SRS Showdown: Quizizz, Socrative, and GoSoapBox

The SRS competition was actually a really fun day. In it, we were able to compete against our fellow classmates, working to state that our tool was the best. This competition taught me a lot about the various tools that we can use in a classroom as study and review tools. It showed me many more options than I knew previously existed, so it was really fun learning with my group and my class about the many different ways we as educators can make reviewing fun for our students.

My group presented on Quizizz, a program that creates quizzes in the form of an online game. In this tool, like many others, you are able to sign in, make your own questions for a personalized quiz, and control who joins the quiz due to an access code. You can use a number of formats and templates that have already been made for you, or you can form your own quiz. Each question is divided up nicely and you are able to insert pictures into your questions as well. With this level of customization and flexibility, it is easy for a teacher to put a lot of questions on a given quiz. Another awesome feature is the fact that students can go at their own pace, yet still feel like they all have an equal chance of winning. It allows for the “game” part of the review to be fun and fair. At the end, you can view the leaderboard, assess grades, and see which questions were the hardest for each student, either individually or collectively. You can also download a spreadsheet of all types of facts concerning problems and participants. You can also email parents with any concerns that you might have if the child is not doing well on any of the activities.

One of the other presentations was on the tool Socrative. This tool was very similar to Quizizz in that you can design review quizzes quickly and easily. One unique and exciting feature of this tool is that there is a “race” function in which you can divide the class into teams and they can compete against each other to see who answers the most questions the fastest. This is an effective way to possibly make kids want to learn their materials better and to be able to win the competition if they understand more. This could be an incentive to some of them. On the flip side, it could also make other kids feel bad if they do not win the competition, so using it in a younger classroom may not be the best idea if they get too competitive. Another shortcoming of this tool is that it does not give as many precise results. Overall, it was an enjoyable tool to use.

One last tool that I enjoyed using was called GoSoapBox. The strengths of this site showed immediately. Once we entered the code for the “classroom”, we were directed into a menu that contained all the activities that the teacher had made for us.  Once on the menu, we could do a number of things. We could follow the teachers instructions and go through quizzes that were previously set up. We could take part in a poll. We could ask questions in a section near the bottom of the menu and add comments to other people’s questions if we had the answer. Another great part of this tool was that people could tell the teacher anonymously if they were confused using an option at the top of the menu. This tool is extremely helpful in that a teacher could see that and halt the progression of the class whenever there were people who needed to catch up. One shortcoming of this tool was that there was no filter. Kids could comment whatever they wanted in certain sections and the monitoring of that would take more effort than would be able to be given.

As a whole, this presentation showed me a lot of new and fun options for us as teachers to use in our classrooms someday. Many of these tools have parts that are very similar, but each has their own specialty. Since there are so many good tools to use, a teacher can add variety, fun, and learning to their lessons and classrooms. 

Twitter Blog Post #2

Yet again, the world of social media impresses me. Before this semester, I had no idea that so many educators use Twitter for spreading ideas, plans, and activities for other teachers to use and learn from. This way of looking at it makes it a great tool for educators, that they are able to learn from the good experiences and the tough ones from their peers. It can be a useful tool if you allow it to be.

            One area that I found particularly good from Twitter was being able to observe what my classmates were up to on their accounts. Seeing their opinions and ideas was a great experience for me and something I enjoyed a lot. I was able to see how they worked with the material that I was going through at the same time. For example, I was able to view my classmates’ opinions on projects like the Flip Project or the Smartboard Class Presentation. Some of them posted links to their videos or show pictures from their experiences. This was an area I appreciated a ton, that I was able to see what other people in my class did and appreciate their work.

            Another area I loved of this kind was the joy I could experience with my classmates through their posts concerning what they were working on. I saw the joy that people had towards formatting their own classes or organizing their projects to teach “students”. So many of us were able to share our excitement for teaching other people, and I too found this to be exciting. Being able to relate to and share the joys that I and others had in teaching other people. It was a great experience to do these projects and then look around and see other people excited about them too.

            All in all, the experiences on Twitter were what Twitter is supposed to be for educators: connection, appreciating and learning. I learned about different ideas and opinions, looking at how they each affected how a person taught and interacted with students and teaching. I focused in at appreciating my classmates’ work. I was able to appreciate how they did their assignments and how hard they worked at them. They shared a piece of themselves in how they did their projects. Lastly, I was able to connect with my fellow future educators in how we did our assignments. We were able to appreciate and relate to each other in the similarities of what we did. 

Module 5-Flipped Classroom Project

Typically learning in school is seen as a classroom activity. A teacher will present information before a class, typically in a lecture setting, and the students are encouraged to take notes. It is given at the pace that the teacher decides and you have to keep up and react to that level. There is not really any varied pace or direct contact with every student, which hinders some kids’ learning. They need to work extra hard to get at what the teacher was saying because they were not able to get it the first time. They cannot rewind it and relearn it in the same moment. How can this be helped.

