
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The Danger of Edu-jargon: SBG’s Birth Cry is its Death Knell?
There are some who can already hear the dirge being played as standards-based grading is drug through the streets to be buried among the rest of the edu-jargon. Why are their ears so much more attune to this than the rest of us who are just now jumping on board what is purportedly a soon-to-be [...]
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If Only This Were an Isolated Incident: A Victory (?)
I’ve been detailing my foray back into studenthood as a I take a course at my local public university. I would like to state — before I begin to froth or scathe — that the point of these posts is for me to try and hash out my understanding of education, and to help me [...]
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I Make My Own Bacon: How I Learned to Love Assessment
What’s more, I want the assessment of their learning to be as real as botulism. I was asked by the ineffable @mctownsley to share my experiences aboard the SBG Express with a class he was teaching about modern assessment practices. The kicker: the participants were all local Iowa teachers. This was one of the scariest [...]
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The Physics Recognition Evaluation
I want to see if students will naturally produce more concrete Newtonian language after a physics course. Finally, a post about physics! There’s a grand tradition in physics of assessing concepts through mathematics. This can be flawed. It can result in kids furiously stabbing calculators with flexed fingers and furrowed brows. “That’s not one of [...]
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Retaining Empathy: Australian Football
I love American football. More specifically, I love Iowa Hawkeye Football. Seriously, it’s number 4 on my list behind my wife, unborn child, and bacon. So, when ESPN had “Australian Football” listed as must-see viewing at 11 p.m., how could I resist? I’ve never been on psychedelic drugs, but I imagine this was about the [...]
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Standards-Based Gradebook Beta: Closing Up Shop Until August
Thank you all so much for your diligent beta testing of the SBGradeBook. I’m really excited by how many people jumped on board, and by how many really great ideas everyone had! Gratuitous teacher award for participationism and citizenshipery goes to Jason Buell, the one beta tester to rule them all. He found every problem [...]