Webapp tackles new method of grading

Those who have followed TransformED since our Ignite event last June probably already known about Shawn Cornally. He’s a science teacher at Solon High School and a passionate believer in changing traditional A-F  grades. You may remember his Ignite presentation and TEDx talk on this very subject.

He stopped by today, along with his business partner Vik Patel, to show us what he’s been working on this summer: Blue Harvest. Star Wars references aside, Blue Harvest is the assessment tool Shawn’s always wanted. It just didn’t exist yet, so he and Vik had to program it themselves.

Here’s how Blue Harvest works. Teachers create profiles on Blue Harvest for each of their students, as well as their students’ parents. The teacher then assigns particular standards that each student has to meet during the course of the academic year. That standard then shows up when the student logs in, along with feedback from the teacher regarding their progress toward reaching that standard. This can happen in the form of written comments and attached files, and Shawn and Vik are working on adding functionality to directly embed audio comments.

Students and parents also can use the Blue Harvest interface to communicate back to the teacher about any needs, concerns and desires they might have. The primary interface is web-based, but users can also interact via e-mail and text message.

At the end of the year, the entire record of the students’ progress can be saved for the next academic semester, giving the student’s next teacher a detailed look at what standards he or she hasn’t mastered. The information also can be exported as part of a student record or portfolio.

This approach, which Cornally calls “the Facebook of grading” aims to provide students with useful feedback that they can use to improve their learning. Part of why Cornally doesn’t like traditional letter grades is that a single letter doesn’t give students any information on how they can do better. Blue Harvest provides that information in a place where it won’t get lost in a folder or Trapper Keeper.

Right now, the current userbase of Blue Harvest is Cornally, his wife and several other beta testers in the form of teachers around the world. To pay for hosting costs, Cornally charges a flat rate of $36 a year for teachers looking to use the service.

What I admire about what Shawn is doing is that he’s not waiting for anybody. He sees a problem in the regular way of doing business in education and is charging ahead in creating his own solution. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. But he’s taking a risk, and we certainly could use more risk-takers here in Iowa.

-Patrick Hogan