Providing Feedback

There are so many interesting aspects to this chapter, it's hard to narrow my response to 2 things. We have a couple class sets of the classroom response systems at Jane Long, and the teachers that use them, love them. Knowledge of this tool is mostly hearsay outside the 4th grade however, as that grade level either purchased them or made the request. Regardless, this feedback tool is remarkably easy to use. The kids get a game show feel and enjoy using the system. What I didn't realize was the ability to create reports concerning the responses. This takes the use of the tool to a higher level.

For my use, in the library, I thought the blog was a great tool. My first thought (not original, I know) was to create a blog about the Bluebonnet Award nominees for the school year. I could post a basic synposis of each book, give the kids an evaluation rubric, and invite them to respond to the books as they read them. This blog would serve multiple purposes. First, the kids could voice their opinions about the books. Kids who have not read the books could consider the feedback in selecting those they want to read. The LA teachers could use the postings to evaluate writing. I, or the reading teacher, could use the postings as live classroom dicussion springboards.

The other tool that caught my attention was the idea of instant messaging. Personal appearances by children's authors earns them more money than the sale of their books, and, for the most part, we can't afford hosting them. However, if I could manage a 20 minute exchange with an author, responding to questions posed by the students, I think the kids would be quite excited. They would be the ones experiencing feedback to their questions from someone they would consider a celebrity. I could coordinate this with the reading and writing teachers in 3rd and 4th, and the questions from the kids might pertain more closely to their current curricular emphasis. The cool thing about this idea is that it could work with virtually every grade level, and could be coordinated with multiple authors. For the little ones, although they might come up with questions, reading a response on the screen might not be very meaningful. However, for the same amount of effort, it might be possible to schedule a phone call with the author on speaker phone for all to hear.

Hearkening back to the previous chapter, I could use one of the survey tools to determine the authors that the kids are most interested in. Naturally, they wouldn't all be available, but with a bit of preliminary work, perhaps the list could be composed of those most likely to cooperate with the project.