It can be overwhelming for a teacher to feel compelled (or mandated) to “use more technology” in the classroom. Sometimes is seems that the required to quantify assessment and use data analysis results in the de-personalization of feedback and is of less value to students.
Technology integration doesn’t have to mean building a rocket or using GIS data in a lab; technology can be a tool that allows teachers to do their jobs more efficiently. Katrina Kennett (@katrinakennett) shows us a great example by using a spreadsheet to track and grade essays against a rubric without sacrificing personal feedback. Katrina uses Google Docs to share student evaluations – the result is part living documentation of progress, part portfolio, part conversation. Add it all up and a student sees their teacher model 21st century fluency, understands what is expected of an assignment, and receives guidance on how they can improve.
To learn more about Ms. Kennett’s use of Paperless Grading and the formulas she is employing, visit http://kennettenglish.blogspot.com/p/grubrics-paperless-grading.html
[...] Katrina Kennett’s (@katrinakennett) blog post and view her video on paperless essay grading for some insight into using formulas in the Google [...]
Wow, my husband and I are both educators and are super impressed by your work here. Great job! How, though, do you “return” the work to the students? Do you share your Google Spreadsheet with each student? Isn’t that a pain to do for each piece of work? Thanks for your suggestions and thoughts!
Hi Christina –
Thanks for your enthusiasm! I’d love to help if you start integrating online rubrics like this. I did share each student rubric with them at the beginning of the year, which is a lot of work on the front-end for me (but then I am the ‘owner’). However, once that’s done, I only have to update them with each assignment. I ‘return’ them simply by filling them out on my end and printing a hard copy that I hand back in class the next day. Some students keep tabs on the virtual copy, some wait for the hard copy, but it takes the pressure off the summative ‘what did I get’ focus.
One trick I’ve recently learned is to make a master rubric for the assignment and then “copy to” the student’s version as I grade their work. That way the formulas/formatting stays intact, and I just need to add my initials. If Google could export a spreadsheet to a batch of workbooks (instead of one at a time), I would be able to push out a class set. Until then, I’m getting closer to fewer clicks every day…
Hope this helps – I’d love to hear more if you have questions/comments!
Katrina
[...] Katrina Kennett’s (@katrinakennett) blog post and view her video on paperless essay grading for some insight into using formulas in the Google [...]
This is great, and something I’ve been looking to do for some time – I love your solution with conditional formatting only looking for your initials, and the =IF grading just using a period and =RIGHT. The dialogue idea looks even more interesting, although I wonder how you tackle student expectations: for example, if you over-promise but then have to backtrack and under-deliver in terms of grades.
As an aside, I used a Google form and a spreadsheet with preset formulae in a similar way to put students into team member roles at the start of a module: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApTo6f5Yj1iJdFVXRGpXYTExbHR1R2JJWk8yOHpqV2c
[...] Katrina Kennett’s (@katrinakennett) blog post and view her video on paperless essay grading for some insight into using formulas in the Google [...]