There are 3 fantastic articles: Converting photos of text into actual text using Google Drive, the importance of school leadership understanding the digital world and 33 digital tools for formative assessment.
This week we have an article about how multimedia storytelling can change people's perception and develop empathy, a post on a hybrid model of assessment, blending analog and digital tools, and a response to the OECD article that made the rounds a couple of weeks ago. Enjoy!
In this week's Digital Bytes there are articles on a variety of assessment tools, the benefits of social media for kids and apps and websites to help create movies and animation.
The "flipped classroom" is a way of describing instructional methods that invert the traditional model of learning where the teacher dispenses content to her or his students during lessons and then sends them on their way to complete problems and meaning-making at home.
In flipped instruction, students front-load the content outside of lessons, typically using technology like video or interactive modules prepared by their teachers, and then participate in problem-solving and other consolidation activities during face-to-face time with the teacher.
The topic has been written about a lot lately as the lightning rod for the movement, Khan Academy, have certainly raised the profile of this style of learning some people think for the better, others for worse. No matter what you think about flipped instruction, the movement has resulted in a new crop of assessment tools for teachers so that they can collect data (which is critical in a flipped classroom) on student's understanding as they are learning and I'll highlight a few here.
Quizletis a flash-card based tool that lets teachers and students create sets of cards and then quiz in a variety of ways. Teachers can set up groups where they can keep track of the progress of students. The site also has social media features where members of Quizlet can upload their sets of cards and find those uploaded by others.
Brain Genieis an environment that contain video learning modules for Math and Science. Teachers can set-up their classes and set goals for the students. After each module, students can check their progress by answering questions related to the content. Their progress is tracked and is then monitored by the teacher so they can pinpoint areas requiring further support for their students.
Class Dojois a little different than all the rest of these as this site allows a teacher to easily leave formative feedback on behaviors for each student they set-up in their class. Each student is displayed as an avatar and you can set-up a customized list of behavioral criteria in two categories, positive (participating in discussion, helpful, organized, on task, etc) and negative (late, homework not done, disruptive, off task, etc).
From your laptop or any mobile device, you can see your class, and simply tap on a student avatar to leave some feedback. All the feedback is logged for the students and kept as an "overall performance" rating based on how many positive VS negative ratings they get.
Reports are easily generated and stored as PDF or emailed direct to parents.
Socrativeallows you to set-up instant feedback from your students on questions that you present orally, write on the board, or present to them via the electronic quizzing function. The students log in to the teacher's online "room" using their secret number and once there wait for the teacher to ask a question. They can respond on any device with an internet connection such as a smartphone, iPod, tablet, or laptop computer. The teacher's interface displays a live record of the responses and with the quiz function, keeps a report that the teacher can use as an assessment grade.
Quizzes are available from sources already made like these from the Times Educational Supplement for GCSE Science. Quizzes can also be set up by a teacher either in Socrative or using an Excel template.
Once created quizzes are easily shared between people simply by using a code that goes along with the quiz.
Socrative also has a "space race" game where individuals or teams of students can race against each other as they answer questions correctly. Another nice feature is the "Exit Ticket" that asks students to reflect on their learning for the day. The teacher can see the report and get a sense on how the students are feeling after the lesson so they can plan to follow up with those who are less confident about their learning.
So, whether you decide the "flip" is for you, these tools can make it easier for you to provide meaningful feedback to students more frequently and with less effort grading allowing you to target students for support.
It's easy to use Google Forms to collect information for surveys and manage sign-ups, but you can also use them for assessments. Geography students are using the Flubaroo script installed in a Google Form to create ten question quizzes for each other.
We spent most of a double period creating the quizzes that they will share with everybody in the class. The link to the quiz can be shared by email or posted to a class website or the quizzes themselves can be embeded on a page. When students take the quiz, the script checks their answers against the key created by the author of the quiz and returns their results immediately via email.
The teacher of the class meanwhile decided to create a Google Form to collect peer feedback of newspaper articles that were written by students in the class. He simply turned his paper-based question guide into a form. This will allow him to gather all the responses in one spreadsheet so he can easily look them over.
