Oct 15 2007
Create a Rubric Assignment
rubric_oct-16-assignment-2.doc
Around 1998, while I was the Technology IA at my school, I learned of a technology grant (I believe it was from AOL) for K-12 schools that encouraged the applicants to think out of the box and write a proposal that would bring the use of technology to a segment of the school population that would most likely not be exposed to technology at home.
I jumped at the opportunity and enrolled the expertise of two of our ESOL teachers. Our ESOL population was mushrooming and I realized that my project idea had great potential.
A large percentage of our ESOL families were recent arrivals to this country. They had left everything behind in their Eastern Europe civil war torn country and had managed to arrive in the U.S. with nothing but themselves. I felt they had a story to tell. Perhaps, if the saga of their individual paths to freedom could be shared through the use of technology, then these future citizens would be able to see a world of possibilities.
We set out to write a grant that asked for multimedia Apple computers for each ESOL classroom, multimedia software, printers, and a tape recorder for each ESOL student in grades 3 – 6 to take home.
The project would require the grade 3 – 6 ESOL students, with the guidance of their ESOL teacher, to create a list of approximately 10 – 20 questions to ask their adult family members. The focus of the questions would be the family’s decision to immigrate and to share stories about their lives before their arrival to the U.S. We wanted the students to do research about their native homeland, including photos, drawings, etc. We were going to create a database on the computer in which the students would enter information such as their country of origin, their ages, how many in their family, and their arrival city and date in the U.S. Their final project would be a display of their research to include the tape recorded answers from their family members.
While AOL was impressed with our idea we did not qualify to receive the grant because our school did not have a high enough number of students who received free or reduced price lunches.
Fast forward to the year 2007 and I think the idea behind the grant proposal still has merit. I would focus on the fifth and sixth grade ESOL students. The students would create an oral or written history of their family to include digital photos of family members (borrowing the school cameras, if necessary), research (using online resources) about their native homeland, and introducing the students to Photo Story 3 or MovieMaker as an option to create their final project.
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Your project sounds like a good one and could build into some very nice digital stories. You might want to add a piece to your rubric about organization and summarizing content rather that preparation. Some students may require lots of assistance but only because they don’t know the application they are using. You might also want to add something that talks about compare/contrast. In addition, using this rubric, only 33% of the points come from content.