Grading Notes, Week 1

With the schedule that we have - Monday through Sunday - I'm realizing I likely won't get most grading done until the Friday-Sunday after assignments were due the previous Sunday.  We have the week ending Sunday at midnight, so I probably won't start grading things until I have the time later that week, which will often be the weekend.  So, with Week 1 assignments having been due last Sunday night, I got to those assignments this weekend.

I've graded the Orientation Project and the Personal Website Project assignments, and those grades are now posted in the gradebook in the Angel System.

Several notes.

Remember, the items included in the Orientation Project are listed at the bottom of several of the Week 1 modules, including the Technology Orientation.  When I recorded your grade, I added a note/comment noting which of those items you did not accomplish by the given deadline (which was extended to today since that's when I graded this assignment.

Your grade for the Personal Website Project assignment is not final.  I used this grading scale for that project:

• 35pts : Creating your website
• 10pts : Defining the layout for your site (+25pts possible if loaded a custom template)
• 15pts : Added Class Announcements RSS feed to your blog
• 15pts : Added Course Blog RSS feed to your blog
• 10pts : Added Course Discussion RSS feed to your blog
•   5pts : Added Tech News RSS feed to your blog
•   5pts : Added Favorite Links (five) to your blog
•   5pts : Added Another gadget of your choice to your blog

I understand we've had some technical issues with the RSS feeds; that's why your grade for this assignment is not final.  Your personal webspace should continue to be a work in progress; continue working on it throughout the semester.  If there's elements of the page (links or images) that are aligned strangely or seem to be taking up a lot of space, continue to experiment with the layout of your space.  Make it useful for you.  That includes continuing to try to add the RSS feeds to it.

Finally, the quizzes are open until the end of April.  Here's the rub though.  Until you attempt a quiz and have at least one score for it, it will be excluded from your grade calculation.  If you do not attempt a quiz, it will be assigned a zero when the quiz closes.  Since that is on April 30, if you have 10 quizzes you haven't done all semester long, you will have 10 zeros added - all at once - to your grade calculation on April 30; so, if you do not do the quizzes, your daily category average may look fine and rosy all semester, and then suddenly become a nasty, stinky grade on April 30 when all of the quizzes close.  Don't let that sneak up on or happen to you.