marking and editing

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Home : 2001 : July : 9

marking and editing
By Cathy-Dee

We have had to deal with this in Alberta as well. The Canadian government has an act called the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act. We had inservices a few years back to talk about how the act could affect schools,
etc., So far things have worked out, and I think at first everyone went overboard on the discussions, etc., and thought that it would affect schools much more than it did.
Basically the act meant that people have freedom to information about themselves - if you ask for a file from a school, university, government office, doctor's office, etc., they have to give it to you.
And you also

have the right to not have things published or made available that you do not wish to have open to others.

Where the schools were concerned was with things like hanging up student's work on displays, putting the names of students who are graduating in the paper or even names of students who receive honours, no publication of photographs of students, etc., I think with the use of the web and school web pages this became a greater focus.

In our school division we have parents sign a waiver for the freedom of information and privacy act that does allow us to put photographs on our web page, hang up students work, put photographs or students work in the local papers, etc., Parents can decide how much or how little they will allow. Since I'm the webmaster for the school I let the parents know that I usually will only public group pictures of students and if I use names at all, I will only use first names.

Marking of papers hasn't come up as an issue for us with this act, which I find interesting. However I think the idea of having students mark their own work (using the highlighting approach) would solve many of the issues raised. I hang up students work all the time - when I mark work I put it on the back of the work I want to display - this way no one knows the marks. And often I do not mark the displayed work until after I take it down. If the students choose to share their marks then that is fine.

I wonder if even having students help with handing back tests, etc., will come into question. The students can easily see the marks if you have them written on the front of the test or paper.

As far as peer feedback with writing, etc., I don't see that as the same as marking a test or quiz. In many ways peer feedback is just a form of brainstorming and editing, the students are not seeing a finished product, have no idea what the mark for the product will be, etc.,