I personally have had no experience with TOPIC/ICON, but frankly, I'm terrified to teach it. Kevin said that he had a good experience with this as a teacher, but everyone I have ever talked to hated actually taking the class. I'm a tutor for Tech students, and I honestly hate the program from what I have seen as well. Thus far, comments on my students' papers are generic, impersonal, and overall not thought-out.
I think that the best thing that I can do as a future teacher under this program, albeit I am very worried about my students hating me for making them work under this program, is for me to try to make my experience as a Classroom Instructor AND Distance Instructor, or grader, or whatever the term is, as positive and personal as possible.
I think that this program would be much more manageable if the students were somehow ensured that their comments and grades would be personal, instead of simply being handed shortcut responses. I do think that it will be a struggle for me to read and analyze every paper that I am handed, but isn't that my responsibility when I take on this assistantship as a Graduate student?
I think that this program will give me a great experience that I can use when I teach high school in the future, but I think that I have to be very careful to manage my time well. The English program I am working on will only take me a year and a half, so everything will be pretty rushed. However, I believe that if I can effectively manage my time and responsibilities, I can put forth the required effort in grading students' papers so that hopefully they can have a more positive experience in TOPIC/ICON.
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Unlike everyone else, I didn't hate TOPIC. I didn't like it either, I was/am indifferent towards it. The only thing that ever really annoyed me was the generic comments that I got back. It seemed to me that the graders (or whatever you want to call them) just selected a comment out of a bank or something. I think that you have the key though. If you work to make each one personal and specific, I think that you will do tons better than those out there right now.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you would be the teacher I would want if I had TOPIC! I think that if you take time and show each person the condsideration you would want on your paper then you will be fine!! It will definitley help you in high school by preparing you to think of worthwhile comments instead of just fillers.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you care about the students and what they think about the system because some teachers out there could careless. I didn't take both either and I think I would have been in a world of hurt. I believe more teachers should think like you and actually care about the students rather then not caring.
ReplyDeleteJust enjoy the experience as much as you can. If you hate it, you grow. If you love it, you replicate it in the future. But either way, I think Lanham would say that, like langauge, just take pleasure in life and, specifically, take Topic with a grain of salt and enjoy being able to snack on Fritos while grading online.
ReplyDeleteI didn't use topic either, so I don't really have a ton to say about it. My boyfriend used it though, and his main complaints echoed the ones in class. The teacher he talked to had no control, and he didn't get grades on drafts before he had to submit the final copy.
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