Teaching with Technology

Using educational technology to enhance the learning environment and increase student engagement!

December Mystery Post – Teaching with Technology

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Happy December! Holy moly, this semester has FLOWN by! I feel like I just shared my November Mystery Post and BAM! December is knocking on the door! So … what, oh what, will the topic of this month’s mystery post be? What technology tool or integration strategy will I share?? Hmmmmmm…

DRUMROLL, PLEASE…

The topic of the December Mystery Post is …FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT!

That’s right! I absolutely love formative assessment tools! Whether it’s Kahoot, Quizizz, Quizlet Live, Flipgrid, Head’s Up, QR Code review activities, or a quick “fist to five” to determine “where students are” in regard to their understanding of course content. Formative assessment is VITALLY important in my classroom, as I’m sure it is in your classroom as well. Teachers need to know how their students are progressing, what needs to be reviewed/reinforced, all of which can be addressed by good formative assessment.

If you’ve read Illuminate (thank you!) you know I ask this question, “did you get excited about formative assessment when you were a student?” I never thought as a teacher that my students would BEG for formative assessment – but they don’t think of games that encourage them to review content through competition, teamwork, use of cell phones, or memes as an “assessment.” It’s AWESOME!

What are your favorite formative assessment tools or strategies?

Thanks for reading 🙂

 

 

Back to School Planning: Kahoot Update

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Happy Sunday, all! I’m continuing today with my back to school planning series, and focusing on one of my favorite tools – I know I say that a lot! – Kahoot! The great people at Kahoot introduced a new game option on Twitter last week, and teachers around the world will love it!

 

When launching a Kahoot activity, teachers have the option to use “classic” or “team mode” as well as the following:

You’ll notice that “enable 2-step join” is listed as a game option. Turning this feature on will require students to jump through an extra hoop when they join a Kahoot game which will prevent (or at least drastically reduce the chances) random people from popping in your class activity!

I’m not saying that my students have suddenly appeared in another Kahoot game by typing random numbers as a game pin, and I’m not saying that they haven’t 🙂

As for the other game options – here’s a quick rundown of the features we use in my classroom:

–> Answer Streak Bonus — use it and love it!
–> Name Generator — we tried it once and my students much prefer to enter their own gamer tags (Check out Chapter 8 of Illuminate for more info on gamer tags!)
–> Podium — yup!
–> Randomize order of questions — we definitely use this option because we review content frequently in my classroom, and I don’t recreate a Kahoot every time we review that content!
–> Randomize order of answers — same as above 🙂 The point of reviewing the content we learn frequently is not to determine whether or not students can memorize which color goes with each answer option!
–> Enable 2-step join — super pumped about this one!
–> Display game pin throughout — most definitely! This is especially helpful for students who have wifi difficulty or come to class late
–> Show minimized intro instructions — nah. My students are QUITE familiar with the ins and outs of Kahoot
–> Automatically move through questions — nope. I do not use this feature because, depending on the responses from my students, I may spend more time discussing the content of specific questions to ensure understanding before we proceed.
–> Require players to rejoin after each Kahoot — nope. I’d rather not focus on “hey what was the pin again?” as we proceed through the class period!

What Kahoot game options do you use in your classroom?

Thanks for reading 🙂

Fabulous Updates to Google Forms

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Google has unveiled yet ANOTHER fantastic addition to the already wonderful Google Forms. Now, with the flip of a (digital) switch, teachers can view data by individual student or question, provide students with feedback on each question, grade subjective questions, AND award partial points per question! Woohoo!

To get started, create a Google Form and turn on the “quiz” feature through settings. Here are the options I chose for my quiz settings in Google Forms… notice that I uncheck the correct answers option and select the “release after review” option.

While in settings, be sure to choose “collect email address” in your options. This will allow your students to view their score and your individual comments on their responses.

To view the data from your quiz, select “responses,” where you will see a more useful selection of data-viewing options! You can choose to view the summary of the data, which provides a bar graph with question responses – this is not a new feature – or, you can view data by individual student or question. If you choose to view data by individual student, you will be able to provide specific feedback on each question and can share this information with your kiddos via email. If you choose to view information by question, you will be able to see how your students have performed on each question – this is PERFECT for formative (and summative) assessments!

By choosing to view data by question teachers can also award partial points for responses! I can’t tell you how many times teachers have asked me how to award partial points … Google came through!

This update for Google Forms is FABULOUS! I can’t wait to see what comes next!

Thanks for reading 🙂

 

New Formative Assessment Tool – Triventy

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I honestly have no idea how I stumbled upon Triventy … does that ever happen to you? It wasn’t Pinterest or Twitter, I don’t think it was in any newsletter I subscribe to. When I share tools I find with you,  I like to also show you how I found it. Hmm. Oh well! Be sure to add Triventy to your formative assessment arsenal! Here’s how it works in my classroom.

Triventy is a gamified formative assessment tool, similar to Kahoot or Quizizz. Teachers can create games and can easily share them with their students via link or through Google Classroom. Games can be public or private and teachers can search (and modify) existing public games to fit the needs of their students.

To create a FREE account with Triventy, make sure the slider is on “education” and not “events” on the home page.

Next, choose “sign up” and choose “sign in with Google.” Be sure to sign in with the Google account you use to access Classroom — if you want to be able to post Triventy games on Classroom, that is 🙂 I know I’ve said this before, but how awesome is it to be able to sign in/ sign up with Google and not forget another username and password?!

To create a quiz, simply select “create quiz” on the main screen. Triventy gives quiz creators the option to invite others to collaborate by adding quiz questions. This could make for an interesting class assignment!

When creating a quiz, teachers can determine how long students will be given to answer quiz questions, and can also add an image for the quiz. Teachers can add images for individual questions as well … if you choose to add an image to the quiz, that same image will be added to each question. If you’d like to change the image on individual questions, you’ll have to make that change while editing the questions. 

I think it’s fun to add my bitmoji to the test and question images 🙂

Triventy provides a quiz question option and a survey option. Teachers can also include hints for each question or a “did you know” fun tidbit of information to display at the end of the question.

 

Be sure to add Triventy to your formative assessment toolbox!

Thanks for reading 🙂

 

Google Form Formative Assessment- Do You Understand?

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Do you remember the formative assessment platform, Let’s Geddit? It was fabulous … aGoogle Formnd then it went away. I was so sad. I’ve been looking for an alternative that was as simple as Let’s Geddit, and I’ve found many great platforms. However, I’ve been looked for something that requires little setup and great data. I should have known … a great Google Form and Spreadsheet are the answer to my problems!

Here’s what I did…

–Create a new Google Form and link the Form responses to a new Google Sheet

 

–Include at least the following questions:
–>Name (obviously)
–>Class Period … unless, of course, you are a self-contained classroom
–>Inclulde a question that asks students to gauge their level of understanding
1. Green – I totally understand the concept and could teach it to my peers!
2. Yellow – I need a little more practice/help/information to grasp the concept.
3. Red – I need HELP!!

–Open the Spreadsheet that contains the responses. Locate the column that will display the color responses from your students. Then, access the “Format” menu and select “Conditional Formatting.” Create rules for student responses. For example, if the cell contains “red,” choose to color the cell red. Do the same for “yellow” and “green” responses. This will allow you to quickly view which students are struggling and those that have varying degrees of understanding.

conditional formatting

 

conditional formattingSuper easy and quick formative assessment.

Reuse the Form and designate a different Spreadsheet for student responses. You could, of course, delete student responses from the sheet … but who wants to delete data?!

I hope your year (if you’ve already started!) is off to a fabulous start!

Thanks for reading 🙂

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