            Enter the Flipped-Classroom Project. While it is not possible nor practical to do this every time, it can be effective if used periodically. The Flipped-Classroom follows the format of teaching a concept online before a class and then testing the class on whether they learned the concept or not the next day. This can effectively allow students to focus on the material at their own pace. They can stop the lesson, look over it more in depth, process it well, and then move on. It can be effective at reaching different learning styles as well, given the flexible and adaptable nature of such a lesson.

For this project, I worked with a partner in my dear friend and colleague Jon Fossell. We developed our lesson by first creating a presentation on Smart Notebook. We focused on developing the presentation with many images and visuals that would draw in our class. We focused on putting only necessary words on the slides, avoiding “over wordage” so that the students could develop the ideas themselves. Next we used a program called Screencast-o-Matic to record over the presentation and work our way through the lesson step by step. This portion allowed us to effectively teach our concepts and develop them more than just our visuals would. This project forced us to not only pay attention to what a student might want to see, so as to draw them in, and to what the student needed to hear or consider to fully grasp the concept.

Overall, this project was a creative way that we were able to educate other people. We were able to both formulate a project and present it easily and effectively. This type of project could be effective in reaching different types of learning styles, as well as allow in depth and self-paced learning. Along with that, this format of presentation could also be a way that students could do a project in which they teach the rest of the class on a certain topic. Overall, this was an effective tool to use. 

Module 4- Smartboard Lesson

After completing my first little teaching experience, I took a deep breath. While it was fairly basic in the instructions for what we needed to do, the execution and the feelings that came with it were new and challenging in certain ways. It was a very good small-scale look at how teachers function on a day to day basis, which both taught me a lot and scared me a little too. There is so much more work that goes on behind the scenes than what I initially considered. There is much more that a teacher does to prepare before a lesson than only teaching it.

            With this project, I was assigned to make my first lesson plan, a task that I had little to no familiarity with. Thankfully we had a template to follow, without which I would have been completely lost. As I continued through this part of the assignment, I was met with many different pieces that I did not realize were a part of every class. Each class I have gone through has had planning of some sort, and realizing all the little complexities that I may have to address and cover in it was a bit overwhelming. However, it was also really cool to acknowledge the work that goes into planning and performing a class.

            After completing this portion of the assignment, we had to make a Smartboard presentation. Having been around Smartboards most of my educational career, I was comfortable with maneuvering its tools and such. However, there were many more layers that I did not really understand. I had to sift through all the tools that this program provided, picking and choosing the ones that I though were necessary and appropriate for my lesson. I also wanted to choose some that would be creative, interactive, and fun for my students to work with. After choosing everything, I had to tailor the tools and pages to what I wanted to accomplish in teaching during these five minutes.

            The final element of this project was the presentation. After completing this portion, I realized just how important it was that I had planned beforehand and worked within an outline that I had prepared. This proved critical, both in time management and also how to emphasize our “Engage-Connect-Launch” focus for beginning a class. There were so many events that took place in the presentation that I could not practice for, especially in how the students responded to my prompts and interactions. That being said, my outline and preparation helped me to get a good hold of where I wanted to go and to be able to cut out pieces that I would not have time for.

Overall, this first experience of planning a lesson and then carrying out my lesson plan taught me that there are many more intricacies that are involved in the preparation and presentation of a class period. I learned that it takes a lot of work at preparing to be ready to adapt to whatever a class happens to throw at you on any given day. It taught me that preparation is key, but is not the “end all” of how a teacher works in their daily work. 

Twitter Blog Post #1

When I first heard that many educators often used Twitter, I did not believe the claim. “Teachers spending large amounts of time on Twitter? That has to be unheard of!” None of my former teachers ever used Twitter, and with this fact came my perceptions, accurate as they may be at times, about Twitter and the activities on it. These thoughts came from the idea that Twitter was only used to complain about politics or watch what celebrities were up to lately. I never really considered the other ways it could be used, but through the last couple weeks I have had my eyes opened a little bit to the ideas, opinions, and advice that circulates this social media for man different educators.

            To begin with, there are a whole host of teachers who share their techniques and ideas on Twitter for everyone to look at. I began my “teacher Twitter” career by following a number of other educators in various fields. As I perused through the information that was shared either through basic posts or retweets of articles, I was met with a wealth of knowledge that I really did not expect to receive on a site such as Twitter. I found advice for classroom work and experiences. There were certain posts that blew me away with the insight I found there. The advice that was given by certain people had me copying them down so that I could keep that in mind as well. I appreciated seeing people that I agreed with on teaching philosophy as well as those that made me consider the differences. Witnessing pieces of experience from current educators was a greatly beneficial piece to my experience.

            Along with that there were many pages that I followed which focused on different parts of education, ranging from technology in education, to views on teaching, to just general educational conferences that were occurring. I was able to see different areas of education in an advertising, yet informative, manner. I appreciated the information that was given to me from these pages and also the connection they had to what I had been learning about in Tech Ed class this semester.

