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Hacking College Admissions

Inspired by a Washington Post article comparing the college admission process to the Hunger Games, Mark Barnes offers three hacks that can revolutionize this process.

The message we inadvertently send: A prestige acceptance is better than a joyful childhood. — Brennan Barnard

Three ways to hack the college admissions process

1 – Eviscerate the GPA – If academic scholarships are to be awarded, they should be based on a portfolio of artifacts, interviews, and feedback that truly provide evidence of performance and achievement.

2 – Ignore colleges who refuse to carefully review portfolios — It’s not difficult. With digital portfolios like FreshGrade, a web and mobile platform that empowers students to take their learning with them forever. Now, reviewing a body of work is a mouse click or finger swipe away.

3 – Embrace colleges that are student centric environments – not exclusive, we’re-better-than-you or you’re-lucky-to-be-here country club schools.

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    Hacking Assessment: How to Improve Learning and Cure a Stomach Ache

    Kerry Gallagher’s daughter had a stomach ache. As a longtime educator and mother, Kerry is well equipped to handle a 7-year-old’s aching tummy, but this one was a little different.

    She gave herself a 90. That 90 made her stomach ache. It isn’t her teacher’s fault. Maybe it is my fault. I’m her mom and I knew how to play the grades game in school.

    In the Hack Learning podcast episode embedded above, teacher, digital learning specialist, and mom Kerry Gallagher and Hack Learning creator Mark Barnes share some simple ways that both teachers and parents can eliminate labels and inspire children to think about learning, without the hindrance of a grade.

    What parents and teachers can do tomorrow

    1 — Gallagher and Barnes suggest that parents emphasize the value of learning over grades to their children. Tell your child that the process of learning and the joy of exploration are the most important things-much more important than a grade.

    2 — Teachers should invite students to assess their own learning, while discouraging labels. Any sort of number or letter grade attached to the activity after self-assessment can undermine the learning experience.

    3 — Make learning inspirational and fun. If the activity and the assessment do not bring joy, rethink both.

    For more from Kerry Gallagher, check out Why Our Grading System Is Failing Our Kids, on her Start With a Question blog. Don’t miss Kerry’s tweets on Twitter @KerryHawk02.

    Share your own success with self-assessment by your student and/or your child, in our comment section below and on Twitter at #HackLearning.

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    8 Takeaways From Hacking Assessment

    8 Takeaways From Hacking Assessment

    By Melissa Pilakowski

    Starr Sackstein’s Hacking Assessment not only revolutionizes education, but it gives step-by-step instructions on how to do it. That’s what makes this book so powerful.

    Not only does Starr describe her classroom, but she also gives some strategies that readers can start implementing tomorrow. The infographic above outlines eight key takeaways from the book.

    What I especially liked in the book was Starr’s description of her process of “going gradeless” in her school that requires grades. That’s certainly the boat that I’m in, and that most teachers in America are in, too. But she provides details on how she still met her school’s requirement for a “grade” through student conferences.

    The strategies of conferencing with students and teaching them to grade themselves are two directions I’m following in the coming months.

    Going gradeless will be a process for me. I won’t get there overnight, but my goal now is to “grade less”—to focus more on giving narrative feedback during the process, to conference more with students about final grades on papers, and to focus on students meeting standards rather than earning that A.

    Are you going gradeless, or even shifting the conversation about learning? Please tell us how.

    Melissa Pilakowski is an 11-12 English/Language Arts teacher in Valentine, Nebraska, as well as a passionate lover of language, technology, and gaming in the classroom. Follow her on Twitter at @mpilakow and read her latest adventures in teaching at .

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    Hacking Class Participation: 5 Ways to Engage Every Single Student

    Class participation is critical to successful learning. Sadly, we often go at it the wrong way.

    When we’re engaged in something, we do better at it. That’s as true of learning as it is anything else: an engaged student is more likely to learn and succeed than a disengaged one. Technology can play a huge part in this: motivating, involving, inspiring. — TeachKit.net

    What To Do Tomorrow

    As Mark Barnes explains in the Hack Learning podcast episode embedded above, the best way to engage even shy students and reluctant learners, so your class participation balloons to 100 percent is to use a backchannel-a digital discussion platform.

    The easiest way to digitize class participation to create a conversation with a simple online tool like TodaysMeet, Twitter or another social network.

    Put students on desktops, laptops, tablets, a mobile device or a combination of these. You can build your environment for a lively online, mobile chat in seconds and have all students “talking” in minutes. Here are a few easy steps to launch this hack immediately:

    1. Decide on a platform: TodaysMeet is easy, because it requires no registration. Just create a web address, like BarnesClassPeriod1, and TodaysMeet will set up a virtual chat room. If your students are on Twitter, use a hashtag to aggregate all tweets into the same Twitter feed–something like, #CivilWarChat. Be sure all students tweet to the hashtag.
    2. Explain the activity: At first students may think it’s weird to chat online, when everyone is in the same room. No need to tell them that your goal is 100 percent participation (don’t worry, they’ll participate). If you feel the need to justify the activity, tell students you want to create a digital record of they thoughts. You can easily archive the chat. TodaysMeet has a download chat feature and there are tons of tools to help you save your Twitter hashtag conversation (Storify) is a great one.
    3. Set simple guidelines: I had two basic rules for digital chats: 1-Students must contribute at least one original thought to the chat. 2-Students must respond to at least one other comment–this doesn’t mean simply retweeting it. If you have 25 students, this gets you 50 comments immediately. Now, that’s a powerful classroom chat.
    4. Discuss appropriate use: In a couple of minutes prior to beginning your online discussion, remind students of their responsibility when chatting in cyberspace. Here’s a very simple approach that applies to everyone, including adults. Tell students to ask themselves this question before posting any comment: “Would I say this in front of everyone in a public setting?” If there’s even a moment of pause before posting, then don’t do it.
    5. Teachers talk too: For there to be legitimate 100 percent participation in this amazing mobile conversation, teachers must post to the conversation. Students love this. Ask questions. Respond to individual’s comments. Add graphics, when possible. Identify comments you love and say simple things like “Yes!” or “Hmm., can you clarify this?” Oh, and don’t forget the occasional smiley face or thumbs up. Everyone enjoys emoticons.

    Tell us your “hacks” for inspiring 100 percent participation in your class.

    Check out other episodes in the Hack Learning Podcast — a Spreaker Staff Favorite.

    photo credit: Kathy Cassidy via Flickr