[sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Report cards on XO

[Yamandu Ploskonka]

Interesting.
I am quite convinced on the value of a kid's interaction with his own 
work, it can develop into quite a self-growth tool.  Some of this can be 
teacher guided, but due to time/training/ability constraints it might 
reach wider if it has some AI elements into it, if the activity has its 
own interacting protocols, genre Elisa but probably :-) not that deep.

Also, for some older kids some sort of opportunity to comment on each 
other's work might be a powerful idea.   Considering that we intend a 
lot of the work to be of a collaborative nature, there definitely is a 
need to also consider kids reflecting on the interaction process itself.



Walter Bender wrote:
> 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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