@chickensaltash Best place would have been Chiang Mai or Phi Phi Island....Now to plan a outdoor ed trip there to study impacts of tourism 14 hours ago
One thing I’ve certainly heard thrown around the staff room is how much teachers hate correcting traditional tests and exams. I would fall into this category as well at times and would much prefer to complete rich assessment tasks that are an absolute pleasure to assess, but we are obligated at times to teach students in the traditional ways so that they are prepared for their final assessments and the format they will be conducted within.
Now given my dislike towards correcting them, I’ve been investigating a heap of different online test creation tools that provide instant feedback to the students and the teachers about what they do and don’t understand. Here’s the list of tools Ive compiled, with help to some of the people within my Twitter network. If your looking for a way to give instant feedback and cut through the pile of correction, why not set an online test? Or better still have your students create their own to give to others?
If you are looking for a more professional quiz creation tool then you cant go past Quiz Creator by sameshow. I purchased a copy last year and have been amazed at the types of questions you can create and the analysis it provides on the people who take the tests. You can find a couple of examples of tests Ive created using it recently here and here
Make A Quizallows users to create their own customised quizzes on the internet. Once created, These quizzes can then be sent to friends and family for them to take!
And a few others I havent had a chance to utilise as yet.
Its exam time at the moment and my students are busy studying up and asking all sorts of questions like, what format is the exam, how many pages is it etc. So with this in mind I decided torun an online revision session for my VCE Physical Education class using Tiny Chat.
Tiny chat has recently undergone a makeover and is now able to run audio, video and screen sharing all from within the chat window which requires no sign up. Simply click the button and it generates a room for you and then gives you options on how you want to invite others. The easiest way to invite people is by sharing the unique URL with your intended audience. In my case I used SMS Express to send an text message to my students containing the URL of the meeting and the time at which I would be available for questions.
The time soon arrived and to my suprise all of the members of my class were in the room. This gave us a great opportunity to review some of the key content and discuss any questions relating to the format of the exam. The great thing is the students didn’t need to have a webcam or microphone to participate as they can simply respond via text, which was more than fine and probably worked better than having them all using webcams.
Before long we had notched up over an hour of question time and reviewed a large amount of key content that was to be assessed on the exam the next day, which to me was a brilliant outcome. So do I think that this revision session will improve the students exam grades? ……..Without a doubt. Tinychat rocks, check it out.
Now for the VCE Outdoor and Environmental Studies revision session on Wednesday night.
So I’ve been looking for a chance to use Etherpad for quite some time now and last week proved to be the perfect opportunity. I had just organised a guestspeaker to appear via Skype in my senior Outdoor Education so we needed to come up with a series of questions to ask him for the following week. So I created an Etherpad and sent it to all of my students via the simple URL it gives you. The best thing is you don’t need to sign up in order to start contributing to the ‘pad’.
Anyway my students received the URL and got to work creating a series of questions that they we could then ask during the interview. The ability to see each others work update in real time meant that there was no double up in the questions. It also seemed as though they motivated each other to contribute, with comments such as ‘how many have you created’ flowing around the room. Within minutes my class had created a high quality document that they could then print and use in their preparation for the interview. Click to see Our Pad.
So why is this better than a bit of poster paper and a class brainstorm activity?
Well digital text is moveable, editable, mashable something a poor old poster would struggle to do. The winner is in the ability to collaborate with people from the other side of the world as if they were in the same room. We tested this out when our guest stopped in and watched the questions he was about to be asked, be created. This proved to be a major motivator in the brainstorming process as the students were writing and rewriting their questions to ensure they would be well received by Eric.
An amazing free web2.0 tool with incredible power for collaboration and too top it all off…. its so easy.
In year 7 Physical Education we are learning about the different body systems that allow us to complete physical activity. This week we started looking at the role the circulatory system has in the body with a focus on heart rate and what happens during exercise to allow us too participate. To demonstrate this I decided to complete an activity in a Google docs spreadsheet that would graph the change in heart rate over a period of time. This is what we did:
The kids simply loved it and with the data being displayed visually, we were able to enter a much deep conversation about how heart rate is effected by physical activity. For a step by step run down of how I set it up you can check below.
