Adventures in EdTech

Standards-based grading is a hot topic in education right now and has been for a while. But what exactly is standards-based grading? Well, according to Naomi Shak in Everything You Need to Know About Standards-Based Grading, " Standards-based grading (SBG) is a system of education which focuses on student learning and grades based on dem onstrated understanding of specific concepts. Instead of a simple letter, students receive grades in multiple different learning targets and can see which concepts they understood well and which they need to improve on." Essentially, students receive a score of typically 1-4 for each content area standard they are supposed to master throughout the school year.  Personally, I absolutely love the idea of standards-based grading! First, standards-based grading allows students and parents to really see what a student has mastered and what he/she still needs to work on. Getting a "B" in math tells the student and parents absolutely n...

Project-based learning is something I've always wanted to tackle, but I never seemed to have the time to dig into such a meaty topic. In this course, I really enjoyed taking the time to dive into the various components of PBL, starting with essential questions. Our class discussions surrounding essential questions, in particular, really stuck with me, as I had always thought of essential questions to be topic or content specific, however, through this course, I learned that essential questions should span several subject areas and spark real intrigue with students. The essential questions I had used previously didn't do either of those things, and frankly, generating questions that did was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. However, through extensive discussions with our cohort, this became easier. Previously, during a unit on how communities change over time, I have used the essential question, "How does where we live affect how we live?" However, thi...