No Clickers, No Problem! Try Poll Everywhere

Want to create class surveys and get instant student feedback about math problems, but you don't have access to clickers?  No clickers, no problem!  Poll Everywhere allows you to create multiple choice and free response questions for your students.  You'll get instant results that can be shared with the class. 

Poll Everywhere is committed to education and has many features that make it ideal for classroom use.  Below is a list of some of these features:

• Create as many surveys as you want with a Free teacher account...With a free K-12 account, you can have up to 40 students respond to each poll.  Just create a new poll or If you have a single class with more than 40 students, you can email them and they will adjust your plan.
• Polls are quick and easy to create...You literally could have a poll created and ready to use in a couple of minutes.
• Multiple ways for students to vote...Students can text their responses in or they can vote online if they have access to an iPad or computer.  
• As responses come in, they automatically appear on the results chart...You don't have to refresh in order to see newest results.
• Results charts can be embedded into blogs, websites, Power Points, etc...This is a nice feature which would allow for comments about the poll or survey.  You could also use this as means to address student misconceptions if they were responding to a math problem.
• No spam or advertisements!

The features listed above are all available with the Free teacher account.  If you'd like to be able to get reports, moderate responses, and create response segmentation for contests or comparisons, you can get an individual teacher plan for $50 per year.  School and district plans also make these extra features available.

In a future post, I'll give some specific suggestions/ideas for using Poll Everywhere in the math classroom.

I've added Poll Everywhere to The Best Technology Tools for Teaching Math list.

The Best Technology Tools for Teaching Math

There are many excellent technology tools available today, but a lot of them are not really applicable to the math classroom.  That's why I started The Best Technology Tools for Teaching Math on Scoop.it.  This site is dedicated to the best technology resources for math teachers and students.  

Click on tags to see a list of topics.  When you choose a tag, you'll see everything related to that topic.  Some topics that will be included are:

• YouTube --- sites that help teachers incorporate YouTube videos in the classroom
• Multimedia 
• Reflection Tools --- applications that help students reflect on their learning
•  Student Engagement --- applications that help students become engaged in the learning process
• Video Editing --- applications that make video editing quick and easy

If you know of resources that should be added to this list, please feel free to use the Suggest tab at the top of the page to make your recommendation.  Or, leave a comment on this page with your recommendation. 

I'll also keep a list of these sites on this blog, but you'll find more detailed information about the applications and their possible uses on the Scoop.it site.  Here's a list of what's on The Best Technology Tools for Teaching and Learning so far:

• Glogster --- make interactive posters  
• Voice Thread --- create conversations around multimedia
• Spliced --- this site allows you to get clips of YouTube videos
• Hofli Online Charts Builder --- site for creating different types of graphs
• Math Dictionary --- this glossary of math terms hosted by Alberta Learning uses visuals and interactive applets to explain/demonstrate math vocabulary 
• Poll Everywhere --- free student response system...create multiple choice or free response questions for your students and see resultants in real time

This is a new list so it's not very big right now.  I'll continue to add things regularly and it will continue to grow.  

If you use any of these tools, let us know how they work for you. 

You may also want to follow my other Scoop.it topics:

• IGNITE Student Engagement in Math!
• Powerful Technology Tools for Teaching and Learning

Stay tuned!  I'll be creating and sharing more math related Scoop.it topics soon.

Seven Ways to Go from On-Task to Engaged

Guest Post by Bryan Harris:  This post was written by a friend and colleague of mine.  It was originally posted on the ASCD blog.  Bryan Harris is the Director of Professional Development for the Casa Grande Elementary School District in Arizona.  He's also the author of Battling Boredom, published by Eye On Education.  

His new book, 75 Quick and Easy Solutions to Common Classroom Disruptions, will also be published by Eye On Education and is scheduled to be released January 2012. You can learn more about Bryan and his work at http://www.bryan-harris.com/.

 
Bryan's Post:

We know that engagement is the key to learning, but we also know that many of our students are bored with the curriculum and activities being offered in classrooms. To battle this problem, much focus and attention has been placed on getting students to be "on-task." Indeed, the link between on-task behavior and student achievement is strong. However, just as a worker at a company can be busy without being productive, a student can be on-task without actually being engaged in the learning. True, long-lasting learning comes not merely as a result of being on-task, but being deeply engaged in meaningful, relevant, and important tasks. 

We see examples of on-task but disengaged behavior every day: students mindlessly copying notes from a screen, listening to a lecture but daydreaming about what to do after school, robotically completing a worksheet. Some students, particularly older ones, have become masters at what Bishop and Pflaum (2005) refer to as "pretend-attend." They've mastered the ability to look busy, focused, and on-task, but in reality they are disengaged in the actual learning.

So, how do we ramp up both on-task behavior and real, meaningful engagement for our students? Here are seven easy ways to increase the likelihood that students are both engaged and on-task:

1. Teach students about the process of focus, attention, and engagement. Tell them about how the brain works and help them to recognize the characteristics of real engagement.


2. When designing objectives, lessons, and activities, consider the task students are being asked to complete. Is the task, behavior, or activity one that is relevant, interactive, and meaningful, or is it primarily designed to keep kids busy and quiet?


3. Ask your students about their perspectives, ideas, and experiences. What do they find engaging, real, and meaningful? 


4. Create authentic reasons for learning activities. Connect the objectives, activities, and tasks to those things that are interesting and related to student experiences.


5. Provide choice in the way students learn information and express their knowledge.
6. Incorporate positive emotions including curiosity, humor, age-appropriate controversy, and inconsequential competition. (Inconsequential competition is described by Marzano [2007] as competition in the spirit of fun with no rewards, punishments or anything of "consequence" attached.)


