We have been using a new website in class the last couple of weeks called Quizizz. It is a fun quiz site and the kids have really enjoyed it. Like many of the sites I have been trying it is free to use and you can create your own multiple choice questions or search by topic for quizzes that others have made and shared publicly. For most of the sites we have been using I have settled on about 12 questions per quiz. The kids stay entirely engrossed for this long and I can focus on one or two topics. The kids really like the avatars that are assigned to them when they sign in to do a quiz. They enjoy them so much that is has caused problems since sometimes if they don't get an avatar they want, they sign in again and we have too many in our quiz. The students see the questions on their device so if you have questions that need pictures, they can see the picture better and they can pinch to zoom to see the picture enlarged. I have done a couple quizzes with my year 7 and 8 on nets , plans and elevations,and surface area. This format works better for questions that need pictures. When using Kahoot it is too hard to see the detail in pictures when the kids can only see the picture projected on the board up at the front. You can assign a time limit to each question, but once the quiz starts, they move through at their own pace. Once they answer a question they get to see where they stand on the leader board and then get the next question right away. Once a student finishes the quiz they can go back and review all the questions so they can see the ones they got wrong. Once all students are finished the teacher can download a spreadsheet with all the results broken down by student and question.
I usually start class with a quiz or two on the tablets. One issue we face is how long to wait before we start. I have students arrive at different times as our school is a bit spread out and they come from different classes. We can't always wait for everyone to arrive and then there are usually issues with one or two devices getting connected to wifi or logged in. They get quit upset if we start without them which shows how much the enjoy doing the quizzes. In Kahoot the game code can be projected on the board during the entire quiz so students can join late. This was not the case with Quizizz. Once the quiz started the game code disappeared which meant students couldn't join in if they came in late. I emailed the site and they added this function with a day or two of putting in my request. After seeing the quick response to feedback I will have to ask about getting more support for maths symbols. That is the kind of awesome support that teachers love to see with educational tools.
This term I have been using three sites on a regular basis, Kahoot, Socrative Space Race, and now Quizizz too. They all have strong positives and the students enjoy all three. They each have different strengths and lend themselves to different topics. It is nice to have some different games to keep the kids from getting blase about the games. The focus of my project with the tablets this year is using them for formative assessment. I like that I can get a spreadsheet from all three games to see how the class did as a whole on any topic or how individual students are doing. I am finding it very useful when we start a topic to gauge prior knowledge and also to see how the students are understanding topics as we move through units. One issue I am having to deal with is when using the tablets the students forget about using their pen and paper to work out many of the problems. While many of the problems are mental maths type questions, I am also including questions that definitely require pen and paper. I remind them to use them all the time but they get so caught up in getting the question answered quickly, that they sometimes sacrifice the accuracy they could get by working it out on paper.
The best indicator of how successful the trial has been is how excited the students are to answer questions using the tablets in a game setting. They run into class and want to know if we are using the tablets and don't want to stop after one game. During the game, they are discussing where they went wrong with their neighbours and are more critical of their mistakes than when we review written assessments at the end of units which are part of their grade.
Saturday 14 March 2015
Wednesday 28 January 2015
Kahoot vs Socrative Space Race
Since we are just getting used to using the tablets in class, I thought I would start with some easy-to-use, fun programs while we worked out the bugs of using tablets in class. Two of my favorite apps I have used before in Australia are Kahoot and Socrative. Both are available for almost any platform you might be using, or the kids might have. In Australia we had laptops, so using tablets is a new experience for me with these apps. Both are games that allow you to get some good formative feedback from the students. Socrative also does lots of other things, but I have started with the space race game and so will compare it with Kahoot.
Both apps allow you to download a spreadsheet with all the data after the game. You can see how every student did on each question and how the class did on each question. This provides some very useful formative feedback that can be used to direct your future teaching. One limitation they both have for maths, is they have limited ability to write maths the way you are used to. Many symbols are not available and some things like fractions (have to write like 2/3) will not look like the students are used to seeing in their books and worksheets. There is a workaround, and that is both apps allow you to upload a picture for each question. You can write your question and answers in a different program, powerpoint works well, and save it as a picture. It also works if you want to have diagrams, shapes or graphs as part of the question or answers. This takes more time to set up and is not always easy to see when playing the game, especially in Kahoot. The kids, I teach all ages up to A level, (age 18) love to play both games. The overall favourite is Kahoot so I will start with Kahoot!
