Socrative

This was originally written for teachers at my school and shared with them November 28.

We had a student stop by 125 and ask what the name of the site with the little rocket ships for answering questions that Mrs. Le used in history.  He wanted to use it in his math class. I think it’s great that the student was able to see the flexibility of the resource and that it could be used in other classes.  I thought I’d share it with everyone in case you are looking for something different to do as we head into December.

The answer is socrative.com  Socrative is basically a clicker type app/website that collects students responses in a variety of ways. You do not need to book chromebooks because it works just as well on any devices the students have - it is very mobile friendly.

Here’s a video that briefly describes what socrative does.

Socrative.com is an easy on line tool that you can use in your classroom with students for quick check-ins, quizes, exit tickets or what socrative calls space races (the one with the rocket ship).  

Reports are collected and can be emailed to you.  Quizzes can be done either teacher paced or student paced.  In “Quick Question” you can poll the class and find out where the class stands on an issue, or with their understanding of a concept.  I haven’t used Exit Ticket at all, so I can’t speak to that one.

I’ve been using the space race in my classes.  I create a quiz (in manage quizzes) before class based on work students had been doing.  In class I login to socrative, click space race, choose my quiz and the number of teams I want to have.  I then break students up into teams and have them compete against each other to answer the questions.  They login using my class room number (assigned by socrative).  One device per team.  As they answer questions correctly, their rocket moves across the screen (I put it up on the data projector).  They enjoy the competition and get pretty excited.

I’ve also done this with new material.  Students are expected to research the answers while they do the race.  This works best if teams can have 2 devices - one for research and one for the race, but it can be done in different tabs on one device.

Socrative allows for multiple choice, true/false or short answer type questions.  The short answer can get a bit tricky because the student answer has to match yours exactly (capitals, spelling).  I try to avoid this type of question.

If you want help getting started with socrative let me know.  It’s not difficult to pick up, but it is easier if you play around with it the first time using more than one device - one as teacher, one as student.

Mystery Skype

This was originally written for my school's weekly staff newsletter, Bear Essentials, November 22, 2013.

One of the great things about going to a large conference with a colleague is you can divide and conquer - each person goes to a different session then shares over lunch or dinner.  At ECOO, one of the sessions I didn’t attend was on Mystery Skypes.  But even though I didn’t see it, I’ve learned quite a bit about it over the past week because Sarah went to the session and was inspired to try it. (Skype is a free video calling service on line.)

The idea behind a mystery Skype is that you connect your class to another class somewhere else in the world and each class tries to figure out where the other is located.  It is a great way to start talking about location, weather, or culture.  It inspires curiosity and engagement.  It forces the students to ask specific questions that will help them solve the mystery of where the other class is.  It also forces the class to think about where they are in the world, and how it might be discovered by another class.  Excellent option for getting students thinking about perspectives or point of view.

Over the past week, Sarah set up 2 mystery Skype sessions with 2 different classes.  The first was only a mystery for Sarah’s class, as they skyped with a friend of hers at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.  The class is studying the holocaust and creating a museum to demonstrate their learning.  They skype session was able to give them access to an expert to expand their research.  Sarah’s second class will do a mystery Skype with a First Nations class as both classes are reading The Rez Sisters play in 3U English. In this case, both classes are in the dark about the other’s location.

But mystery skype is not the only way to use skype.  There is a website with ideas for using skype in your classroom (https://education.skype.com/‎) that suggests using skype to collaborate with other classes around the world, to invite experts into your class or take a virtual field trip.  Here you can find all kinds of ideas for using skype in your class (experts, lessons, topics, classes looking for a connection).  There is also a skype blog, twitter feed and facebook group if you want to see what others are doing.

Update, after this was put in Bear Essentials.

See Sarah's reflection on her first Skype session with her friend at the Holocaust Centre. Her reflection on the second Skype session should follow soon.

Twitter Experiment in class

Yesterday I decided I’d inject a little bit of digital citizenship and connectedness into my grade 9 geography class.  We were talking about ecological footprints, so in class I logged into my @ODSSUnger twitter account and sent two tweets.  We composed the tweets together (OK, I did it, but I did it in front of them and got their input) in class.

The first one was fairly general: “My gr9 geog class wants to know what you do to reduce your ecological footprint #UngerCGC1P”  This is not my PLN twitter account, and I only have 43 followers (most of which are Orangeville businesses that just follow anyone/everyone in Orangeville with a twitter account), so I also retweeted it on my PLN twitter account hoping for more feedback.  

One response to this tweet was

From this we were able to discuss how this would help reduce his footprint.  How many different areas this would affect of his footprint.  We also talked about how this would be possible in the winter months.  The class seemed to think he must have a greenhouse whereas I thought he likely froze or canned his produce.  So we tweeted him back to see. We will (hopefully) look at his response on Monday.

We also sent a tweet to our Mayor Adams:

This was good in terms of giving the class something to talk about that was local.  Which one they thought was most significant, what each meant and how it affected our footprint and land use.

I appreciated that the students could see what we were talking about in class was something that other people were thinking about and focused on.

The added bonus was in a couple replies to Mayor Adams’ tweet.  

These two tweets allowed us to discuss point of view and bias. We looked at the profiles of each of the people and discussed how their backgrounds and professions may affect their view. This was all outside of my "lesson plan" but really got the students thinking and discussing with real life examples.

Since then there has been a discussion between Mayor Adams and Chris Halliday on twitter that I can’t wait to show my class.  I love that asking a fairly simple question on behalf of my geography class has blossomed into an interesting discussion that has moved beyond my room, but that my students still get to see it.

This little experiment of mine resulted in a few different good discussions and teachable moments that would not have happened had I not reached out beyond my class.