            One last key piece to my experience on Twitter was the connection that these educators had to each other. There was a network of educators that all followed each other and, whether it was the reality in real life or not, had a personal connection and knew who each other was online. While there are arguments to be had on the depths of these “relationships”, for their purpose of sharing educational advice and techniques Twitter served very well.

            Overall, my experience on Twitter thus far has exceeded what I expected coming in. I have found different pages that I can look at for techniques or technology that I may want to pay attention to for my classrooms in the future. Along with that, I have been able to see advice on teaching come from both current educators and my peers, the next generation of teachers. All in all, it has been a beneficial experience for me.

Module 2, Digital Story: An Interactive Informative Study

Sometimes the words “multi-media presentation” create joy and excitement. People may think about really good presentations they have witnessed, how the combination of the speaker, videos, music, and effects all mounted together to create a nearly perfect atmosphere for learning. These types of presentations strike a chord with nearly every person present. The audience is engaged the whole time and leave feeling full, adamant, or even excited about what was presented. Done correctly, these types of presentations can be extremely effective.

Shoot back to reality and here I have sat, greatly intimidated, and even frustrated at times with creating my own version of a “multi-media presentation” and all its complexities. While I hope that my final project brings awe to everyone in the class by informing them on eagles, I more importantly have developed skills and understanding that is very important to remember as well. There are many layers to a project like this, and each one takes specific care and caution while culturing them to make sure that it accomplishes the task I hoped it would.

For starters, I needed to find a way to get my point across quickly, yet effectively. In this Digital Story project, I had only a certain amount of time to spend discussing my subject. I needed to be thorough, yet concise, which is something that I struggle with in my daily speech. Figuring out what I wanted to say in that allotted amount of time and then performing it was the first step to this project. The next was finding images to match my subject. I needed to focus on finding things that would help enhance my subject matter and portray it in a way that I wanted it to be understood, which was a sense of awe and respect for my subject. When considering images for this project, one needed to be mindful of how each image would either assist or hinder the messages or the presentation.

Lastly came the painstaking process of layering all the pieces. This portion tried my patience the most, but probably taught me the most as well. I learned the difficulties that accompanied the intricacies of such a project. Every picture needed to be edited with effects and positioning, along with a music playing in the background. Along with that, I needed to add and match up my narration to the pictures and vice versa. These steps of layering taught me a lot about both the technicalities that come with a Digital Story and also how I need to be patient in the process.

At the end of the day, the Digital Story came together and I had before me a more polished and pretty version of my original narration. I had all my facts and opinions in the story, but they had been enhanced and supported by the images, music, and effects that I added into it. This type of project can help enhance our presentation, the learning of those who view it, and even our own skills of informing and teaching. 

Module 1, Jigsaw Method: Piecing Together Learning and Life Skills

When one hears the word “jigsaw” an image of chaos and disorder comes to mind. Probably many of our first encounters with the word jigsaw came with the concept of a puzzle that did not notch together like a traditional puzzle, but rather slid together and had to have all the pieces in line for it to fit in the outline. This may be frustrating for some people, who would rather there be a thousand pieces that stuck together than have fifty pieces that were in a jigsaw puzzle. While the Jigsaw Method of learning does not need to be nearly as precise as a puzzle, it still has a few of the basic concepts in it that make it compare to how we traditionally use the word “jigsaw”.

            The Jigsaw Method follows the pattern of multiple ideas coming together to create a group, similar to the puzzle pieces. The first step of the process is to have groups randomly assigned in the class. All the students in each group come with different ideas, which can be compared to the puzzle pieces. Each student in the group studies the same subject and learns it well. They then come together to discuss the subject, each with his or her own ideas, preferences, and points of view that teach the other students in the group, even though they all studied the same subject.

The next step compares to the puzzle in that each idea represented in the group is a “puzzle piece”. Each group only has one representative of his or her subject present, while all the other group members have their own individual and different subjects. Each person in the group becomes masters of their craft, allowing them to know the subject at hand very well. The groups are then prompted to instruct the others in their group on their subjects. Each person takes turns describing and teaching their group about their subject, connecting the group together as a learning community of sorts.

            The Jigsaw Method tailors to the idea that students can and should learn to be able to discuss with and teach each other. The first portion, where a group studies the same subject and then teaches one another, works on developing the ability to listen to different viewpoints on the same subject and being able to learn from each other. Just because one may have a certain viewpoint on a matter does not immediately mean everyone else will have the same perceptions. It is beneficial to have many people take different angles on the same subject. The second portion focuses more on the ability to convey messages and being able to both teach and listen. Both of these skills are critical in any vocation, because everyone must learn AND share for there to be growth. All in all, the Jigsaw Method not only develops skills in instruction and learning, but how to interact in all other areas of life as well. 

This is my first post in this blog