And so it continues...

Yesterday the website was up and running and I was ready to jump in with both feet. I worked with the platform for my first class and was feeling OK about the work that we were doing. These students had spent a day on the site - then were having to do work off the site for two days and then went back onto the site. It was hard trying to get seventh grade students to try and get them back into their work on the site. They reluctantly signed back in and got to work. 

I found that they were struggling with the independence of the project. It felt too frustrating that there was too much work to do. Students wanted to jump in and submit their work without reading directions and were having a hard time navigating the site - trying to figure out the scope and sequence of the work they were to be doing. On my end it felt very frustrating to see my students struggling. In my day to day class when I see this I am able to quickly jump in using this formative assessment to change the direction - modify the google doc they are working on or change the task completely. Using badges4edu I felt like I could not put my hands in what the students were working on. Instead of planning based on what my students were doing and what they needed - I felt like I had to plan out for three weeks with all the performance tasks completed and finalized at the beginning of a unit and was worried about changing anything. I also felt like I was spending most of my time at a computer instead of spending my time with my students. 

After my first class I was able to do a google hangout with Susan and Audrey which was tremendously helpful. I renamed some of the steps and made the work more sequential. I took away the quest and badge buttons and rolled out to my second class and it went GREAT! Students were plugging away. At the end of the class students were asking if they could continue working on their badges. They were psyched about the points and seemed to really take to the idea of the site. 

I was finally feeling great about all of this hard work that my students were putting into the site and I was feeling like the hours of planning that I had put in was worth it. 

Then 3:30 rolled around and I was going to start looking at submissions from students to look at the work that they had done over the day. This is what I saw:

So here I am back at where I was last week. I have taken all of the quests and turned them into Google documents and created buttons on the website for the students to work through. 

It is not so exciting or as sleek at the badges4edu - but it works and it feels secure in the work that we are doing that students will be able to access their work and know how to do it. We will keep you posted on what happens next!