[sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Report cards on XO

[Walter Bender]

There is a group that is designing a Portfolio activity to complement
the Journal. The basic idea is to engage the student in a process of
selection (from the Journal), reflection about how/why the work is
significant, and the creation of a narrative to tell the story. Not a
report card, but a powerful assessment tool, nonetheless. More details
as we progress with our sketches.

regards.

--walter

On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 2:07 PM, Eben Eliason <eben.eliason at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure that such an idea actually requires a special activity,
> or a "report card" template with preset fields. It seems to me that
> the item of importance is the ability for the teacher to give each kid
> an immutable object which they may then view on their XO, and take
> home to show their parents.  This object might be a .pdf, or it might
> be an image, or it might be something else, but the teacher could
> create such an object in Write, or in a spreadsheet activity, or in
> whatever suits their needs best.
>
> It seems to me that the more interesting part of this problem is the
> distribution method.  Unlike a homework assignment where the teacher
> could share an activity, or (in the future) send an object to everyone
> in the class group, there is need to distribute files individually to
> the kids by some unique identifier.  Perhaps this is the place where
> an "Evaluate" activity does have it's place.  If done well, a fresh
> instance of the activity could provide a way for a teacher to fill out
> evaluations (or import in their desired format!) and identify which
> kid each belongs to.  Then, upon sharing that single evaluation
> activity with the class, each kid would receive *only* their own
> evaluation from the shared instance.  That instance would then, every
> time they open it, simply be a viewer for that particular evaluation.
> This is a good example where the master-slave (usually discouraged in
> Sugar) would actually work.
>
> - Eben
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 11:01 AM, Yamandu Ploskonka
> <yamaplos at bolinux.org> wrote:
>> Following with the "Printing support" thread, I found out that the
>> "only" item that _needs_ printing in the conventional school setup is
>> the report cards.
>>
>> Since I militantly believe that XO-supported education we should not
>> depend on printing at all if it were possible, I would want to submit a
>> proposal to have grading information be accessible through the XO.
>>
>> While that is a simple part of student management software that
>> doubtlessly will be part of the server, and thus accessible as a web
>> page, still there would be a need for that information to be copied
>> _into_ the XO for those kids who would have no access to the server from
>> their homes.
>>
>> Thus, in its proposed incarnation, the "Work Report" activity would
>> exist in the XO, be fed its information updates from the school server.
>> The child and family would have that info as an available reminder of
>> the teacher's feedback and child-specific suggestions.
>>
>>  From a security standpoint the server notices via mac address the ID of
>> the child's computer to upload info to.
>>
>> There would be an associated activity, "Teacher Reports", available for
>> the teachers' XOs, where the teacher can comment on student work.
>> Simple fields, "what is good about this work", "what needs improvement",
>> "other suggestions".
>>
>> While I personally would avoid there be a "grade" field, I am aware I
>> will be overruled on this, so I concede.
>>
>> In most cases anyways the report card follows a definite format and is
>> already pre-printed to be filled out by hand.  I am sure that
>> improvements on this are possible, but since this is very much a
>> nationally-defined format, it might not make sense to worry at this
>> stage.  Last time I was there in 2000, Uruguay High Schools printed
>> reports on dot-matrix plain paper already.
>>
>> Yama
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-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org