CEDO 525 Week Two

I thought the article on feedback contained a lot of truths and a lot of very good information. I think our ability to provide feedback to our students is absolutely essential to their learning and the better we can do this, the better they will learn. I like the articles idea that positive feedback is critical, yet artificial responses aren't valuable either. I agree with this assertion full-heartedly. I am a firm believer that students know immediately when a teacher is being genuine or fake and they will lose respect for that teacher much quicker when they are giving false positve feedback than they would if that teacher was giving negative genuine feedback. It is my belief that a combination of positive feedback mixed with some cold hard facts feedback keeps the students on task and in tune to what you are trying to achieve while giving them the carrot in front of their nose that will keep them going and striving for better.

Though nice, I do not find the electronic forms of feedback to be sufficient for my curriculum. As an Architecture and Engineering teacher, so much of my work is done through drawings that I grade, critique and return to the students. How I control my feedback is by asking that all the students hand in their work through a digital dropbox. Once I have this in my dropbox, I then grade this online as this allows me to do so in a non-printable text so as not to destroy the students time and effort on the work. The students can then make the changes and print off their work for an improved grade. I've found that by offering the students a "second chance", they take the critique more seriously and trully attempt to internalize it which is what we all strive for. I guess to me, with these electronic programs, the feedback is too concrete and to final. I would like to use these some more and play around more to see how I could manipulate these to fit my style but for not I don't really see utilizing them much. In addition, I was not real pleased with Rubistar as it does not contain anything regarding technology curriculum.