We got to talk about what I thought were good twitter etiquette guidelines. And as a class we wrote thank-you tweets to the people who responded.

I am thinking about getting the students to do a little side research about the EAB issue and what the students think the town should do about an arborist.

This is not something I have tried before, but feel fairly good about how it went and will try again.

What have you done to bring “real world” examples into your class?

What bonus ‘teachable moments’  have you had this week?

And if you would like to share how you've reduced your ecological footprint please tweet to @ODSSUnger and use #UngerCGC1P. Thanks!

GAFE and feedback

The following post was written for Bear Essentials (my school’s staff weekly newsletter).  I have a regular column “On-line with Lisa.” This was a guest post written by David Harvey, and English teacher at ODSS. This post was originally written for the newsletter the week of April 12, 2013.

I am a better teacher this semester than every semester before it.  This is not hyperbole, but a direct result of using ugcloud.  ugcloud is a board-supported cloud-based (no hard drive required) service where I create documents in an excellent, auto-saving word processor (google drive), share documents with students and colleagues, and where I receive and provide feedback on all of my students’ work through our ugcloud email addresses.  When I’m working with student writing, ugcloud becomes interactive and allows me to highlight everything from specific words to particular punctuation to entire paragraphs and make corresponding comments in the side margin.  The student sees both the highlights and the comments.  When the student clicks on either the highlighted section or the comment in the margin,  the corresponding information is highlighted.  There is a very concrete and clear link between their writing and my comments.  ugcloud also allows me to make an overall comment on a piece of writing which I often do when I’m done reading it.  

My teaching has become accelerated through ugcloud as it has allowed me to give students more precise, concrete, full-sentence feedback by the mid-term than I can usually manage in an entire semester.  The interim report, which often causes me great concern due to a lack of information, caused me no stress whatsoever this year, as at that point, I’d read and thoroughly commented on 6 pieces of formative writing in my 1D class and 9 in my 4U class.  The cloud makes things more efficient and effective, and while part of this is my ability to type faster than I write, another part of this is the closing of the feedback loop.  

We know that the shorter the time is between the work and the feedback the more likely the learning and, with the cloud, students no longer have to be in class (or even in the same country) to receive feedback, nor do they have to wait for me to mark 30 pieces of work before they get theirs back.  I mark them in the order in which they’re submitted and they can watch me work with their document in real-time.  As a result of the speed of things, I have never had a clearer understanding of my students’ abilities, nor taught them each so much on such an individual basis so early in a course.  I can open up their email folders and instantly see everything they’ve written, the order in which they submitted it, all of my feedback, and then each keystroke of editing the student has made while applying their new understanding.  

This is a game-changer.  While I’ve never accepted technology as the great saviour of education - and still don’t - I’ve never discovered and used a technology with such great benefits to both myself and my students.  I haven’t collected a single piece of paper from either class this semester - not one.  More importantly,  I’ve seen a level of improvement  in their work by midterm that I usually hope to see by the end of a course.  

I’ve witnessed what I consider three legitimate educational revolutions in my 14 year career, and this is the most recent and the most powerful one in terms of what works best for me and what works best for students.

"I just want a credit"

This post was started in November 2012...
My grade 12 students are unengaged.  I cannot do anything to inspire them or engage them.  I've tried getting them to find answers to historical questions on their own, using their own devices, class iPads, laptops and textbooks.  The questions are 'boring.'  I've tried getting them to create questions on a topic on their own to research.  They sit with blank pages in front of them.  I've tried engaging them with music, art, the guillotine, science, religion.  Other than a knee jerk anti-religion rant from a few it was blank stares or more interest in their own conversations which they are unable/unwilling to give up no matter what we do in class.
So, I tried to have a discussion with them about why they were taking this history course.  "I need a credit to graduate."  But why this course?  "I've already taken all the tech courses I can take."  OK, so you need a credit.  Is there anything else you might be able to get out of this course?  "Huh?" Try again: what do you have to do to get the credit?  "Show up every day and get pass."  How does one pass?  "Show up everyday and do the assignments."  There is a distinct lack of familiarity with the word learning.  They don't want to do it.  Or maybe they don't know how to do it.  These students are in their last year of school and they have figured out how to get through the system, but not how to learn.
One of the great ironies I find in my grade 12 course is that my "Big Idea" for the course is "Knowledge is Power."  The focus is actually on the relationship between knowledge and power, because often in history the case is that the person with power lacks knowledge or the people with knowledge lack power.  They don't see the irony ~ if they remember what the word means after they finished their literary devices test in English class.
My plan for the next unit is to divide the class into 4 groups and have each group tackle an -ism from the 19th Century (nationalism, romanticism, imperialism, industrialism).  I am doing a brief introduction of each of the -isms before they start.  They need to develop some questions to focus their study of the -ism.  I will need to approve their questions before I want them to get too far.  We are going to work at creating various types of questions.  They are going to have to learn about the -ism and its relationship to the Knowledge is Power big idea.  They are going to have to create something that will demonstrate their learning and share their learning with the rest of the class.  I want to be excited - I was when I started planning this in the summer.   I want them to be engaged in their learning, I want them to be excited.  I don't think this is going to happen.  My fear is that after 2 weeks I will give up.  They will not have done anything substantive.  I will have 'helped' (given) them formulate questions.   I will have found research for them to answer their questions.  A few might have a couple basic definitions or timelines of the events pertaining to the -ism.  Even fewer might have some understanding of the significance of the -ism on the time period.  One or two may have attempted to make a connection to knowledge is power.  Someone in a group may have started to create a prezi with the definitions and/or timeline.  It will be quite zoom-y and will be very colourful, but it won't be done and it won't demonstrate deep thought.

Update: They did get it done.  It took them 3 days to believe that I actually wasn't going to to be "teaching" them anything.