1 - Created a Google doc spreadsheet that had all students in the class and 5 columns for them to enter in they heart rates at 5 different intervals. 2 - Created a graph on a separate sheet that would pull down all of the data from the 5 columns and display it as a line graph. 3- Then sent this document to all of the students via their Gmail accounts. 4 – Each student logged in on a computer and opened the spreadsheet and found their names. 5- We started by taking a resting heart rate using the radial/carotoid pulse and entered this into the ‘pulse 1′ column. 6 - We then moved outside and completed a harvard step test for 3mins with the whole class working at the same intensity and with the same timing of up and down steps. 7 - We then took our pulse and entered this into the ‘pulse 2′ column. The students then directed their attention to the Interactive Whiteboard which was displaying the graph and watched as it updated in real time 8- Finally we went on to complete 3 more heart rate readings at different stages such as 1 minute, 3 minute and 5minutes after the harvard step test and entered these into the appropriate columns.
Today during my senior Physical Education class my students completed a test under exam conditions. The test was on the topic of ‘Biomechanics’ and to the naked eye it looked very much like one of the traditional tests I sat while I was at school. However look a little deeper and this exam was a little different; Here’s why…
In the days preceding the test, I scheduled SMS messages to be delivered to the students phones that contained questions requiring them to employ a series of higher order thinking skills, such as evaluation and synthesis. It was clear that the ability to reflect on the learning process of a period of days was a real advantage to the questions the final product.
The next difference was that some of the questions required the students to seek outside help. In the example below students had to SMS a friend who would then choose a random sport and send this back. The students then used this sport as the basis for their responses. In my opinion this question is more aligned with the real world, in that the students had to be able to apply their knowledge and understanding into a situation that was determined by a friend as opposed to a concrete question on a piece of paper.
3. The final difference was in that I encouraged the students to bring in their Mp3 players that had been pre-recorded with a series of student created podcasts of all the lower order elements of blooms taxonomy such as definitions and discussions. They then used these throughout the test as prompts to assist them in responding to the higher order questions.
Overall a very successful approach that has certainly proved to me that the powers of reflection & collaboration in the learning process can have a dramatic effect on the quality of the work presented. Well done students.
Friday the 15th May saw the annual Innovation Showcase at the Crown Palladium in Melbourne. It was an absolutely excellent event that clearly followed the theme of linking educators to share innovation. The first session I attended was ”Flat Classroom Walls” by Anne Mirtschin, which can be summed up as simply brilliant. Her ability to connect her students with others from all around the world is nothing but inspirational.
I also was fortunate enough to be asked to present a session in the afternoon on the use of Mobile Phones and SMS in the classroom which seemed to be well received by both the online and face to face audiences. You can find a copy of the presentation here; http://mrrobbo.wordpress.com/innovation-showcase/
After a fantastic day connecting with lots of like minded professionals we moved into the closing keynotes with one in particular raising a few very interesting points that will require some further thinking. So here’s what I was left with after Mark Pesce’s Closing Keynote;
Do you fill a bucket or light a flame, when it comes to teaching your students? This is a very interesting way to think about the way in which we go about educating our students. What’s your take?
The second point was demonstrated using my favourite cartoon South Park. The video proves that no matter what rules we enforce, or systems we put in place to prevent students utilising ‘banned’ tools during school time, the fact of the matter is they will continue to do so. As a teacher this reinforces the need to consider exactly how the tools that the student’s embrace, could be introduced into the classroom to improve learning and engagement. If more of this thinking was to occur in our classrooms we might start to see a few more candles being lit along the way.
Recently I was desigining an opening page to the ‘How Fit Are Wii’ program. I needed something that summarised the intent of the program with a real quick snapshot. So I decided to copy the program outline into Wordle to see what it came up with.
