Cliff Waldie was in today to tell us all about Fresh Grade and how it can benefit us as educators, our students as learners, and our students’ adults through open communication. This communication includes expectations, how things are assessed, student work, and prompts for self reflection. Fresh Grade is a great platform for communication with students’ adults in a form comparable to an e-portfolio. It’s a great place to upload student work and student projects and artwork so that things are not just completed in class and sent home as “dumpster projects.” It’s great how flexible Fresh Grade is on the side of the teacher as to what can be included and how things are shown. Even the way things are assessed and how you convey that to the parents/guardians/caregivers of the students can be creative and reflective/reflexive to that of student performance and teacher preference. Fresh Grade is something I will definitely consider fiddling with when I have my own classroom and students.
Learning is both personal and collaborative
I enjoyed reading your post because you display the “what” and “why” of fresh grade. I like how you first listed the benefits of fresh grade and connected it to why you would use it. I liked especially the line “It’s a great place to upload student work and student projects and artwork so that things are not just completed in class and sent home as “dumpster projects” – it really makes me imagine students throwing their art in a big dumpster overflowing of other art projects haha. Further, its a great example of why we should use fresh grade. Great post!