Using Weebly for student reflection, evaluation and feedback

Our most recent experiment with technology in the art room was using a Weebly site as a way for students to look at their work as well as that of their peers, evaluate how they did using a rubric, and offer feedback to me through the site.

The Weebly "gallery" offered a quick and simple way to upload the entire class's photos so that students could look at their work again, even though they had already taken the pieces home. I uploaded a pdf of my rubric for the project, where they could look at how they did with different categories like demonstrating asymmetrical balance, clay craftsmanship, etc. and choose a point value for each category. If they added these together, it gave them an idea of the grade they felt they should receive for the project based on those criteria. Students were very honest and maybe even harder on themselves than I was grading them. I talked with one student who had given himself a very low grade, but in talking with him more about the categories he had deducted points from, we saw that he had taken away all his points for a category rather than looking closer at the rubric which showed he should have had partial credit for it. It was great to see students putting some thought into how they did and reinforcing the concepts behind what they were doing, which might sometimes get lost in the activity.

Once students evaluated their work and gave it a grade, there is a feedback section where the students can send me comments on what grade they gave themselves and explain the reasons why. Again, it was great to see students engaged and thoughtful in their remarks. I really think the clean and professional look of the Weebly site and gallery helped both myself and my students to see their work in a new light. Having the students look at the rubric themselves and think about their work helped them see more clearly how the concepts translated into the actual artwork we made. I also feel like using the technology made them much more engaged in the process because I have tried similar reflections using pencil and paper and the results were much less fruitful. I am glad I gave this a try and hope to incorporate it more into my projects in the future!

John James Audubon

This week we had a visitor in the library, Jaqueline Davies, who wrote the book The Boy Who Drew Birds, which is all about John James Audubon.

So for the 2nd and 3rd graders who got to meet her, we are looking at the artwork of John James Audubon this week to see how much we can learn about different species of birds just by looking at his illustrations.

For example, this golden eagle painting lets us see not only the characteristics of the bird, like it's size, color, ability to fly etc., but we also see something about the eagle's diet and habitat. We can see that it lives high in the mountains, can tolerate colder climates and hunts and eats small mammals. The students were then asked to think of an animal that they have observed and illustrate that animal in it's habitat and give clues about its diet in their illustration. We also used mixed media since we learned from this video that John James Audubon was also an early mixed media artist.