Many students, especially in this day and age, have the idea engraved in their minds that if they don't do well in school it's because their parents never did well when they were growing up. Students have a difficult time relating the amount of time and effort that they put into an assignment, or even the attention that they give a lesson, to achievement. I really found the idea of using Spread Sheet to show students just how effort and achievement are tied together. I think that having students keep track of the amount of time and effort they put into an assignment or class per week is a wonderful idea. I often hear from students,"Why did you give me that grade? You want me to fail, don't you?" It's never,"Man, I guess I didn't try hard enough. I'll have to do better next time." If students had a Spread Sheet in which to document how much effort was afforded to each task, I think that they would better understand the relationship. Creating a Spread Sheet isn't a time consuming task, so it wouldn't be difficult to have something like this ready for the start of the year. Students could paste it into their journals each week, and document their effort. Students could then use the results to create a graph so that they can visually see what they might need to improve upon.
Along with the Spread Sheet, using SurveyMonkey to create an effort survey would be a great idea. I've never used this particular program, but I'm willing to give it a try. It's important for me to teach students that grades are earned, not given, and that if the effort isn't there then they are going to receive the grade that's most appropriate. It would be interesting to see how students respond, especially if done the first week of school, to the questions on the survey. Using the survey at the beginning of the year would give me an idea as to how the students feel that they perform in school and on homework assignments. I think that this type of survey would be most helpful to students if given at least twice during the year. Students should complete the survey within the first week of school, and then again around semester break. I think that they would have a different opinion about the amount of effort that they put into something if they could compare the two surveys...especially after having been in school for an entire semester.
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This strategy is little more challenging to find ways to use technology. To me, unless you have technology readily available, it is just as easy to documetn effort by hand. However, if students kept the info in a spreadsheet it would make it easier to graph later. I am confilicted with the use of technolgy for this strategy. I would have to see it in action to become a believer.
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