I’m glad the review of Grab was helpful. There’s a keyboard shortcut for taking screen shots, but I can never remember what it is. I like Grab because it is in the Utilities folder and it’s easy to use.

We’ll be examining how to create podcasts tomorrow, and I’m confident that you’ll find ways that this technology might be included in assessment methods that match your group’s objectives. The context for the podcast will originate with making annotations in digital text, which I think may have direct relevance to your unit.

“Struggling” is a good way to describe the process of developing learning objectives! I know that your group has been working hard on yours, and I see how it is paying off. Again, your objectives will never be “completed,” so it’s important to let them go at some point and know that they will change as a result of assessment alignment, implementation of the unit, and just things that strike you in the middle of the night. If you have captured the intent of the objective, that is 85% of the work – the other 15%, which is often consumed by finding the right words, will sort itself out over time.

We talked about this a bit last week, but I’m glad I’m reading this now to re-visit your group’s dilemma about “voice.” Because measuring this is complicated by the factors that you’ve identified (e.g., bias, subjectivity, etc.), I can understand the tendency to want to abandon it as an objective. You might, however, keep it in and see how it goes in the implementation of the unit. Something as simple as “Students will demonstrate an emerging “voice” in their writing” might be a start. You don’t have to assess them on the quality of the voice, just simply give them feedback on how they’re doing with developing and identifying their voice. Not sure if that makes sense, but I offer it as something to consider.

More later.

Cynthia