Making A Difference

Holidays, especially shorter ones, can increase the evaluation queue by days. Fewer projects are delivered, but unsurprisingly the number of students and teachers who take the time to give student feedback also take a drastic dip.

This is to celebrate the group of fine students who neither dropped out nor drooped during their holiday in April, but continued to deliver evaluations and dole out good advice to their fellows. In alphabetical order according to their Khan Academy nicknames:

Admiral βeasin (peer evaluator)
Alyce Westerfield
Bluebird
Element118
Jonathan Bagwell
Lin Gh. (peer evaluator)
Lone Ninja Studios
Nicholas
pinkpuppy22

These students have helped remove 1009 projects from the queue during a 10 day period. That's more than 20% of the project influx during a normal week day when the schools are open! The peer evaluators have assisted in giving thorough feedback on 126 project evaluations, and have helped look over all those 1009 evaluations to check that they were correct. A special thanks to the peer evaluators! Without them we would have to limit the number of students further.

As if that weren't enough, some of the students have given valuable feedback on the DGPE teaching material, helped report faulty evaluations and inappropriate behavior or have gotten involved in collaborations creating tools to help evaluators do their job faster and more consistently. It has been a big boost to see you work towards better evaluations, to notice the improvements you made, and not the least, see that the students on the receiving end often took the advice to heart. It's wonderful to see that some of you are taking what you have learned to new heights by creating useful programs or working towards an Instructor certificate. You've made, and you are making a Difference.

A few students signaled interest in the project, but did not find the time to deliver enough work to qualify for a certificate of participation. Welcome back for a new attempt later! And, to all of you who helped handle the majority of project evaluations during Spring break, even if it were only one: “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” (Dalai Lama)

---- Chris Rennick, Evan Lewis, and Inger Hohler