7. Allow for creativity and multisensory stimulation (think art, drama, role play, and movement).

Have you noticed that on-task does not always mean engaged? How do you achieve both?

Podcasting to Increase Student Achievement in Math

Think about something you’ve learned recently.  Did you talk to anyone about what you were learning?  If you had would it have helped you learn the material better or faster?  Most of us would answer yes to these questions.  Now, think about your students.  Do you think they would learn more if they had additional opportunities to talk about what they were learning?

When we talk about what we’re learning, we deepen our understanding. Our brains need time for processing new information.   Talking about new ideas/concepts helps us bring to light and flesh out misconceptions we have about the topic.  We have so many standards to cover in math, that we are always pressed for time.  As a result we often neglect to give our students sufficient processing time.  The catch is that our student’s would gain more understanding and retain more information if we allowed time for processing new information. 

We also make stronger memories when we use multiple modalities for learning.  So, talking about what we’re learning can have significant impact on what we understand and what we retain.

Podcasting is easier than you think!

There are many technology tools available for making podcasts.  I'll highlight several of these in future posts.  Today, I'd like to share one podcasting tool that you can start using immediately. 

Podcasting (phonecasting) with Ipadio

What is Ipadio?

Ipadio is the easiest podcasting on the planet!  Well, it's at least one of the easiest podcasting tools on the planet!  Ipadio allows you to create podcasts from your phone.  After you sign up for Ipadio, you register the phones that you’ll use to make your phone casts.  You can use landlines and/or mobile phones for podcasting.  Ipadio gives you an ID number that you’ll use every time you call in.  You also get your own channel for hosting your phone casts.  If your students use this, they’ll get their own channel.  If you have your students use Ipadio, you may want to use LiveBinders, or Net Vibes to help you keep all of their channels in one location.  This will give you easy access when you review their podcasts. 

 

The great thing about Ipadio is that it provides an easy platform for allowing students to process and consolidate their learning.  You can use Ipadio in and out of class, so you can assign Podcasts for homework.  This way, you don’t always have to use class time for making student podcasts.

Here are a few benefits that podcasting can have:

•   deepen understanding of concepts by talking about them
•  strengthen memories by using more than one modality for learning
•  engage students with content
• motivate students by using a tool they enjoy learn about student’s misconceptions
• differentiate by appealing to auditory learners and those who may be interested in entertainment

Using Ipadio to Support Learning in Math

A few ideas for using Ipadio to support learning:

Teacher Podcasts:

•  Make podcasts of your lessons.

• Make podcasts to reinforce your lessons.  For example, if you are teaching a lesson on Pythagorean Theorem, you can make a podcast describing specific uses for the Pythagorean Theorem.   If you're teaching fraction operations, you can make podcasts that describe the steps for solving each type of fraction problem.

• Make podcasts of key vocabulary words for a lesson or unit.  You can also incorporate these podcasts into other applications so you can include visuals and the words. Any application that supports links would work for this. --- Wallwisher would be a good application for creating these multimedia Word Walls. 

Student Podcasts:

•  Have students make a short podcast about what they learned each day or each week.  This has many benefits.  Students are keeping a record of their learning and their growth.  They can create a Live Binder and organize it by Units, Topics, or Math Standards.  Teachers can use Live Binders or Net Vibes to keep student podcasts organized.

•  Have students pretend to be a math topic, concept, symbol, or vocabulary word.  Their podcasts would reflect the perspective of whatever word, symbol, or concept their pretending to be.  For example, if a student is pretending to be an improper fraction, they could describe themselves as being top heavy or a heavy weight.

•  Have students conduct math interviews.  They can interview each other about math concepts.  Or, they can interview other teachers, students, administrators, parents, etc.  These interviews can be very quick with just one or two questions about a topic, or they can be more involved.  If you decide have students conduct interviews regularly, you may want to have them create 'Glogs' that contain their interviews.  Glogster is an interactive poster maker.  It's very easy to use and does require much time to make posters. 

 

How would you use podcasts with students?  Leave a comment and share your ideas.

 

Taking Learning to the Cloud - Online Sticky Note Sites

Welcome to the first installment of Taking Learning to the Cloud!  This is the first in a series of posts that highlights web 2.0 tools.  Today I am highlighting websites that have some type of online sticky notes.  The webslide show below features these sites.  The sticky note and the webslide show seen below are both examples of things that can be done using two of the featured sites. 


This sticky note was created using MySticky.net.


This webslide was created in Diigo.  To see my annotated notes of each website, click here.  My notes highlight key features of each of the websites in the slide show.


I hope you enjoy these sites.  I will make future posts highlighting math activities that can be done with specific sites. 



Taking Learning to the Cloud - Online Sticky Note Sites by Love of Learning Educational Services, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Collaborative Consumption and Education

In a recent TED talk, Rachel Botsman discusses the move of society towards collaborative consumption.  Even though this talk is not directly related to education, it does speak about the increasing need for teachers to provide collaborative educational experiences for students.

Rachel Botsman:  The Case for Collaborative Consumption



Today's 21st Century learners are living in world where collaborative sharing is the norm outside of the school setting.  It is beginning to become the norm in some classrooms.  Many teachers are currently using Skype, Wikis, Blogs, Social Networks, and other collaborative tools with students.  The potential for providing students with rich, relevant learning experiences has never been greater than it is today.  There are so many useful collaborative tools online that will enrich teaching and learning.

I'm planning on sharing some online collaborative learning and tools in a future blog series titled "Taking Learning to the Cloud".  This series of posts will contain descriptions, links, and math lesson ideas for using various online tools that allow learning to take place in the Cloud.  We'll also discuss the advantages of going to the Cloud with students, parents, and other educators.


Collaborative Consumption and Education by Love of Learning Educational Services, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.