Background to this Site:

This site was born of a need to help teachers take the next step in the Digital Education Revolution in the NSW Department of Education. It is hoped it will become a valuable resource for teachers to use when designing assessment tasks incorporating digital activities. It is based on the concept of Tight~Loose~Tight.

Tight~Loose~Tight was a phrase adapted from leadership theories to  provide a construct for planning for the 21^st Century pedagogical environment.

While Tight~Loose~Tight is a construct that can be applied to many aspects of planning school (as explained patiently to me by Roger Pryor), this site speciffically focuses on structuring assessment tasks within its framework.

For this purpose it can be described as:

1. TIGHT – Tight and clear expectations and strong scaffolding to support the  Board of Studies and Curriculum requirements.
2. LOOSE – Giving students permission to be creative and innovative using a variety of tools and processes. This facilitates student choice in the demonstration of learning outcomes.  
3. TIGHT – Tight and clear rubrics with explicit and clear criteria  give a strong focus to the demonstration of learning. This includes ensuring students have marking guidelines and are aware of the high expectations for quality of work, no matter what format they choose.

This site then is a repository of marking rubrics, student work samples,  teacher marking examples and how-to guides which focus on a variety of digital activities that can be used in the classroom. These resources are designed to work alongside existing assessment structures and tasks to provide opportunities for adoption of the construct of Tight~Loose~Tight.

Thank you to Roger Pryor for all his time and inspiration to help inform this project.

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How to use this site:

Each of the links on the right-hand side will take you to a page with an ePortfolio and links which contain:

• Marking rubric – these rubrics have non-KLA specific technical criteria and should be used in conjunction with existing assessment criteria which outline content required for the task. They are a scaffold for teachers to mark the technical aspect of presenting their learning in a task. The hope is that teachers can focus on helping students to concentrate on showing their learning, not just their technical skills.
• Student work samples and thier marking.
• Assessment task used for student work samples
• Ideas for use of this digital activity
• How-to guides for using software associated with many of the activities (see hyperlinks in explanation text)

To download the ePortfolio click on the Download button on each page and then save the resource onto your computer. Due to the file size, some files may take a while to open.

The ePortfolios have been made with Acrobat Pro Extend 9 – and it is advised that you use Acrobat reader 9 or later. If you do not have this on your computer you will not be able to view and use the documents as they have been designed. Click on the button below to download the latest version.

As more student work samples and tasks become available, this website will continue to develop and grow.