#Makerspaces and Coding: Assessment using Anecdotal Notes with @edmettle

“How do you assess the process of learning through makerspaces and coding?”

I get this question a lot. After all, how can you truly assess a student’s creativity – or any of the other 6 Cs many of us now focus on? Obviously we can use rubrics or another point system to track the curriculum concepts of these projects – but what about the process of learning? You may wish to check out the twitter chat #TTOG (teachers throwing out grades) on Monday nights.

Truth be told, I love making notes on the Learning Skills of students during these activities using edmettle. I made edmettle as a way to track student feedback based on soft skills – both given by me, other teachers and other students. Within edmettle, you can add rotary teachers as well making it the ideal place to share positive feedback on student learning with all stakeholders.

If you haven’t already taken the tour, have a go below:

When you first login (or signup) on edmettle, you land at this splash screen that looks like this.

You can see immediately that “Manage Skills” is an option. In this space, the teacher chooses which skills to focus on – ideally to personalize the learning of all students. In my class, we focus on the Ontario learning Skills + grit.

Using any device with a browser, I can award mettles in the moment during these makerspace and coding activities. Students receive notifications via email as well as their parents (who also have their own parent code for access).

Perhaps best of all, students (and teachers) can endorse themselves – providing a means for self-reflection. Teachers can model this process and encourage students to follow suit.

So for those of you ready to begin with makerspaces, inquiry, challenge or project based learning – consider using edmettle to capture the good things being done in your classroom not just within the curriculum but within the soft skills umbrella too. You can export all the feedback for each student as a .doc file for report card season or to communicate with parents. A nifty little feature…

Check out edmettle at http://www.edmettle.com.