Pros: Fast paced and after each question the students get to see the point standing and where they stand. This feeds their competitive spirit and they get very excited with every move up or down the the leader board. After each question the whole class gets to see how many students answered each choice. This is fantastic for the teacher as you can see how many got the question correct and how many selected each wrong choice. The question and answers are also displayed so you can immediately discuss each wrong selection and review any misunderstandings students may have based on their incorrect choice.I have never seen an activity where all the students are so excited and committed to answering questions, no matter the topic.
Cons: Students do not get the question or answers on their device. The question and answer choices are only displayed on the projected image at the front of the class. Each device only has four colours with a shape that matches up with the answers on the projected image at the front. This means it can be hard for students in the back to clearly see the question or answer choices. For each question you choose the time allowed to answer. The max time you can set is 2 minutes so it won't work for questions that the students might need more time to work out.
Socrative:
Pros: Each student will see the question and answer choices on their individual device. This means it is easier for all students to see the question and works better for questions that have diagrams, shapes or graphs. You do not set a time for each question so the students can spend as much time as needed on each question and they work through the questions at their own pace. A set of rockets is displayed on the board and as each team answers questions their rocket moves across the screen. You can either let the students select teams or have the app randomly assign students to teams. You decide how many teams you want to have.
Cons: You don't get the immediate feedback that you get with Kahoot. It is not until you look at the spreadsheet with the results once the game is finished, that you can see which questions or topics the students misunderstood. Depending how many are on each team and how well they do on the questions, their rocket may reach the finish before they have answered all the questions. This means they tend to lose the impetus of the competition as I tell them they still need to finish answering all the questions.
Summary: The kids enjoy playing both games but enjoy and get more excited by Kahoot. I think they are complementary apps as I have discussed since in maths there are certain topics that would work better with Socrative Space Race. Trying to read graphs or angles in shapes would work better if the students could see the picture in front of them. Longer problem solving questions would work better as the students could have more time to work through the problems in the Space Race also. It is a real pleasure to see the students standing, thinking, debating, and calculating furiously to solve each question in the Kahoots. The shouts of joy as they are one of the few to get a hard one correct and move up the leader board, or the groans as they mess up and slide down the standings means they are never satisfied with one Kahoot and always want to play "one more!"
Both apps allow you to download a spreadsheet with all the data after the game. You can see how every student did on each question and how the class did on each question. This provides some very useful formative feedback that can be used to direct your future teaching. One limitation they both have for maths, is they have limited ability to write maths the way you are used to. Many symbols are not available and some things like fractions (have to write like 2/3) will not look like the students are used to seeing in their books and worksheets. There is a workaround, and that is both apps allow you to upload a picture for each question. You can write your question and answers in a different program, powerpoint works well, and save it as a picture. It also works if you want to have diagrams, shapes or graphs as part of the question or answers. This takes more time to set up and is not always easy to see when playing the game, especially in Kahoot. The kids, I teach all ages up to A level, (age 18) love to play both games. The overall favourite is Kahoot so I will start with Kahoot!
Pros: Fast paced and after each question the students get to see the point standing and where they stand. This feeds their competitive spirit and they get very excited with every move up or down the the leader board. After each question the whole class gets to see how many students answered each choice. This is fantastic for the teacher as you can see how many got the question correct and how many selected each wrong choice. The question and answers are also displayed so you can immediately discuss each wrong selection and review any misunderstandings students may have based on their incorrect choice.I have never seen an activity where all the students are so excited and committed to answering questions, no matter the topic.
Cons: Students do not get the question or answers on their device. The question and answer choices are only displayed on the projected image at the front of the class. Each device only has four colours with a shape that matches up with the answers on the projected image at the front. This means it can be hard for students in the back to clearly see the question or answer choices. For each question you choose the time allowed to answer. The max time you can set is 2 minutes so it won't work for questions that the students might need more time to work out.
Socrative:
Pros: Each student will see the question and answer choices on their individual device. This means it is easier for all students to see the question and works better for questions that have diagrams, shapes or graphs. You do not set a time for each question so the students can spend as much time as needed on each question and they work through the questions at their own pace. A set of rockets is displayed on the board and as each team answers questions their rocket moves across the screen. You can either let the students select teams or have the app randomly assign students to teams. You decide how many teams you want to have.
