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Progress Tracker Reflections

 Part of setting up my class with the Modern Classroom Project is a progress tracker. This worked well for my CS classes, since I follow the Code.org curriculum and they already have unit and lesson numbers. The biggest problem that I have is that both of my CS classes are around 40 students, and trying to display that many names in a way that everyone can see is challenging. Even with my large interactive tv screen, it can be hard to see everyone.

Another issue I had is that I would allow students to keep working on lessons while we were in the same unit, but often I'd have students who'd finish the work a week later than everyone else and be upset that their progress wasn't updated on the tracker. Code is a bit different with mastery checks because students do a project to prove mastery, and I'm not able to limit their access to that. As I'm writing that, I'm wondering if I can set up a multiple choice form for each lesson based on the project they are supposed to complete. It would require a bit more work on my end but it might be worth it for managing student mastery and save me time with grading. I'll need to look at the Code forums to see if people have made those already, I know there are some for some units. (Looking, this wouldn't be useful for the next unit because it's more paper based etc)

It's also been challenging in that to update it, I update Code on their rubric, then update Google Classroom with the rubric I input there, and then update the progress tracker. So it's been a lot of steps for me and I get overwhelmed with just 2 classes of 40 students. My biggest wish for that I guess is that Code integrated with Google Classroom so I could do it all from one screen, but I know that's a lot to ask.

While I'm writing all of this, I basically feel like I won't use the progress tracker anymore ha. But I will keep using the grading rubric and have students check their own progress on Google Classroom instead of adding extra work for myself. 

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