The result was simply brilliant as it clearly emphasised the key elements of the program with words such as fitness, students, learning all appearing quite prominant. After seeing this, I decided I would do the same with my senior physical education curriculum document. The result can be found below;
Now this proved to be a really valuable exercise as it highlighted the concepts I have been spending much more of my time around this year and pointed out some of the others I would be sure to add a little bit more emphasis towards in the coming weeks. It was also refreshing to see the the word ‘learning’ appear as one of the largest letters in the wordle.
For sometime now I’ve been thinking of a genuine reason to use SMS in the classroom to gather responses from a wider audience and today was the perfect oppurtunity. After reading a blog post from Andrew Douch who completed a similar activity in his class last week, I set out to introduce a version of the activity into my VCE Outdoor & Environmental Studies class.
At the moment we are learning about the different values people demonstrate towards nature. So with this in mind I got the students to choose 3 people who they could SMS who would be likely to respond quickly within our scheduled classtime. They then had 3 questions they needed to include in their SMS with only one question asked per person. Chatter soon picked up as students begun talking about who they would message. In no time at all the students had sent all 3 messages out to their targets and the answers started rolling back in. It was fantastic to see the students level of engagement in what could have simply been completed in a standard question and answer format on a piece of paper.
So why do I know for sure that this approach is better than the traditional. Here’s my thoughts;
The students were thinking about who would be likely to help them complete their questions, which ultimately helped them identify their own Personal Learning Networks. Which is helpful for them establishing who they could contact for help in the future.
As answers started rolling in, they were sharing their responses with each other, comparing them and taking notice of the similarities and differences among the responses. This lead to a great level of discussion about the concepts the activity was hoping to cover.
The follow up discussion was much more richer than what had taken place in the past as I believe each of them was able to bring some sort of vested interest into the conversation
The students were able to use SMS to collectively gather responses from a wide range of people from outside the school community. As a result the broad range of views enabled a more diverse range of discussions to take place.
How else could we be able to gather 50+ responses within the course of an hour that represented the views of the general public.
The engagement levels of the student group were through the roof.
After they had received all of their responses the students then added them one by one into a Google form so that we could view them as a complete list. The results were then feed into an activity that required the students to utilise the Flip cameras to act out and record a series of skits that will be uploaded to Youtube at a later stage.
It has recently occured to me that a tool I really take for granted is certainly the most important in my current teaching practice. Ive been utilising Skype now for well over a year since making the switch from MSN. The reason I decided to change was to create an instant message account that could be used completely for teaching and connecting with my students. After signing up I logged on in class and showed the students how I could make calls for free to other skype accounts, I then wowed them when I rang the school office asking to speak to the principal.
Now it was no suprise that as soon as I got home a heap of the students had downloaded skype and added me to their contact lists. Word soon spread throughout the student cohort that ‘Skype Was Cool’ and before long the majority of my students were online.
Instantly the conversations in the after hours happened and as my skype account is always open students have the ability to instantly contact me in regards to their school work. There are also the times when they just want to have a chat and to me this is the most important feature. The repoire I have been able to establish through conversations I have with students outside of school hours has been excellent. The ability for students to seek answers to their questions at all hours has also been very powerful. Whether its asking if they have to bring a change of clothes for a prac session tommorow or a complex eplanation of a homework question it can be done with the help of skype. Some of them have even started asking me questions about subjects I dont even teach, which again proves the power of being connected.
Anyway below is a chat transcript from a senior student in my Outdoor & Environmental Studies subject which occurred at 9.30pm. Without skype and instant messaging how else would she have been able to seek an answer so quickly?
After seeing a tweet from @tombarret about how you can use google calendar to send reminders about events on your calendar to your phone via SMS. In his tweet he mentioned how he uses it to remind him of his yard duty or other activities. As I’m usually extremely busy (as we all are) I have been known to forget the occasional yard duty or important lunch time meeting (haven’t we all) so decided to head to www.google.com/calendar to set it up for myself.
Watch the video below to see how you go about setting up this simply brilliant tool for your own reminders. The end of the video also shows what the SMS looks like when it reaches your device. Now think of the possibilities of this with your students……
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