The Homework Dilemma

November 27, 2008 at 10:19 am · Filed under Front Lawn Sessions and tagged: blackboard, homework, onenote

One task that is an obvious candidate for taking advantage of the benefits of teaching in a 1:1 environment is accepting, marking, and returning student work. So why is it so difficult? This was the focus of the Front Lawn session on Wednesday November 19th.

How can teachers achieve paper-less harmony in their classrooms, and is that the only benefit to digital homework? Our discussion revealed that it may be the original motive, but it is just one of many benefits that might have you look at 1:1 in a different light. We discussed several options, each of which had been used by somebody in the room for digital homework submission and this is what we concluded.

Email – Are you Sure?
The most obvious candidate for digital homework submission is email. This method works, sometimes, but there are several reasons why it is a dangerous path to wander, and why I would have a hard time recommending it.

1. Excuses, excuses. “I sent it, didn’t you get it?” What you may not realize is that it is probably true much of the time. Email gets caught in server queues, trapped by SPAM and junk mail filters, accidentally deleted, and of course, sent to the wrong address.
2. Management headaches. Student email gets mixed up with your work messages, and though compatibility issues are largely resolved with the tablets, you sill have to click too much to open the email, read the file, and then return it.
3. Feedback and marks. If the assignment is done in Word or OneNote, you can provide feedback with the pen or with typed text and return the attachment. I actually do this with extended essays and it works great, but not for full classes. If the assignment is done in anything other than an Office application you are going to have a problem marking it up.
4. Inbox full. Attachments can take up a lot of space and are duplicated in both received and sent items. A full load of classes will quickly clog your inbox.
5. Information overload. We already rely too heavily on email and it causes us a lot of stress. We need to pursue other communications technologies that better handle tasks such as this and allow us to focus on the important emails that arrive in our inboxes.
   

MS OneNote Portfolios
Though we also talked about Blackboard assignments, which have their place as you will see below, the unanimous favorite was the OneNote portfolio. Don’t let the word scare you; you don’t have to suddenly drop grades and assess authentically, but it might be the only method that is not only easier and more reliable than paper, but has many fringe benefits.

The OneNote portfolio involves setting up a shared notebook that students open once only, and a section for each of your students to submit their work. These sections can either be public, which is easy, or private, which requires quite a bit more work. A combination of both is a good idea to facilitate differentiation and sharing of quality work samples. A student help desk rep can be given rights to set up the complicated private sections for you.

This is how it works.

1. One notebook is created for each class on the shared drive.
2. In that notebook a section is made for each student.
3. Whenever a student submits work, they print or insert their file (or both) directly onto a page in that section. That’s it.
4. You now have access to it both at school and at home, and can mark it up by hand or type in comments. You do not have to “hand it back” as all you have to do is tell the students the marking is done and they can have a look.
   

OneNote portfolios have many benefits over email, paper, or BB assignments.

1. It’s student-loaded. This means the student is responsible for the logistics of getting the work in front of you which not only alleviates tedium for the teacher but ensures students learn and apply skills that can be used again in collaborative environments such as this.
2. Less hassle. You don’t need to remember to collect or hand back work which also means class time is not consumed for such tasks.
3. Information. You have access to every piece of work a student submits over the life of the course. This has huge benefits for IB internal assessments, but beyond that it means you can review student progress before or during conferences and have samples to show parents if necessary.
4. Marking. You have a whole range of pens available anytime: at home, at school, or on the bus to aid in your marking. You do not need Internet or network access to look at the work.
5. Track Changes. If the original file, such as a Word doc, is actually embedded in the page, you add comments to the file using the review features in Word and you bypass email.
6. Its all good. Compatibility issues are eradicated because work can be printed from any application into a page and written or typed on. Students can choose whatever application they wish to work in, whether you have it installed or not, and you can always read it.
   

Blackboard Assignments
Because Blackboard was designed as a distance learning tool it provides some features for submitting work outside the classroom. The assignment feature provides a place for all students to upload work in any format (preferably pdf) to one tidy place. You can then download them all as a zip file and look at them. You still need to get them back to the students, which is where the process fails.

This might be useful in situations such as a take-home test where you want students to complete an assignment before a certain time and not be able to make any changes to it. It might also be useful for summer assignments.

Comments