Instructify

Have a rubric? Build a rubric. Need a rubric? Take a rubric. Those traditional values imparted to us by the take-a-penny tray at 7-11 are still valid today, as evidenced by the Rubric Machine.

From David Warlick, who brought you the awesome Son of Citation Machine, The Rubric Machine lets you create custom rubrics online and share them with other teachers across the Web. You can set the objectives and point values for each performance indicator, and when you’re done you have a shiny new rubric you can post on the Web.

If you want to use or adapt somebody else’s rubric, you can do that, too. Rubrics created on Rubric Machine are licensed under Creative Commons and are free to use for non-commercial purposes. That means you can grab all the rubrics you need without snatching extra pennies from the take-a-penny tray. –BILL FERRIS

Rubric Machine

Related Stuff:
Reveal Your Sources: Son of Citation Machine
Setting the Standard: Rubistar
The Real Thing: Authentic Assessment Toolbox

“Like I’m ever gonna need to do this in the real world!” Boy, you’d love to show that kid in third period physics a thing or two.Time to reach for the Authentic Assessment Toolbox, a free online guide to “creating authentic tasks, rubrics and standards for measuring and improving student learning.” You can download sample lessons and rubrics for most subjects at all K-12 levels. Toolbox creator Jon Mueller covers the What, Why, and most importantly How of creating assignments that harness more than students’ knowledge that “C” is the most likely answer on multiple choice tests.

So the next time a student whines about how useless an assignment is, you can say, “You’ll see how people use Newton’s laws of motion in tonight’s homework. Due tomorrow, smart guy.” –BILL FERRIS

Authentic Assessment Toolbox

When I was in school, I think the idea of the rubric was dismissed for the utilization of a simpler scale– ranging from “Great Job!” to “Please see me about this…” For the more progressive and discerning teachers of today’s educational systems, rubrics are used more widely and carefully. Teachers want to nurture their students’ creativity, certainly. Often times, you’ll assign creative projects so that students can show off their skills and demonstrate that they are learning all the while. But how do you properly grade such projects?

With rubrics, of course. Check out Rubistar, where you’ll be able to quickly find a rubric for your project based assignments in one of many examples available. You can also design your own using one of the easy templates. Rubistar offers a variety of customizable rubrics in an array of categories, including Oral Projects, Multimedia and Work Skills. Within each category, customizable rubrics range from Class Debate to Writing a Musical, so even if you have a project in mind but don’t know quite how to get it started, these will give you a base line.

Rubistar is free to use and is another great resource from 4Teachers.org, who also bring you QuizStar and TrackStar. Rubistar allows for you to integrate with both BlackBoard and Moodle, so you can directly interact with student via the web for your online course. If you’re totally unsure of what to do, the site offers a few tutorials to get you started. It’s tough to grade creativity, but rubrics will help give you a place to start. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

Rubistar