Cons: You don't get the immediate feedback that you get with Kahoot. It is not until you look at the spreadsheet with the results once the game is finished, that you can see which questions or topics the students misunderstood. Depending how many are on each team and how well they do on the questions, their rocket may reach the finish before they have answered all the questions. This means they tend to lose the impetus of the competition as I tell them they still need to finish answering all the questions.
Summary: The kids enjoy playing both games but enjoy and get more excited by Kahoot. I think they are complementary apps as I have discussed since in maths there are certain topics that would work better with Socrative Space Race. Trying to read graphs or angles in shapes would work better if the students could see the picture in front of them. Longer problem solving questions would work better as the students could have more time to work through the problems in the Space Race also. It is a real pleasure to see the students standing, thinking, debating, and calculating furiously to solve each question in the Kahoots. The shouts of joy as they are one of the few to get a hard one correct and move up the leader board, or the groans as they mess up and slide down the standings means they are never satisfied with one Kahoot and always want to play "one more!"
Thursday 22 January 2015
It has been a while since I started this blog and much has changed. I am now back in Muscat at the British School Muscat teaching maths and one year 8 history class. After being used to my older students having laptops in Brisbane, when I started back at the British School I went through withdrawal. You really get used to the students having technology in the classroom.
Being a small school in the middle east makes it hard to get the same level of tech support. A few good chats with the IT department and we came up with a plan. The local hyper-market had a Eid sale back in October so several teachers got out their credit cards and went down and we managed to get a set of 24 Samsung Galaxy Tab 4's which were reimbursed through petty cash. This would allow me to have a classroom set to so every student in my classes could have a tablet to use. (My largest class is year 7 top set with 24 students.) Then ICT had to load up the apps I was planning on using. To start I had them put on the apps for Kahoot, Socrative, Infuse, Desmos and Exit Ticket.
Then we had to work out the logistics for the classroom. We needed somewhere secure to store the tablets and some way to charge them. I ended up with a cabinet built by the carpenter which was attached to the back wall. The first version didn't have any room for the power boards. That got sorted and there are 4 six outlet power boards in the tablet cabinet.
We have started small in class and I am only focusing on my year 7,8 and 10 classes as I have these classes the most, six 65 minutes lessons a fortnight. The first lesson learned was getting the devices connected to the Wifi. One of the issues we identified at the start was whether the wifi would hold up with 24 tablets at the same time. It seems the only way to get connected to wifi is to open the browser and the apps for each program won't work unless you have already connected to wifi. This slows things down a bit when we get started. The school wifi login does not always come up the first time you open a web page. This means it can take a few minutes to get all the students logged in and into the program. Many of the students are not used to Android so they are learning their way around the device.
All the students have been very excited to use the tablets in class and rush in each lesson to get started. On those days I have not planned on using them they are very sad! The key is to turn this enthusiasm for using tech into maths and learning enthusiasm. These first 3 weeks I have been just using Socrative space race and Kahoot. I have been keeping the games to 10-15 question games that I have made myself. While you can use other games already on the sites I find I get exactly what I need for each day's game if I write my own. One of the best resources I have found to get multiple choice questions is Diagnostic Questions. There is a wide variety of very well designed questions designed to diagnose student misunderstandings.
While the students enjoyed Socrative's space race, they all love Kahoot! They all get into every question and cheer every change in the leader board and moan if they get a question wrong, or even worse, get booted out of the game when the wifi cuts out. (Fortunately this does not happen too much) No matter the topic, I have never seen such enthusiasm. The first question in the door is "Are we doing Kahoot today?" Just the other day we were doing multiplying and dividing decimals as the topic and the enthusiasm and learning going on was beyond what I have ever seen in a classroom. The kids don't want to stop.
I will finish up for now and talk more about lessons learned and how I am using the apps next time.
Being a small school in the middle east makes it hard to get the same level of tech support. A few good chats with the IT department and we came up with a plan. The local hyper-market had a Eid sale back in October so several teachers got out their credit cards and went down and we managed to get a set of 24 Samsung Galaxy Tab 4's which were reimbursed through petty cash. This would allow me to have a classroom set to so every student in my classes could have a tablet to use. (My largest class is year 7 top set with 24 students.) Then ICT had to load up the apps I was planning on using. To start I had them put on the apps for Kahoot, Socrative, Infuse, Desmos and Exit Ticket.
