[sugar] 9.1 Proposal: Report cards on XO

[Yamandu Ploskonka]

I like it! I agree that the "unique identifier" is essential to the 
solution.  I have also proposed there be some identifier for the work 
itself.

The way that would work, the teacher uploads the work assignment, to the 
server.

That has a unique tag.  The kids download that, which adds their own 
unique tag to the document.  They do the work, they upload it back. 
The teacher can access the work, which is neatly sorted out by the 
original assignment tag.  As the teacher works grading and commenting, 
this is uploaded back to the server, where it is neatly sorted out by 
the student tag, thus leaving a longitudinal record of the kid's work.  
There is a teacher on-line module that makes it easy to seek by 
assignment, student, date, etc.

I wish there were a way for the teacher to work off-line too.  It is not 
assured they will have access to the server, actually that will be 
likely an exception for quite a while.


If I were a teacher I would like this look-and-feel
* ability to remark inside the work, in a different color maybe? so as 
to deal with misspellings, edits.

* ability to assign comments on a codicil that would become attached to 
the work, that would become sort of an XML field that could be 
visualized besides the student work.  Tags I proposed were "good stuff", 
"stuff to improve", "other" and also some field for the kid's feedback.  
Some of those comments could be generic boilerplate I would want to have 
on a drop-down list of choices.  Life is short, and when you're a 
teacher it feels even shorter,  some time-saving tools are welcome.

* whatever it is it has to be simple and fast.  If I need to create a 
separate Write document, switch between the kid's work and my comments, 
pack it and send it to the kids, that is way way too much work.  If it 
is something that only takes 2 minutes, let's see 3 minutes to read the 
thing, 2 minutes to comment, 30 kids, that's 1 hour 40 per evening, for 
Language Arts each evening, still a lot.  Every second in making this 
faster and easier adds up real quick.

* it might be interesting to incorporate in some ideal future comment 
fields for kids to comment on each other's work, but that has no 
priority at first in my view.

If the end result ends up in the kid's machine automagically as a PDF it 
would simplify for kids and parents to follow up and such.


Eben Eliason 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
>> _______________________________________________
>> Sugar mailing list
>> Sugar at lists.laptop.org
>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
>>
>>     
>
>