Day 21: Test-worthy?

First things first: for no real reason except to jump on the Obama-mania sweeping the nation, I made my own personal Hope portrait, which you can see right over there to the right. You can do the same thing for yourself at http://obamiconme.pastemagazine.com/ but don’t blame me for time wasted on such silliness. By the way, you can create one of these for virtually any photo you want, so you can make one featuring a desk lamp, a cucumber, etc. Again, don’t blame me for your time-wasting, as I have a responsibility to waste my own time first.

Today was Exam 2 day. Even many non-Christians have heard this famous quote, which is particularly true of exams: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” To date I have not reached a confidence point at which I am willing to risk the integrity of an exam using connected learning tools. In my mind, since we still experience frequent problems when we take a 10 minute, 10 item quiz, I am terrified by what might transpire if we tried to expand this to a 60 item, 50 minute exam. Along those same lines I am quite comfortable dealing with the consequences of a missed quiz, but don’t have any interest in ‘fixing’ a major snafu which leaves 10 or 15 students without an exam grade. Finally, while the iPhone screen is just fine for a few items, I worry about using it for a full hour of checking items (and scrolling backward and forward through 20 screens of items). So….we did it the old-fashioned way: paper test, scan-tron answers, scores to be turned around within 2 class days.

My quest for a good attendance system continues. Taking a cue from the Japanese school which is using the GPS in the phones to check roll, I contacted a US firm which provides location services; they told me they can’t do what I need to do. Bummer.

But wait, here are some more pointless Hope graphics!!!