Like Krazy

While I like to give the students an opportunity to do a game-like review (Jeopardy and "Blingo"* are two popular formats) before a test, the time and resources are not always available for me to create an appropriate amount (and type) of questions. But now I have the students generate the questions and then it just takes a cut and paste to build the review into Socrative.com. The review session is done in pairs with students sharing an iPad (or netbook). In a couple classes there was an odd number of students so there was one group of three, but the third person seemed a bit left out and could not read the screen very well with the others. In most cases, as they worked through the review, one student read the question out loud and they both discussed the answer before selecting. The review game in this case is Space Race, which is part of Socrative.com. At first appearance it may seem a little "young" for high school students but my freshmen and senior classes ...

The honeymoon is over. Well, sort of. The second day did not go quite as smooth as the first because of technology issues. Shocker! In each of the two classes, one student had extra difficulty getting his computer to connect to the wireless. I helped and tried several solutions and a couple different computers before finally getting it going. The other students were very patient but it was because they were using their computers for many things beyond getting ready to take the quiz. At least they were distracting themselves and I decided to accept that early on in this process. I'll work on something more "productive" to keep them occupied if (when) this happens in the future. There have been several positives already. I found that I can create questions with a little more detail and make them multiple choice. In the past I did not think it fair to expect them to recall details but they should be able to identify or recognize them in a list. It works very well to se...

"Take out a piece of paper and fold it in half length-wise." Almost every one of my English classes for the last twenty years has begun with that statement. What follows is a short, five-question quiz on the previous night's reading. Recently, one or two of those questions comes with notebooks open, which gives students a chance to see how well they are taking notes and keeping track of what is important from the day's discussion. In any case, both students and I get a quick look at how well (or if!) they are reading and understanding. "Take out your smartphone or get a netbook from the cart." That's how today's class began for two of my classes. Those students took the quiz (created in a spreadsheet and imported into a quiz program)  using the netbooks, their smartphones, and on an iPad.  They loved it, but that's not surprising. It was something different and not only used technology but used something (cell phone) that is banned in school....