An eventful day in my personal PBGR adventure.
“BEEEEEEEEP,” the bell rang and I left first period, embarking across the walkway in the bitter March cold. Fortunately, I survived the trek… somehow. It was a Wednesday – advisory day. Great! I would rant about that genius idea, but that’s for an entirely different blog.
I popped into 307, grabbed my graded work, and headed optimistically towards the computer lab in 222. Why was I optimistic for something I despise so? It was a perfect opportunity for some “research.” I situated myself at one of the shiny new computers. They were impressive. Then again, most school expenses are when they play an active role in government subsidy.
The scanners struck me as efficient as well. Certainly, they were efficient wastes of time and funding. But this is all beside the point. Why talk about the hardware, when there is so much to say about the software? Ironically, I know my way around the e-portfolio pretty well. I navigated to the site and logged in quickly, before anyone else had even pulled up Internet Explorer.
A new look greeted me as I found my way around the site. Everything seemed fine. Then, all the other 20-something students in the class started logging in. I tried to pull up my work, and molasses nearly started oozing from the monitor of the computer.
The confusing username/password system bamboozled students. If they can’t even log on at this point, what hope does the system have? Frankly, not much. Trying to explain the sudden slow-down, the supervisor for the period who labeled himself as, “just a science teacher who knows how to work the system,” (extremely official, I know) said there was probably just something being changed on the site, but it was obvious to anyone with more than half a brain that it was simply struggling with the spike in traffic.
Reluctantly, I did lower myself to uploading a single rubric. *gasp* Enough cynicism though. Let’s be serious.
When the 40 minutes were up, nearly 10 students uploaded nothing, and only a couple fewer failed to even gain access to their portfolio. That is not a very good percentage, especially considering the lack of guidance available and the rarity of openings for the scarce number of computer labs around the campus. Surely, this is a testament to the grim reality of the PBGR situation at
Have any of you out there reading experienced similar situations? Maybe you can touch on something I missed, or just relate.
4 comments:
"Walking across" is a joke. How about we stop buying those trees and start thinking about putting something above those damn walkways so we don't get soaked next time it rains. But wait, yeah that's right we're supposed to bring a change of clothes to school. More things to carry around besides my 10 pound back pack. I'm sure one of those trees costs about the same amount as something USEFUL that we actualy need. Who takes care of them anywaysss..NO ONE!.. PBGR's are also a joke. I'm having a hard enough time passing my classes and getting all my work done and I haven't even thought about those stupid things yet. Oh wait, I don't even know how to upload one or get into my account thing. Maybe our school should build the rest of the train tracks before speeding it's way around the corner. Tj your blog es muy bien!
PBGRs are nothing more than a way to prove that those who gradutate from high school deserve to graduate. But guess what...thats why we have teachers and grades and credits and required classes. The notion that we need anything else to get in the way is rediculous. No college admission person is going to want the added work of going through an eportfolio, which by the way, I still have no idea how to use. I don't have a single thing scanned in. All I have are some rebrics floating around somewhere from teachers who like this system about as much as the students do. Is it the government doesn't think our teachers are capable of teaching us properly? Or do they simply think making it more annoying to get everything done to graduate will somehow make us better students. Either way it is ridiculous. Eventually someone will have to realize how preposterous these new requirements are. I just hope it isn't too late. Hopefully this blog will be able to open the eyes of the administration and whoever else is a proponent of this system.
Also, I just wanted to mention not to try to look at this blog at school, apparently it has a reason to be filtered out.
PBGR. Produce Bureaucratic Graduates Rubric. The fact that PBGR's are ridiculous beyond comprehension can be put aside because the simple fact that only a select few teachers have even the slightest knowledge on the system. Not only do teachers have to constantly upload work onto their specific page, which none of them do, but students also need to know how to maneuver throughout the website, which none of them do. The PBGR's are an exact model of what our country is becoming. Instead of displaying creativity and our grasp of the high school criteria through some sort of...senior project, we our being pushed to follow a strict set of guidelines. Every advancement in history is because someone decided to break away from the guidelines. Thomas Edison was sick of candle wax, cavemen were sick of carrying meat and Bill Gates felt the need for a different operating system. In a country that has already dramatically slowed down in technological advances there is no need for high school criteria to further inhibit the creativity the future of America. Having a bureaucratic disposition towards business, inventing or any career is hurtful to that person and America. The PBGR's are the perfect example of what can go wrong with our nation if we become a bureaucracy. Those who would normally excel, begin to fail. Higher ups would be as oblivious as the people below them. And every last one of us would strive to meet an incomprehensible goal that would not even push forward the economy of America.
Nice TJ, looks like you forgot to point out some things though:
1: In order to pass some PBGRs, you would have to fail the actual assignment. So what good is passing the PBGR if you fail the paper or presentation?
2. Rhode Island is currently ranked dead last in the freedom it gives it schools. With this coming from the federal government, a blind man can see it's not that easy to give "freedom".
3. The class of 2008 has to do 24 PBGRs whereas the 2009 class has to do 48. The state really expects us to pull double the amount of PBGRs out of our asses in just one more year? On top of completing the now mandatory Senior Project?
4. PBGRs are supposed to standardize what is being learned and display that. The rubrics are confusing and entirely judgemental based on what the teacher consider to be "proficient". Not only that, but those "standard assignments" are only being completed by everyone in one school. And even then, not the same teachers are grading them, so what is the point?
5. The system has flaws, experienced glitches and will crash.
6. If it supposed to standardize highschool requirements, then why isn't the whole state doing it? And even then, every piece of work would have to be graded the same way, by the exact same teacher. Now, do they make exceptions and adjustments for those students not in the honors program? And if so, then do the honors students need to complete these objectives if other students don't have to meet the same criteria?
7. Another group of analysts reported that schools need more funding to better acomodate all students. That's obviously false. Sure, some school disricts do in fact need the extra support from taxpayers. However, in the case of Westerly, why should the taxpayers pay more money just to have the state and district turn around create more insane requirements to hold their students from graduating?
8. Lastly, if the whole point of the portfolio is to send off to colleges, then why do we need to add to it senior year? The work shown would be incomplete and in order to show academic excellence there is already the SAT and ACT as well as countless AP exams.
FYI: PBGR stands for Political Bullsh*t Graduation Requirement
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