grading papers

Well, the Thanksgiving holiday break comes to a close today so I'm going to spend the rest of the day working on grading papers. I have to say that teaching never feels like a "job" except when I have to go through the drudgery of "grading." It just seems as if we should have come up with better forms of assessment by now. The one size fits all worksheet, quiz, multiple choice exam, just doesn't feel authentic to me and it never has. Besides, once all the grades are in that's when the real massaging of the numbers begins- classroom participation, extra credit, etc...
Technology should really be answering this question for us. The days of bubble sheets are hopefully numbered. I want to see technology leveraged in a way that frees teachers from the "marking blues" and gets rid of the "red pen syndrome." Data should be driving our decisions when it comes to curriculum design and lesson ideas. I want a data tracking system that shows me what every student in the classroom knows with regard to my course objectives. I want this data to show me when I need to reteach and when students need refreshers. I want pinpoint accuracy- "Johnny knows objective 1.01 but he didn't get 1.02." When we get to this point with technology then you can free teachers to really teach and to personalize the learning for every student.

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