Tech Bytes - January

This month's blog post is going to take a little different format and flavor from the previous Tech Bytes.

Our county has a fabulous, highly-esteemed program called Pinnacle Leaders Program. The program was begun to identify, nurture and develop teacher technology leaders. Pinnacle leaders are role models for the county, their schools, and colleagues.

Recently, our latest cohort group was tasked with sharing a "favorite thing." Their work includes all components of Tech Bytes from Be in the Know to Cool iPad apps. So without further ado, here are Pinnacle 22's Favorite Things (and my tech byte for January!).

Formative Assessments - Checking for Student Understanding

As teachers help their students grow in understanding and learning, they "take a pulse" during lessons to make sure students are understanding and grasping the concepts. The idea, of course, is to  make sure that once students reach the end of a unit of study or the end of a school year, they will show mastery of the content. In the past, teachers would verbally ask the students and most would nod their heads. Oftentimes, when teachers probe deeper they would find the students really didn't understand and would adjust teaching accordingly.

In classrooms of today, teachers have a plethora of devices (whether BYOD environment or 1:1) for students to use to show understanding. There are many choices for teachers as well from Socrative, Nearpod, Kahoot, Quizizz, and goFormative. Even for classrooms without devices, teachers can use their tablet or phone and Plickers.

I met with teachers this week to show them two of the above-mentioned tools: Plickers & Quizziz.

Plickers is super easy to use provided the teacher has a tablet or smartphone available. Go to the site, create your account and add your students. Next, print the cards. The cards can be used for multiple classes, so for those of you in secondary, you can use this tool as well. You can verbally ask questions or embed them in your presentation. When you are ready to ask the question, simply open the app on your device, select the question, and choose scan. You will see the student's name pop-up on your screen and their answer choice will be recorded as you use the camera to scan the cards. Plickers work for multiple choice and true-false questions. You will need to teach your students how to hold the card and not to turn the cards while you are scanning, otherwise their answer will be changed.

Quizizz is one of my all time favorites. Why you ask? Well, if you ever played Kahoot, you know how much fun that is and how it engages students. Students even love to create quizzes for their classmates. Quizizz is similar except, wait for it...the questions display on the student devices! You don't have to project the quiz and this allows students to work through questions in a different order than their peers and at their own pace. Points are still awarded for speed and correct answers. Students also will see memes after each answer. You can search many of the public quizzes or create your own. You also have the choice to duplicate a public quiz and edit to suit the content you are assessing. Quizizz also provides the option to let the students complete the quiz as homework. You select the date and time the homework quiz needs to be completed. And finally, Quizizz is customizable as you can see from this image.

 

Take these tools for a test run with your students and let me know what you think. My presentation is below.

Blog Challenge: Day 6 Assessment Tip

Blog Challenge: Give a tip for assessment. What is an example of an assessment you give? Share any tips for designing/giving/grading assessments.

This one is an easy challenge. Use Google Forms.

You can create a Google form for surveys, pose reflection questions for the students, exit slips for what was learned and what they still need help learning as well as student reading logs. Combine a Google Form with Flubaroo to created graded quizzes. The possibilities are endless and it is super easy to use. Click here for GCS ITF handout.