I have been quiet for a couple of days as I finished up the school year and did some planning for a summer course I will be teaching the end of July/beginning of August. In the meantime, Grant Wiggins commented on the UbD Wiki post and offered up a nice bit of encouragement for those of us who are reading Understanding by Design and collaborating at the wiki, which Wikispaces has generously agreed to host ad-free. We are just getting started, so it is not too late to join up!
More tomorrow after I have rested from education for a bit.
Update, 5/30/08: Thanks to Grant for allowing UbD Educators to access his online course this year. The course is no longer available for free.
[tags]Grant Wiggins, UbD, Understanding by Design, Jay McTighe, wiki, assessment, education[/tags]
Dana:
I'm a new English teacher; have only been working in a HS English classroom 1.5 years (had 2 classes last year and did a one-term long-term subbing the year before that.)
I've been reading lots of ed-blogs this year and yours has been great. [I've stolen lots of your ideas alredy 🙂 ] So thanks.
Based on your earlier blog I've gotten a copy of UbD to peruse — they had a one-day, two-hour PD on UbD at my school a few years before I joined, which staff said was insufficient and helpful.
I'm thinking I might like to join the wiki, but am embarrassed to say that even with your earlier posts I don't know what a wiki is or how to use it. Can you give me any help?
(Also, and unrelated, I couldn't add an RSS feed or notification for your blog to my homepage. Any ideas?)
Hello, Peasant! (This is not THIS Dana, by they way; I'm another Dana. Just, y'know, to confuse things…)
A wiki is a website that's written by a group of people, as far as I can tell. The url is http://ubdeducators.wikispaces.com and you will need to create a wikispaces account and then request to be added as an author to the UbD wiki.
I hope that helps at least a little. Welcome aboard! 😀