Think of this wiki as a shared online whiteboard. We can pool information using this wiki, making our learning and research accessible to everyone. Play around with this wiki: Notice how you can add comments to a page, see what people have changed, and edit all the text.

The above paragraph is pro forma reassurance from PBWiki, folks. Now we're jumping into the pool.

Standards-Based Grading, or SBG from here on, is also known as "grading linked to standards," and "grading for learning." (Thanks to EI for the new term and three-letter acronym!)

What I have in mind is to kick off our examination of standards-based grading with a warm up discussion wherein we analyze a couple of grading situations that made the papers. In SBG Warm Up Draft 1, let's look at the articles separately, comment on them, then compare the situations and draw some conclusions about what's being described in the articles.

In SBG Discussion 1, after the Warm Up, we'll talk about what grades are for, who needs to know what grades tell about a student, and what grades should and should not describe. In SBG Discussion 2 and subsequent discussions, we'll continue with our examination of SBG and apply what we've learned from wiki participation.

If it will suit the participants, I'll ask questions here and there to bring out additional information and insight. If you promise to go easy, I may even play Devil's Advocate.

For our comments, let's use "normal" format, "Verdana" for the font, and "small" for size.

Got your life jackets on? Let's go to SBG Warm Up: Draft 1 (below) for further instructions, then bounce back here to read the articles and make notes for the observations you will write in SBG Warm Up: Draft 1.

We'll keep our drafts here so we can refer to earlier versions.