Foster collaboration with Scrumblr

While there are loads of sites that allow collaboration online, few are easier to use than Scrumblr.  Simply name your Scrumblr page, add and name some columns, and then create and position “index cards.”  Honestly, it’s that easy.  The beauty of the site is in its simplicity and its pared-down features.  Sure, other sites may offer more features than Scrumblr does but I really appreciate sites that provide a useful service without bogging down the functionality with a lot of fluff. I also respect the fact that the Scrumblr creator has released the site’s code into the open source community for others to build upon.  Package those strengths together and Scrumblr is an outstanding site with a ton of applications for educators.

Educators working on a team should consider using Scrumblr to keep track of group tasks. One member can create a Srumblr page and share the link with the whole team.  Then, each team member can see their assigned tasks and make additions.  Scrumblr can also be used to help students brainstorm or to help them organize material they’ve learned.  Since the site doesn’t require usernames or passwords, students can visit a Scrumblr page and just start contributing.  Scrumblr can also be used with an interactive whiteboard to build an engaging, student-centered lesson where students actively organize and categorize concepts.

Since the site doesn’t offer usernames or passwords, each Scrumblr page is open for the world to edit.  I wouldn’t worry too much about this lack of protection since each page exists in the vast expanse of the Internet and probably won’t be easily found.  That being said, I wouldn’t use the site to store your credit card number or the launch codes for any intergalactic missiles.  If you’re just using the site as an instructional tool, however, Scrumblr offers a simple yet powerful collaboration tool with loads of educational options.

New YouTube features to create and educate

Over the last several months, YouTube has silently added some great features for educators which I hope helps to sway some of the site’s detractors. For those of you who might not know, there are many school districts that block students and teachers from using YouTube in their classrooms.  I find this really disappointing, and honestly, a little draconian.  YouTube is an amazing, instructional tool.  While I don’t see much educational value in the stupid boy stunt videos and Lady Gaga impersonators that seem to overpopulate the site, I also appreciate the treasure trove of tutorials and instructional aides that YouTube offers.  Now, with the addition of several new features, YouTube is becoming a place where our students can learn, create and participate in a worldwide forum.

YouTube Create:

With YouTube Create, the site now offers greater connectivity with other sites so that students can more easily create and share their works.   With a click, YouTube users can now access Stupeflix Video Editor, Xtranormal and GoAnimate.  While YouTube has offered its own video editor for a while, with YouTube Create, users can now create their own videos online by using these second party sites.  The really cool part is that even though the sites are separate from YouTube, the tools are integrated into the YouTube landscape so that there is seamless functionality. Wondering how you could use YouTube Create with your students?  Consider giving your students a video project as an assessment instead of assigning them a paper or giving them an exam.  You could even let them choose which of the sites they want to use to create and share their work.

YouTube Copyright School:

I’m sure this feature was developed as a result of the number of violators were uploading copyright material.  The impressive part is that YouTube is taking a proactive approach and providing instruction for users to help them understand and follow copyright restrictions.  The YouTube Copyright School provides a series of tutorials and videos that explain the basics of copyright law, infringement and public domain.  At the end of the last tutorial, users are presented with a quiz which assesses their understanding of the topic.  Although I’ve heard that YouTube is requiring the tutorials as a means of remediating copyright offenders on their site, the tutorials would also be a great instructional aide for educators who want to give some copyright background for students as they develop their own multimedia projects.

Resources for using rubrics to guide assessment

As educators employ more creative works as forms of assessment in their classroom, the question often turns to “How do we assess this?” Many educators find it easy to grade an exam or a quiz, especially when multiple choice and true/false questions are used. But how do we assess an assignment like a digital story? Or if we’re having our students blog?  What if they’re contributing to a wiki? How do we as educators assess our students when they are creating works that are more subjective to judge?

One answer is to use rubrics. A rubric is a tool that outlines the criteria for which student work will be assessed. A well-designed rubric provides a uniform standard for educators to evaluate subjective assignments which can make the assessment process easier. When shared with students prior to the start of an activity, a rubric can provide a road map for students so they know which areas of the assignment are the most important. Rubrics also inject transparency in the assessment process, allowing students to know exactly how they’ll be assessed for a given assignment.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that rubrics can have a normalizing effect on students’ creativity. When I provide rubrics for an assignment, I find that I get a lot of really good products from students but fewer “out-of-the-box,” “knock my socks off” creations. But I also get fewer poor student creations as well. By using rubrics to provide explicit standards for students, I can help guide their creativity, which can have both positive and negative consequences.

This week, I thought I’d provide a few resources that can help educators create their own rubrics. Before you assign that digital storytelling project or that podcasting assignment, check out these resources for ways to assess student work.

Creating a Rubric:  Online Tutorial

If you’re new to rubrics, this would be the place to start.  This tutorial walks through the basics of rubric creation and implementation.  The tutorial is easy to understand and even provides examples of rubrics for different types of assignments (oral presentations, research papers, etc).

Rubrics4Teachers:

Rubrics4Teachers offers a tremendous library of rubrics for a variety of different content areas.  While most are geared to K-12 classrooms, they can provide a starting point for educators working in other academic levels.  The site also provides links to resources that explain the theoretical foundations of using rubrics such as this article that explains the 5 W’s of Rubrics from the journal Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation.

Rubric Maker:

This online tool will walk you through the process of creating a rubric for almost any assignment.  Simply enter a name for the rubric and then select the criteria from drop down menus.  The different “quality levels” are populated with written standards for each level.  You can modify these written standards and even add your own.  After creating your rubric, you can download the file and print your rubric to distribute to students.  There are some limitations to the site (you can’t have more than four quality levels, for instance) but overall, Rubric Maker is a quick and easy-to-use tool for creating rubrics.

Rubistar:

Rubistar is one of my favorite rubric tools.  It’s tremendously comprehensive, offering rubric support from oral presentations to digital storytelling projects to lab reports.  After selecting a project category, Rubistar offers suggestions for different assessment criteria.  You can select from the drop down menus and the different quality levels will be populated (like with Rubric Maker).  Each standard can be modified and additional criteria can be added.  Rubistar even offers free subscriptions so educators can save their rubrics and track their use over time.

Check out a video tutorial for Rubistar.

Public domain images for student projects

For regular readers of the 8 Blog, you know that I advocate using creative projects as alternative forms of assessment with students.  Instead of giving an exam or having students write a paper, educators could have their students develop a podcast, build a wiki or create a digital story.  One concern that emerges with these types of projects is students’ use of copyrighted images and media.  In the past, I have offered some resources explaining copyright laws and also listed sites that offer copyright-friendly materials.  This week, I thought I’d build on this work by offering a list of governmental repositories for media.  Since the agencies are funded through tax expenditures, the resources they offer exist in the public domain and can be utilized freely by students in the projects they develop.  Even though the materials are public domain works, students should be reminded to give proper attribution to the creators in their projects.

General Governmental Repositories:

US Government Photos and Images

Library of Congress

FEMA Photo Library

National Park Service

Fish and Wildlife Service

Science agencies:

USDA Agricultural Research Service

USDA National Agricultural Library

National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery

NASA Multimedia

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

US Antarctic Program

CDC Public Health Image Library

Military branches:

US Department of Defense

US Navy

US Air Force

US Army Image Library

US Marine Corps Pictures

Related posts:

What’s legal (Part 1)

What’s legal (Part 2)

Nine copyright friendly sites for student projects

Image used:  Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange (1936) – Taken from Library of Congress