I offer the following mini-assessment of any Web 2.0 project as a way to refocus our attention on student learning rather than the Web 2.0 tool.
Take the highest level of Bloom achieved during the project
1- Knowledge 2. Comprehension
3 – Application 4. Analysis
5.5 Synthesis 5.5 Evaluation
and multiple it by the number of days in the project.
So, if Susan produces a Social Studies podcast that simply restates (Comprehension) information about George Washington after five days, her score is 2 (Comprehension) x 5 (days) or 10.
If Pablo produces a Social Studies podcast in which he goes through the problem solving steps that George Washington went through and evaluates his final solution (5.5) in two days, his score would be Evaluation (5.5) x 2 = 11
Based on this analysis, a two day project of higher level thinking rates a higher score than a longer project. Let’s focus on student learning!
My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students, is available through Eye-on-Education.
Formative Assessment and Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment by Harry Grover TuttleMy book. Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment will be available from Eye-on-Education in the Fall.
Education with Technology Harry G. Tuttle 
Harry,
This is a potentially very useful assessment formula.
If it’s going to really be helpful, though, I think people are going to need to know the process you used to determine the formula….
Larry
Larry,
I believe that the level of the thinking that students do is critical. When I combine the Bloom’s level of thinking with the amount of time that it took the students to achieve that level in the project, I have a simple but very powerful tool to assess the worthwhileness of any project. This one lens provides educators with a reality check about the value of the project.
Harry
This system really puts the focus on student learning, which os of course exactly where it belongs! I have a question though. What if a student’s work is an attempt at evaluation or synthesis, but not at a level of sophistication that is indicative of quality thinking?
Why didn’t we think of this before? Its so obvious that we should be teaching our students to value the thinking aspect of an assignment. I’m still pondering the usefulness of marking by how long it took. That might be counter-productive.
I recently discovered using Bloom’s in the actual assessment system, and I find it has really helped my kids. I use it to asses different parts of assignments (so a single assignment might get a few different grades depending on the level of Bloom’s used).
I use Bloom’s to weight my entire course. Generally, the first three levels are 80% of the course (which match the state standards, which if they get, they should pass), the next two are 12 %, and synthesis is 8%. For my honors course, I weight the latter two more heavily. But the actual content of my course is given as 50/40/10 but graded as 80/12/8.
But I like this idea, it’s a good way to grade a project.