This past weekend, I had the privilege of attending the Metropolitan Detroit Science Teachers Association (MDSTA) conference. I went to some cool sessions, including one led by a MACer from two years ago, but I think my favorite was the one called "All aboard the BYOD express!" It was run by a delightful man named Gary Abud, who just so happens to be the Michigan teacher of the year. He has taught chemistry, biology, and physics, but currently serves as an instructional coach for the Grosse Pointe school system. I got the chance to talk to him one on one earlier in the day and he's a really great guy, approachable and fun, and I'm very glad to have made that connection. His session turned out to be as enjoyable - and informative! - as I hoped.
Gary began with a very interesting point about BYOD as a concept. He said that we often tell students to put their devices away because we don't want them to look up the answers. His counterpoint was simple and powerful: if a student can Google their way through your class, you have some serious rethinking to do. And he's absolutely right. If a phone can do all the thinking for a student in your class, then you're not asking for any higher order thinking and that's a problem. Gary also addressed another common worry about BYOD by saying that not every student in your room has to have a device because it's easy to do grouping activities and have students share.
Gary spent most of his presentation doing in depth demonstrations of three tools: GoSoapbox, InfuseLearning, and Socrative. We have heard of the last two in 504, but I really enjoyed seeing the tools in action with a room full of 40 people. Also, GoSoapbox was new to me, and it was Gary's favorite. As his presentation demonstrated clearly, each of these tools has its own strengths and weaknesses, and choosing between them really depends on what you want for your classroom.
I'll summarize some of the highlights of these three tools here. At the bottom of the post you'll find a video Gary made about various tech tools in the classroom - start around 8:30 for the specific discussion around these "total participation" tools.
GoSoapbox
With this tool, a teacher creates an "event" that students use a code to enter. Once in the event, students can navigate between three types of objects: polls, questions, and discussions. The teacher can pre-load polls and questions, keep them invisible, then switch them to visible at the appropriate moment during class. The discussion section is more open; students can ask each other questions and have conversations about the class. Students can see poll results on their own device if the teacher has that option selected, but the responses are anonymous.
Pros: Students can explore all the pieces of the "event" whenever they want - revisit past polls, see other answers to questions, respond to peer questions. This event remains open beyond class time, allowing flexibility for its use beyond the hours of the school day.
Cons: Teacher has no way of knowing whether all of the students have replied without scanning through the names and seeing if someone's missing. Students could get distracted by the flexible format.
InfuseLearning
With this tool, the teacher does not load in specific questions. Instead, she clicks on a certain type of response (true/false, multiple choice, free response) and students see a prompt to reply. The specific question itself must be delivered by the teacher verbally or on the board. The teacher sees a list of students and each student gets greyed out as they submit a response, so she can ask any missing students specifically to respond. The teacher also has the option of saving results for later analysis. One really cool function of InfuseLearning is the possibility of submitting a drawn picture as a response. This could be very useful in a science or math classroom. Ask students to sketch a graph or balance an equation, then scroll through and discuss everyone's responses projected up on the screen. I think this is a really cool way to get a snapshot of the whole room's thinking. It also makes student work the subject of conversation rather than the teacher always writing things on the board. Another useful feature of InfuseLearning is the quiz function. You can load in a complete quiz beforehand, then start the quiz and have students complete it during class. The results are saved and any multiple choice questions are graded automatically.
Pros: Teacher can check for 100% response rate and know exactly who is missing. Draw response function. Saving results (polls become a csv file, drawings become a PDF). Easy quiz execution and grading.
Cons: Inability to pre-load questions into the event for formative assessments during class. Students can't see anything except the currently active prompt - they don't see results or past questions. Results have to be shown from the teacher's device.
Socrative
Socrative is kind of a blend of the two above tools with its own quirks. Socrative allows for one device to submit multiple assessments which can really help if not all students have a compatible device. We didn't get as complete of a demonstration of Socrative, but Gary did get a chance to show us his favorite feature of Socrative. Like the other tools, students can submit a free response answer to a question. After these responses are gathered, students can then vote on the one that they feel is most correct. This is very useful for promoting reflection and developing a class consensus around an idea.
Pros: Multiple responses, voting on free response answers.
Cons: No drawing feature. Students cannot see anything except the currently active prompt.
These summaries are by no means complete, and each of these tools is a rich resource in its own right. I personally am most attracted to InfuseLearning - I love the ability to save results and use them as part of my evaluation of class progress on the individual and whole hour levels. The drawing feature would be incredibly useful to get a quick sense of where students are on a topic. There's something so much more authentic about a hand drawing (even if it's on a digital tool) than typing in an answer. I also like that students can't click around idly while I'm trying to keep them focused; the tool enters the conversation only when I want it to. The prospect of auto-graded quizzes is also very attractive.
The more I learn about these tools, the more convinced I am that I want to make them part of my teaching. There's potential here to bridge the generation gap and reach students where they are as incredibly proficient users of advanced technology. As a young teacher who has grown up with technology (well, I got my first laptop at 14 and my first phone at 18... but I caught on quick!) and is also very proficient in it, I feel that I am well-placed to leverage these tools in my classroom. I loved learning about them in such a fun, interactive environment. I recommend checking out teacher conferences when you get a chance!
Here is Gary's video about BYOD:
Anne, it's so cool that you had the opportunity to attend this conference *and* that you got to see Gary Abud. I saw him last year at MACUL for a Connected Educators session and there were several very thoughtful teachers who took part in that. Here's a link to a series that they've put together that includes Gary.
ReplyDeleteThanks, too, for the nicely detailed descriptions of the three tools, Anne. Rory and I thought seriously about including Socrative in the Tech Tools in Use assignment, and I think we'll think even more seriously about it for next year.