Sounds like a great day. This makes me want to teach.

Way to be brave, Dan. It sounds like bridging the technology gap between generations is your anointed destiny.

Oh yeah…I second what Steve says about enrollment. Just let the students join the class freely during the first few days it exists. It’s easy for a teacher to detect any strangers, boot them out and then close the door to any new students after the flood gates have been opened. After that, teachers could just use an enrollment key to give to any new students or guests they want to allow into the course at a later date.

I’ll be presenting Moodle workshops to my colleagues in November. Like you, I’m still learning. Good luck.

What happens when they lose or “lose” their pretty passports?

I also like the comment above re the colors. It does seem like they could all be the same color but they could just differentiate with a number on the 2nd or 3rd ones, even if it has to be Sharpie’d on there at the office.

As a complete aside, in my city? No one under the age of 18 is allowed to buy sharpies or spray paint. So, Sharpies are a cool, cool item to have. ;-D I honestly don’t know if anyone actually follows this law or not.

No doubt that almost all students that are the ones who are generally tardy will lose these papers. Then what is expected of the teacher when a kid enters the room? I’d suggest that we would be able to send these students to the principal’s office. Once they realize that they are getting ten or so kids a period by the time the middle of September comes around, they’ll realize the policy isn’t working (and suggest that the teachers do something).

A lot of my kids can’t get through the school year without losing a cell phone or ipod. Expecting them to continue to carry around a piece of paper all year long seems silly.

Seriously, who thinks this will work?

To turn off:

When the teacher of the course is logged in and at the course home page, they can go to Administration > Settings and then the options for enrollment are in there.

Hidden Costs:

I think we’d all agree that ideally what we want is to convey to students why showing up to class and on time is part of what it means to be a responsible individual. We want this more than the “Show up on time or your ass is grass (while pointing to colored sheets on the wall).” threat.

Unfortunately, using artificial systems of control to influence behavior is in direct conflict with the desire to get students to actually see their own behavior in action. If we do the latter, we win. We all win. The reality though is that many of us are teaching in supra-large institutions with 30 or 40 students in each of our classes. Although we try, student-teacher relationships are FAR less than ideal in such circumstances. So, I’m certainly not suggesting that these schools do away with these “necessarily evil” systems though it does bother me that many educators out there don’t even realize that these systems are a result of very imperfect circumstances to begin with. Instead, they just smile and defend these systems as being “solutions”. It’s like giving money to poor countries and thinking one is actually doing something to solve the problem of poverty.

My 4-year old has no concept of “rules” in our house. So far (crossing fingers), Mom and I have no need for such things. That’s not to say we just “let” him run wild. But we interact and relate to him so much that we can generally let his own conscience decide. In fact, we see that the more his own conscience makes decisions, the more he matures. We spend an enormous amount of time asking questions like “Why do you think you should bathe and brush your teeth?”, “Why should we go to bed now?”, “Why are you upset?”, “What did you think would happen when you stuck those coins in the DVD drive?” We can do this because we spend an enormous amount of time with him (both Mom and I are teachers and he also attends the school we teach at). We attempt to be as relationary (instead of reactionary) as possible. As teachers, do we have the time to establish the kind of relationship with all of our students so that a question like “Why do you think it is important to come to class prepared and on time?” has a genuine opportunity to “hit home”? Generally, no. We don’t. And because we don’t, we depend upon systems that further drive a wedge into what is naturally the very intersubjective job of teaching. Hey, when we treat students like Pavlovian dogs, what can we expect? Getting them to “step-in-line” will produce some statistics proving the very “worth” of the implemented system but at what cost? How can you measure the disadvantages of these systems? You can’t really…at least not numerically.

Imagine if we taught a few classes of 10 – 15 students. Any teacher good at what they do would never need systematic devices to control and shape student behavior. But the blunt argument I have no response to is – “But I don’t have 10-15 students in my classes. So I have to do this.” I guess in that situation you just try to do your best and be honest with the students as to why these systems are here. Surely though, if we buy into the baloney and actually wave these papers at the students in a dark tone to scare them, we’ll make matters much worse (I don’t know you Dan, but I’m guessing you’re far from the type of teacher who would do that).

It’s tough. Got no answers.

Wow.

I’ll bow to your principal’s obviously successful experience curtailing tardies with this system at other schools. Tardies have been a MAJOR issue at every school where I’ve taught or administrator’d, but I just can’t shake the feeling that this seems a little Draconian.

A thousand questions come to mind — and I’m sure they were asked and answered at your school so they’re just rhetorical here:

* The administrator in me wants to know: Is someone keeping track of what color a kid is on? Else what’s to stop me from “losing” the yellow one when it’s about to be full, going to the office, and saying I just lost a green one in order to get another yellow one?

* The parent in me wants to know: Why do eight tardies go by before I’m notified of the issue?

* The teacher in me wants to know: Is there a limit to the “lateness,” or can a kid waltz into class with 5 minutes left and get dinged for a tardy only?

So many layers to this one I’m interested to see how it fares.

As the system gets more complex, you create a new class of criminal…

Well I’m very interested to see how your tardy policy plays out. This is always a major issue and I like the idea of the student owning the record-keeping responsibility. But as you insightfully pointed out, how the whole thing feels to students will depend solely on how the signatures are doled out by the teacher.

How’s the new tardy policy working out? Also wondering about the use of Moodle in the math classes, so how’s that going? What are you doing about the kids that don’t have internet access at home?

I’m with Peter Rock on this one. Time was, it was the nasty chermenz who stopped people in the street and demanded “Vere ah your peppers?” The next twit who goes on about Amerka “land of the free” will get raucous laughter from me. Colours? Levels? Passport? Tracking? If I wanted to get people from a young age accustomed to showing their id any time any “authority figure” demands it, accustomed to thinking in terms of coloured levels of categories for just about everything, accustomed to having everything about themselves tracked and logged, this is how I would do it. The idea that this policy could only be demeaning and insulting if poorly implemented has me rofl! If no-one protests at the very IDEA of it, then you will indeed have robot ants for students. (Missions accomplished, some cynics might say). I didn’t go to school in the States so I had to ask a colleague who did what the hell a “hall pass” is? We never had them in my school in my day. Oh, but I forgot, that’s not a valid argument, is it? ;-)

I think it may be a cultural issue.

How well do “rules” and “independent thinkers” play together?

There is some tension there, and depending on many (cultural?) factors, it could be possible to take different views.

My own suspicion is that, if you weren’t exposed to a large tardy problem (as in a significant percentage of the class showing up well after a lesson had started) that the above approach might seem overkill.