Then we had to work out the logistics for the classroom. We needed somewhere secure to store the tablets and some way to charge them. I ended up with a cabinet built by the carpenter which was attached to the back wall. The first version didn't have any room for the power boards. That got sorted and there are 4 six outlet power boards in the tablet cabinet.
We have started small in class and I am only focusing on my year 7,8 and 10 classes as I have these classes the most, six 65 minutes lessons a fortnight. The first lesson learned was getting the devices connected to the Wifi. One of the issues we identified at the start was whether the wifi would hold up with 24 tablets at the same time. It seems the only way to get connected to wifi is to open the browser and the apps for each program won't work unless you have already connected to wifi. This slows things down a bit when we get started. The school wifi login does not always come up the first time you open a web page. This means it can take a few minutes to get all the students logged in and into the program. Many of the students are not used to Android so they are learning their way around the device.
All the students have been very excited to use the tablets in class and rush in each lesson to get started. On those days I have not planned on using them they are very sad! The key is to turn this enthusiasm for using tech into maths and learning enthusiasm. These first 3 weeks I have been just using Socrative space race and Kahoot. I have been keeping the games to 10-15 question games that I have made myself. While you can use other games already on the sites I find I get exactly what I need for each day's game if I write my own. One of the best resources I have found to get multiple choice questions is Diagnostic Questions. There is a wide variety of very well designed questions designed to diagnose student misunderstandings.
While the students enjoyed Socrative's space race, they all love Kahoot! They all get into every question and cheer every change in the leader board and moan if they get a question wrong, or even worse, get booted out of the game when the wifi cuts out. (Fortunately this does not happen too much) No matter the topic, I have never seen such enthusiasm. The first question in the door is "Are we doing Kahoot today?" Just the other day we were doing multiplying and dividing decimals as the topic and the enthusiasm and learning going on was beyond what I have ever seen in a classroom. The kids don't want to stop.
I will finish up for now and talk more about lessons learned and how I am using the apps next time.
Wednesday 16 January 2013
First Post
I have been on summer holiday for many weeks now and have had more time than usual to read all the good maths blogs I usually follow. It just struck me that it was time I started blogging about my experiences also. I did my teacher training in England, then taught at the British School in Oman and a school in the Cayman Islands before we moved to Brisbane, Australia. I am American and went to International Schools overseas as a kid before my family moved back to the US where I went to high school and University. This has given me a view of many different schools and education systems. I have now been teaching in Australia for a year and am slowly getting used to the Queensland and Australian system. All this moving around has inspired me to take a little bit from lots of different systems and schools. I hope to share some of what I have found, learned and seen in my teaching.
For Christmas I got an ipad mini, my first apple device or tablet of any kind. This has also gotten me excited about how I can use this new tool to help me in my teaching. All the students in years 10-12 at the private school where I teach have a laptop. This has also been a new experience for me in how to better integrate the technology we have into my maths teaching. I have always taught senior school maths, years 6-12 (years 7-13 in the English system.) My children both just finished their Prep year here and start year 1 in a couple weeks. It has been fun for me to see how they learn and develop their maths skills. It is a very different perspective on learning maths compared to what I am used to in senior school.
I hope to use this blog to reflect on my teaching and the tools I try out or use, as well as my experiences as the parent of two year 1 students as they follow their maths path. I appreciate your input and guidance as I have been inspired by so many teachers who blog on their maths journey.
For Christmas I got an ipad mini, my first apple device or tablet of any kind. This has also gotten me excited about how I can use this new tool to help me in my teaching. All the students in years 10-12 at the private school where I teach have a laptop. This has also been a new experience for me in how to better integrate the technology we have into my maths teaching. I have always taught senior school maths, years 6-12 (years 7-13 in the English system.) My children both just finished their Prep year here and start year 1 in a couple weeks. It has been fun for me to see how they learn and develop their maths skills. It is a very different perspective on learning maths compared to what I am used to in senior school.
I hope to use this blog to reflect on my teaching and the tools I try out or use, as well as my experiences as the parent of two year 1 students as they follow their maths path. I appreciate your input and guidance as I have been inspired by so many teachers who blog on their maths journey.
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