Standards Tagging To Benefit Students or Just an Exercise?

The college where I work wants each activity in the class calendar to be labeled with one of the official course outcomes (standards).

I applaud the effort in asking instructors to think about how what they are doing supports the outcomes. However, I also realize that most instructors just put numbers in so that each activity has a number. They do not change what the activity is; they just put a label on each activity. The instructors do not change what they do in the classroom.

Furthermore, there is no common course assessment so, in fact, each instructor gives whatever type of final covering whatever type of content. Until we give common course assessments there is no real outcomes based (or standards-based) learning.

Students do not benefit from such pseudo-standardizing of courses.

YouTube Stuff- Tagging it so Others Can Find it

When you post your YouTube video, please make sure to tag it with the major tag of Education; the subject area (Social Studies); the critical aspect of the standard (contributions of various groups); the specifics (Irish building the Erie Canal); and the general grade levels (4-11). Add any other tags that would help educators and students to find it such as Canal Songs, and Westward expansion, and New York State.

The better you tag it, the better other teachers and students can benefit from your efforts and your students’ learning.

We can make YouTube (and other YouTube like places) an educational repository of all our educational videos that are made by teachers and students for teachers and students.

So what tags have you used with your YouTube instructional videos?

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

—-

Blog as Eportfolio: Using Tags

I have mentioned in previous blogs, students can use blogs for eportfolios. The use of tags will allow students to indicate the critical standards-based elements of each blog.

As educators, we want to assess the students’ growth in our subject area standards. However, the students may include various learning experiences that incorporate more than one standard in a blog entry. They may organize their eportfolio around their bigger authentic learning experiences. However, they need to carefully tag each entry and to clue us as to their awareness of each standard.

If students in English class create a blog that demonstrates their labeling a nature trail, they can tag that blog with the appropriate standard key components such as 1.1, 1.3, and 1.5. In the blog, they will insert the appropriate standard component and explain how this aspect of the blog demonstrate the component. (We listened to a nature guide who explained to us the various flowers and trees on the nature path. From her talk, I listed the trees and four facts about each one (1.1-getting information from oral sources). I then researched these trees on the Internet to find two additional facts and to get more details for each of the facts (1.3-getting information from text sources). Then I created a label for each tree in which I included a picture of the tree, its name, and six detailed facts about each tree. (1.5-creating information for others). Here is a sample…… The student then includes a reflection on her growth in each of these key components.

Due to the tags, the teachers can find the standards easily in the students’ blogs and then with the students’ annotations, the educators can see the specific evidence within a larger context. If their blogs are private (them and you), then you can rate them and give them formative feedback.

Do your students tag their blog work for your standards-based assessment?

——